Eat Smart Not Less !!!!

All foods fall under 3 categories:  protein, carbohydrates and fats.

Your hands can be very useful in estimating appropriate portions.  When planning a  meal, use the following portion sizes as a guide.

Carbohydrates:  Provides you with active energy and allows for good mental focus.  Your most favorable carbohydrates are fruits and vegetables whereas your less favorable carbohydrates are grains and starches, which are  densely packed with sugar.  As a result any less favorable carbohydrates not utilized by your body at the end of the day are converted to fat.  Make sense ??!!

Fats:  Healthy fats help to control your blood sugar levels so you can maintain higher energy levels throughout the day.  Healthy choice fats include olive oil, peanut butter, almonds and avocados.

There are also things like complex carbohydrates such as vegetables, legumes, oatmeal, breads and pasta.  Complex carbohydrates have 3 or more sugar molecules linked together.  Simple carbohydrates are items like: sugar, honey, fruit, milk, candy, soda, and juice.

A healthy balance between  the three would be 30% protein, 40% carbohydrates and 30% fat.  This balance also helps to control your blood sugar and insulin levels.

An apple a day, Keeps the doctor away!!

Guidelines for Weight Control

Twelve Tips From Twelve Hamilton Personal Trainers

1.  If energy input exceeds energy output, the excess calories are stored as body fat (it doesn’t matter if the extra food is carbohydrate, fat or protein – all foods are converted to body fat for storage in fat tissue).

2.  Regular exercise will increase energy expenditure, and has other benefits for weight control including lowering our “setpoint” (cardiovascular exercise), increasing lean body mass (weight training), increasing fat-metabolizing enzymes (cardiovascular exercise), and increasing your body’s metabolism (cardiovascular exercise and weight training).

3.  Your metabolic rate remains elevated above resting levels 30 minutes or longer after vigorous cardiovascular exercise.  This means that you continue to burn more calories for many minutes or even hours after your workout.

4.  To improve energy balance in favor of losing weight, decrease your caloric intake and choose foods that are high in complex carbohydrates (pasts, rice, potatoes, bread, cereals) and low in fat and sugar.

5.  When a healthy, sensible diet is combined with regular exercise, close to 100 percent of the long-term weight loss will be in the form of body fat.

6. The number of fat cells is largely determined prior to adulthood which stresses the importance of being physically active in our younger years, and then maintaining a high level of activity throughout your life.

7.  When adults get fatter, as a result of overeating, they are filling or enlarging existing fat cells rather than creating new ones.

8.  Increases in body fat as we grew older are largely due to a lack of regular physical exercise.

9.  Your weight loss should be gradual: no more than 1 kilogram (2lbs) per week.   This is the safe limit to reducing your fat stores.  If you lose greater than 1 kilogram per weak, you are likely losing lean body tissue (muscle), which will lower your metabolic rate and increase the likelihood that you will regain the lost weight.

10.  It is not possible to “spot reduce”: there is no evidence that fat is burned to a greater degree from the fat stores directly over the exercising muscle groups (i.e. abdominal fat is not necessarily burned when doing crunches).  The only way to burn body fat during your workout is to exercise continuously to maintain your heart rate in our target zone (i.e. 60 – 85% of your maximum heart rate).

11.  Eat at least 3 meals per day, with the majority of the calories before mid-afternoon. frequent smaller meals are better than fewer large meals.  Snacking is fine as long as they don’t increase your over-all daily caloric intake and you snack on healthy foods.

12.  For beginner to intermediate exercisers, exercise of low intensity and long duration is more effective for burning fat than exercise of high intensity and short duration.  For more advanced exercisers, higher intensity, shorter duration cardio-training can have a tremendous fat burning effect.

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Eat Smart … Not Less!!

All foods fall under 3 categories: protein, carbohydrates and fats.

Protein: Protein feeds your lean muscle tissue daily.  It also stimulates the release of the hormone called glucagon.  This is a mobilization hormone that allows your body to use stored energy such as fats and carbohydrates, as energy sources

Carbohydrates: Provides you with active energy and allows for good mental focus. Your most favorable carbs are fruits and vegetables whereas your less favorable carbs are grains and starches, which are  densely packed with sugar. As a result any less favorable carbs not utilized by your body at the end of the day is converted to fat. Make sense ??!!

Fats: Healthy fats help to control your blood sugar levels so you can maintain higher energy levels throughout the day. Healthy choice fats include olive oil, peanut butter, almonds and avocados.

There are also things like complex carbohydrates such as vegetables, legumes, oatmeal, breads and pasta. Complex carbs have 3 or more sugar molecules linked together. Simple carbs are items like: sugar, honey, fruit, milk, candy, soda, and juice.

A healthy balance between the three would be 30% protein, 40% carbohydrates and 30% fat. This balance also helps to control your blood sugar and insulin levels.

An apple a day, Keeps the doctor away!!