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Fitness How To’s: Four Critical Components to Your Nutrition
Component 1: The right number of calories
While not the only component to weight loss, it isn’t any mystery that if you are serious about losing weight you have to create a calorie deficit. A number of people have struggles that go beyond the simple calorie count, but this is where it begins. If you don’t have a baseline and track in some measure where you are in relation to it, you have no chance of losing those unwanted pounds. That being said, there is a second component to having winning nutrition.
Component 2: The Right Kind of Calories
Many people who still struggle in losing weight after they have their calorie count under control see much improved results when they give focus to getting their calories from the right sources. While this example is a bit extreme, no one would recognize that there would be an issue in attempting to get all of your calories from soda and chips. You could technically gauge how much Coke and Potato Chips to have at all three meals to stay within a target calorie goal, but on top of feeling miserable you not likely see any changes. For some, that balance in the macros of your nutrition must be a bit more precise than for others. Keep your pulse on how many calories you proactively plan to get from protein, carb, and fat sources.
Component 3: Effective Distribution of Calories
One huge downfall many of us have fallen prey to is fasting through the day in an effort to use all of our calories in one meal. That does not allow our metabolism to achieve any balance, and is likely to wreak havoc on our body, mood, and emotional state. Avoid this pitfall! Plan at least 3 mealtimes on your day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and make an effort to stretch into 5 to 6 smaller meals on the day. With these in place, the 4th component is a no-brainer.
Component 4: Water
This was one of my greatest struggles. I had virtually lived on diet soda, and water was just too boring for my taste buds. I have made great strides by using water with lemon (and other citrus) to have some flavor and get to my 8 (+) cups of water on the day. The good news is that as you incorporate more water into your diet, the more your body will want it. This does not happen overnight, but I can tell you that I can actually sense my bodies thirst for water and soda has little appeal for me anymore. Seek to keep balance in your eating habits and you will see great strides in your weight loss journey. One final note, also be sure to not create too large a calorie deficit and so starve your body that it begins to shut down. One of the best tools I have found in helping me to reach target goals in this regard is an app/website called myfitnesspal (My fitness pal). You can put it on your smartphone or just log into it on your computer at myfitnesspal.com. It is totally free and allows you to track not only your calories but your fat, carb, protein, cholesterol, sodium, etc.
Fitness How To’s: Five Keys to Fitness Success
Exercise
There are a host of things we could look at, but let’s keep this simple. If you are serious about losing weight and/or getting fit the first item on this list comes as no surprise. It’s no secret that exercise is an essential part of fitness, no matter what level of exercise you engage in. It does not have to be high intensity, but you have to give your body some level of activity and elevate your heart rate. If you need this reminder as I did, renew your mind with the truth that it is ok to sweat a little.
Two inevitable questions that now follow: How much exercise? How hard should I go? In answer to the first question, make a plan to exercise at least three to four times this week. If you have been engaged in regular workouts you could even push to five or six workouts in the week. The level of intensity should be in line with what your body can handle, and only you know that. The real key here is to start slow if you’re just getting back on the horse or have never incorporated a regular workout routine before. You can always increase intensity the next day if things don’t seem challenging enough, but it would be terrible to get sidelined by an injury just coming out of the gate because of impatience. The duration of each workout is again going to be something you either know how to gauge because you know your body, or have to learn. If you are learning (or relearning) your body start with a half hour including cool downs. As you feel you can handle more consider gradually moving to 45 minutes and eventually even a full 60 minutes of activity.
Nutrition
Equally obvious is what nutrition you allow into your body. This is a huge deal because all the efforts of your workouts can be undone if you think you eat whatever you want simple because you “worked out”. Be smart, and identify some healthy meals you can use for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to ward off the hunger monster.
Accountability
“Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves; A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”
I know there is a huge temptation to believe you can simply get it done on your own. The truth that we all know to be true is this: we do better with accountability. We thrive and gain strength when we have someone who goes through the struggle with us and helps keep us focused. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the one providing encouragement.
Find at least one accountability partner, but if at all possible get a group of 3 or four. Give them the authority to ask tough questions and be prepared every now and again to tell on yourself.
Commitment
Don’t be in it for the short term. Make the commitment for the long haul. Temporary results are incredibly frustrating as the other side of the yo-yo diet always seems to leave us worse off than when we started. Make the commitment that you have decided to take ownership of your health and fitness goals and BE COMMITTED to them!
Adaptability
How does the saying go? “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. Be prepared for the fact that your ideal plan to bring a fitness regiment into your schedule may not go entirely according to plan. You will have to “tweak” things, and possibly make sacrifices to get workouts in and be resilient enough to adjust to the curve balls life will inevitably throw your way. You can do it! It just might not look the way you envisioned it at the beginning 🙂
To Waste or Waist?
If you grew up in a home like mine, there was ample appreciation for what we had and it was unconscionable to allow food to go to waste. Translation? You cleaned your plate, and did not allow food to go into the garbage. While well intention-ed, this approach to eating fails to take into account the possibility of not having a well balanced meal, or have portions in excess of what we actually need. Add to to this the pressure of needing to validate family cooking by going back for seconds, and you have the makings of some potentially bad eating habits.
Of course, in high school this wasn’t such a big deal with football and plenty of activities to counteract the massive calorie intake. However, enter college, and then marriage with that same mentality in place but no exercise to balance it and it can create a bit of an issue. I was able to compound this problem further by looking at every plate put in front of me as a challenge as to whether I could finish it or not. With so many restaurants offering outlandish portions it became extraordinarily unhealthy for me when we would eat out.
Part of my nutritional overhaul involved me planning my food choices, and that included when I would go out to eat. I now plan that when we go out I may very well eat half my meal and bring the other half home. It provides a fair degree of flexibility, but I am also careful in what I order.
This got me to thinking: why do I force feed myself when I know that I’m done with my meal? Then it struck me! I was still using the same eating philosophy from my childhood. I began to actually think through this idea of “Leave nothing to waste!” It occurred to me that just by shoveling what was left into my face does not mean it has benefited my body. Whenever I eat in excess, the bottom line is that it goes to MY waist, which means by eating it the food has gone to waste twice over!
Please know, I am not abdicating that we should get in the habit of throwing food away. I believe that if we reprogram ourselves to learn our bodies better, we can be better prepared to know when we are best served by ordering smaller portions or being ready to take food home. There are those occasions when it doesn’t work to try to bring the food home due to spoilage or distance from home. While it may be aggravating to throw perfectly good food away, what’s worse is if we waste the food twice over and pretend that by eating it we made a good decision. I am learning to listen to my body better. I encourage you to do the same, and when appropriate allow some food to go to waste so that it won’t go to waist 🙂
How Necessary is Nutrition?
When I first planned to lose weight, I figured I would simply apply the formula I knew would work. I would simply ensure that I burned more calories than I took in. The problem with that is I gave no attention to where the calories I received would be coming from, and worse yet my body would not necessarily feel “full” because it was not receiving the nutrients it craved. This led to some really bad cycles, and wondering how I could make so little progress in weight loss. I used workouts as an excuse to treat myself to whatever I wanted to eat. It did not take long to discover that I was easily able to “undo” whatever benefits I would get from my workouts.
Doing a little bit of research, I learned that 70% – 80% of my visible results would be directly related to my nutrition. What was the question again? How important is nutrition? About 3 to 4 times as important as your workout. Use a trusted food tracker like myfitnesspal and you can even track your macros.
Welcome to Second Chance Fitness!
Much thanks for stopping by! However you got to this page, something health or fitness related drove you here. What do those words truly mean? What is it to be healthy? To be fit? I thought I had an idea of what fitness was, same as I believed if I could simply lose weight it would automatically equate to being “healthy”.
Fortunately, I had a friend who understood my desire to lose weight and was willing to work with me and help motivate me to set goals that would not only help me reach my weight loss goals, but also learn about true health and real fitness. It was incredibly effective. I lost over 20 lbs., and even better dropped from a size 42 to a size 36.
Before that, I used fad diets to try to regulate my weight and played the yo-yo game we are all so familiar with until I had ballooned up to 276 lbs. I thought I was doing well when I decided to track calories. However, I rarely exercised and had no consistency in my eating habits. I experienced some weight loss, but was still eating garbage and had no real fitness to speak of.
At age 40, I finally committed to giving it my all and seeing if I could get results. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Having a comprehensive fitness plan enabled me to get the exercise my body needed as well as get the nutrition I was sorely lacking. As I improved my food choices, I saw my junk food cravings virtually disappear, and I was motivated to do more and more clean eating. Soon, I clocked in at 214 lbs, and was back to a size 36 pants (from 42) for the first time since college. Best of all, I was feeling great, and knew I had found a sustainable and viable lifestyle that I was excited to maintain.
My journey has just begun, but I am so excited for what is yet to come. Where are you right now? How are you doing with your efforts in fitness? Need a second chance at this whole fitness thing? I would very much love to hear your story and pass along (pay forward, if you will) what was presented to me. Drop me a line and let me know what I can do for you!
Second Chance Fitness 