The 5 Factors of Body Transformations

The 5 Factors of Fat Loss

Part 3B of 5: Supportive Nutrition

In first part of our Supportive Nutrition coverage we went over what to eat, the different macro-nutrients, and their thermic effect. Here in part 2 you'll find out how much to eat, how often to eat, the 2 most important rules for your success, and the importance of having some freedom in your diet (aka - the cheat).

1. The Importance of Meal Timing

Consuming food triggers digestion, and digestion requires calories. By eating more frequent, smaller meals, you continuously supply your body with nutrients while forcing it to digest and break down the foods. This, in turn, can have the net effect of raising your metabolism.

Ideally, you want to eat a supportive meal every 3 hours. Eating frequently stabilizes your blood sugar levels, providing a steady flow of quality fuel to your muscles and brain. This helps to steady your mood and boost your energy. Besides making you feel better, this increased energy can help further fat loss because you will naturally want to be more active.

Another benefit of a stable blood sugar levels is a suppressed appetite. By eating a supportive meal, frequently, you are reprogramming your appetite. You will begin to have fewer cravings and binge less often because you no longer experience the pain of hunger.

When you constantly give your body food with small meals your body does not feel the need to store fat. On the contrary when eating large, infrequent meals your body feels the need to store some food as fat for it is unsure as to when it will be fed again.

Eating frequently throughout the day can also help you stay energized and avoid making poor food choices. Eating smaller balanced meals often helps to reduce blood sugar fluctuations and leads to stronger compliance in making supportive food choices and long term success.

Skipping meals will only sabotage compliance. Missing a normally scheduled meal will leave you hungry, increasing the likelihood of making a poor food choice. As the day wears on, lack of proper meal timing will most likely cause you to become so hungry that you will forget about sticking to a supportive nutrition plan. It then becomes a matter of eating anything to satisfy your hunger!

2. Eating Fewer Calories

To lose fat you have to eat – not starve yourself. The only way that the human body burns off body fat is by being in caloric deficit. The goal is to adjust your daily calorie intake slightly to initiate fat loss. Restricting your calories will allow you to experience weight-loss, but it will be the result of muscle loss. When this occurs, not only does the body burn muscle to fuel its energy requirements, but by ridding itself of muscle, you are essentially slowing your metabolism.

But counting calories is tedious. And not always practical. So you must be able to use some form portion control. Enter the rule of the fist. The bigger the person, the bigger the fist, the bigger the portion...and vice versa. Here are some guidelines:

All of your meals are going to start with a protein source. If it is roughly the size of your fist, then it's a proper sized portion for you. If you are one to measure, women shoot for 4 oz and men shoot for about 6.

Next, there are specific meals (as you will soon read) where you want to add a starchy carbohydrate. Again, if it is roughly a serving equal to the size of your fist, then it is a proper portion size. Measurement-wise, around 1 cup of carbs is a good serving.

EXCEPTION #1 - Healthy Fats. Fats (oils, nuts, etc) are a little tricky. At 9 calories per gram, they are very calorie dense. So they DO NOT fall into the "rule of the fist." Generally, a portion size of 2 TBSP to 1/4 cup is standard. As for nuts, a great rule to follow is one nut for every 10 lbs of bodyweight.

EXCEPTION #2 - Vegetables. As far as vegetables go: Eat as much as you want!!! And I highly encourage it. It's rare I meet an individual that eats enough vegetables. The thermic effect of these foods are amazing. But you must stick to the high fibrous ones and go for a variety of deep colors in your selection.

NOTE: If you are a calorie counter, to reduce body fat a useful guideline for creating a caloric deficit is to reduce your calories by at least 500, but not more than 1000 below your maintenance level. For people with only a small amount of weight to lose, 1000 kcal will be too much of a deficit. As a guide to minimum calorie intake, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends that calorie levels never drop below 1200 calories per day for women or 1800 kcal per day for men. Even these calorie levels are very low and put you at risk for loss of muscle and a lower metabolism.

3A. The Formula

As you can see from above, I'm not going to give you an individualized menu or the perfect calorie count. That’s right, I gave up telling people exactly what to eat.

First, there is no “magic” number. One of the main problems with other diet programs is that they focus on – or emphasize –the numbers. Remember that food is fuel. But food should also be pleasurable. And I know from most of my clients, if every time you need to eat you have to calculate and weigh your food, you are more likely to give up. Think about it...if you had to cut up your food into specific pieces, a big part of the pleasure of eating is lost. Your meals would become a chore. This is why I integrated the concept of the Supportive Nutrition Guidelines. It is much easier to look at your plate and notice that you have a lean protein, a fibrous carb, and (depending on the time of day) a starchy carb.

Secondly, I could create the perfect menu plan, but you won’t follow it – at least not the majority of the time. This was my protocol in the past. I would spend hours creating the perfect menu plans for clients. But time after time, clients reported their frustration and inability to follow such an idealistic menu plan. However, these same clients experienced amazing results.

But...I will give you 2 VERY important rules to follow that will catapult your fat loss efforts....TEN-FOLD! Read on.

3B. The "Fat-Loss Formula" for Meal Construction

There are so many diets to choose from. Low-fat, No-carb, Mediterranean, Paleo...the list goes on. And they all work. Why? Because they share a few of the same important factors:

There is a requirement for a "natural"/non-processed selection of food

There is a form of portion control required in each (whether blatant or subsidiary)

and most relevant to this section...

There is a conscious effort never to mix starchy carbs with fats in the same meal.

That last bullet point is VERY important! The two nutrients you'll want to avoid consuming together in appreciable amounts are carbs and fat. Carbs cause the storage hormone insulin to be released. Fat ingestion leads to large amounts of fatty acids in the blood.

Insulin + fat = fat storage

The Rules of Supportive Nutrition are this:

1. Consume protein with every meal.

2. Add either carbs or fat

Now since many foods have trace amounts of carbs and fats in them, you will rarely be able to get a meal down to absolutely ZERO fat or ZERO carbs. Just be sure to keep the "unwanted" nutrient for that individual meal under 10 grams.

To recap, here are the two "approved" types of nutrient combining:

1. Protein + Fat meals (you can have your higher fat meats, eggs, etc. here)

2. Protein + Carb meals (these meals should have low to no fat proteins choices such as poultry breast, egg whites, no/low-fat cottage cheese, etc.)

So now you know what nutrients to eat together. But, when should you eat a Protein + Carb meal and when should you eat meals that contain Protein + Fat?

3C. Carb Intake Timing

The key to fat loss is not avoiding carbs. It's learning to consume them only when your body is most primed to "handle" them. This comes at two different times of day:

1. In the morning - Glucose tolerance is highest in the morning. That means it's ideal to consume a large portion of your daily carb intake at breakfast. Your body is best equipped to process them during this time.

2. After intense exercise - During the 1-2 hour window post workout your body is ultra primed to suck up carbs for recovery, energy replenishment, and other anabolic processes. And none of it in the form of fat storage.

These last two segments, Fat-Loss Meal Formulation and Carb Timing, are the two tools you need to keep your body in a fat burning state 24 hours a day. Combined with the heightened metabolism effects of Resistance Training and Smart Cardio, you'll maximize your fat loss like at a rapid pace.

4. Cheat Meals

Everyone loves their Cheat Meals! Simply having something to look forward to is extremely motivational. It makes it much easier to avoid temptation in the short term. On the other hand, the fundamentals of successful fat loss remain constant…If you make a point of eating cheat meals often enough, you reduce the chances of successful fat loss.

As you apply these supportive nutrition habits, you make your body very efficient at burning calories. But then your body becomes too efficient at it. This is when your the leptin levels in the body drop and so will your basal metabolic rate. That means we would have to eat less and less calories as time goes on to achieve the desired effect. We DON'T want to do that.

The way we get around this is by tricking the body with strategically place "cheat meals." But this rule CAN NOT be abused or used as an excuse too often or with a gluttonous mind-set. ONLY after you have adhered to a very high majority (90%) of "Supportive" meals can you put a not-so-supportive meal into your body. These meals help jack your Leptin levels back up and your body will be quite good at burning through it. You’re going to enjoy that favorite food even more, because it’s become a special treat.

A general rule on cheating: make sure that no more than 10% of your meals are missed or cheat meals. So if you’re having 5 feedings a day, seven days a week (for a total of 35 meals per week), then no more than four of those meals should be misses or cheats. This is the what I call the Dr. John Berardi rule (I highly recommend his book Precision Nutrition). If you can achieve 90% adherence you will without a doubt get the results you want.

Conclusion

That's it. You have been armed with all of the information you need in these last two installments to make informed choices on eating to support your fat loss goals. All you have to do is execute.

Next installment of the "5 Factors of Body Transformation" we will be discussing supplements. See you then.

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