Food: Your questions answered

Food: Your questions answered

Ok so I asked you for feedback on what topics you want to hear about. Surprise, surprise, most of you want to hear about food! What food to eat, how to prepare it, when to eat it, how much and how often. And let’s not forget what foods help us to lose weight (more specifically body fat not just weight. Muscle weighs more than fat and it’s your fat-burning furnace. You don’t want to lose muscle!)

As you already know I am against deprivation diets of any kind. How can you deprive yourself of valuable nutrients when you’re training anyway? When you train the body’s resources get used up. Muscle fibres get broken down. THEY HAVE TO BE REPLACED! If precious muscle is not replaced you run the risk of PUTTING ON WEIGHT and losing all your exercise gains. Don’t do it!

So what to eat. In my book it’s really simple. Here’s some bullet points to make it easy:

Weight-loss: Cut the carbs. Anything from bread to pasta, pastry and wheat-based cereal. Wheat will bloat you like a hot-air balloon, even if you eat very little. It has inflammatory properties especially for women. To add to that it turns very quickly into sugar in the bloodstream if it’s more refined, making it an ample substance for fat storage. Fat is not your problem when it comes to fat storage but carbs and sugars are as they promote the fat storing hormone insulin. Reduce, eliminate or replace starchy carbs with healthy veggies.

Energy: Do you lack energy most of the time? While there are many factors that contribute to low energy levels like sleep deprivation an obvious one, there are also dietary reasons why we slump especially at certain times of the day. If you are eating energy zapping foods like sugar and carbs (here they are again) you will get an energy slump every time. Sugar will encourage an insulin surge to drop high sugar levels to lower manageable ones. Not only does this promote fat storage, it also results in an excessive drop in blood sugar leaving you more tired than before you had it in the first place. What to do? If you can go cold turkey and cut sugar altogether from your diet you’ll win. If you can’t do it all at once then wean yourself off bit by bit. Or try to replace sugary foods with fruit. BUT be careful. Fruit is also high in sugar. And even though it’s natural sugar it’s still sugar. The only advantage that you have with fruit sugar is the fibre which slows down absorption of sugar but it still can give you a sugar spike so keep it to a minimum.

Protein: Ok so this an important ingredient when you are exercising and/or looking to lose weight. If you eat meat, fish, eggs and dairy you shouldn’t have too much of a problem taking in enough protein each day. However, you want to aim to have protein with EACH meal. I know it’s a pain but having a carbs-only breakfast (toast, cereal) and lunch, will only give you lots of energy and no muscle support. Plus you’ll get hungry within a few hours. Eating protein in the morning will enable muscle and organ repair and set you up for the day whilst also keeping you fuller longer.

Fat: Is essential. Low fat diets have done a lot of damage to the balanced diet plate as they have all been put into the same category of BAD. However not all fats are created equal and we need as much as 30% fat every day. The secret is to get in more good fats than bad fats that help with satiety (keeping you full), brain cognition and function and cleaning arteries, among many more things. Try to get more monounsaturated fats in your diet than saturated fats and almost always avoid trans fats, they are always bad for you. Saturated fats are found in meat and animal products like dairy. Remove excess fat from meat cuts, skin from chicken and go for lean pieces of meat and low fat milk. Eat oily fish regularly or if vegetarian eat flaxseeds, chia seeds and hemp seeds to get valuable omega 3 and 6 oils. Other sources of good fats are olive oil (raw), avocados and olives.

More on food next week! Please feel free to ask more questions. 

You can comment below. ⬇

Hope you’re having a good year so far and sticking to your goals!

Sally x