Top nutritional advice for weight management!

Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together and you’ve got a kingdom – Jack Lalanne

First of all consider this – exercise is important in helping to lose weight! Dieting alone will help you lose weight however in order to get a toned body you must exercise!

Nutrition is the science of food and its relationship to health. Nutrients are chemicals in foods that are used by the body for growth, maintenance, and energy. Nutrients that cannot be synthesized by the body and thus must be derived from the diet are considered essential. These include vitamins, minerals, some amino acids and some fatty acids.

Proper weight management consists of understanding first how your metabolism works and then applying basic nutrition and new eating/drinking habits in order to create change in your metabolism. Sign up for a 6 week weightloss programme today!

As a certified Metabolisim and Nutrition Advisor, I am happy to share with you that I take exceptional care in ensuring that you get sound advice on nutrition and advice on ways that will effect your metabolism to give you the best results for burning unneeded fat. Your metabolism or more directly, the metabolic rate diet system is based around five key parts of the human body. These include the liver, thyroid, adrenals, pituitary glands, and body substances. Learning how to manipulate your metabolism through diet for a positive outcome is what I am offering to help you to do. In my studies I have intensively reviewed the most popular diets available today looking at the pros and cons while extracting the most useful information from each diet! This included reviewing the Atkins Diet, Paleo Diet, Womens Health Look Good Naked Diet, Weight Watchers and a few others. Furthermore I will give you tips and useful information on how to maintain good health through combined healthy eating, exercise and mindfulness.

Different diets however propose different challenges, for example vegan diets. While I personally am not vegan, I love the subject and view closely the eating habits and benefits thereof. What interests me most is that vegans have their own personal reasons for going vegan (and I accept all the reasons I hear from animal cruelty to steroid/force fed cattle) all legit reasons. I personally love that veganism exists and that the movement has led to loads of new research and experimentation. Extracting that information and combining it with works for me is crucial in finding the happy medium in what is best to eat.

Because foods are fuel, biologically speaking, we must look at our body systems, how they interact with one another and what they need to function efficiently. This means that it is important to look at what nutrition we need first and then choosing foods that will provide. Some of us may be missing certain vitamins and minerals when we rely on a particular diet for all our answers. For example The Vegan Society has a very interesting article about vegans and the need to get B12 vitamins.

The site insists that the only reliable vegan sources of B12 are foods fortified with B12 (including some plant milks, some soy products and some breakfast cereals) and B12 supplements. This is not an attack on veganism, but more-so to put forth the message that we must be mindful of any nutrients or minerals that we may be missing if we cut out certain foods. For more information ( see here).

Chlorella and spirulina for example are both types of algea that apparently are filled with B12 amongst other nutrients. Again one must always be diligent in reading about possible side-effects due to your own possible allergic reactions to those. For more information about side effects effects of chlorella and spirulina while detoxing ( see here).

Gluten intolerance is very common. Personally I avoid gluten as much as possible and have noticed a different. Occasionally I will have a slice of wholegrain bread toasted (once a week), but generally speaking I will only use oats as they have a version of gluten that works for me. I personally have also replaced dairy milk with oat milk. The celiac diets in particular are of interest to me because of the suffers of celiac disease. These are people that have in some cases a life- threatening condition and must self manage their eating habits avoiding gluten at all costs. I have met several people with celiac disease and have had the privilege of speaking to them while working with street foods serving gluten free foods. Information gained from speaking with those individuals have helped me to pass on useful information to those that are looking at changingtheir eating habits.

If you are concerned and would like to avoid gluten here are a few sources:

http://ourgffamily.com/
https://celiac.org/

Soy products should only be used if you can prove it isn’t a genetically modified (GM) product. This goes along with any vegetable products such as corn (maize) oil. The labeling of GM products can be quite daunting a many food companies find it easy to work around the governments food labeling and packaging polices. That is why it is great that communities of people will stand against these flaws.

Here is an excellent website concerning GM products.
https://www.gmfreeme.org/

How do I lose weight?

Very simple – count your calories and stay in calorie deficit! What that means is not consuming more calories than you can burn. Or – burn more calories than you take in. I’ll explain more after answering the next question.

How many calories should I eat!

An average woman needs to eat about 2000 calories per day to maintain their weight, and 1500 calories to lose one pound of weight per week. An average man needs 2500 calories to maintain, and 2000 to lose one pound of weight per week.

However, this depends on numerous factors. These include age, height, current weight, activity levels, metabolic health and several others. These are things we can go through together to be more specific to your needs.

But back to the simple calorie deficit idea consider this; it takes less than 7-10 minutes to eat a Sausage Egg McMuffin which has approximately 430kcal… it takes  approximately 40 MINUTES RUNNING on a tread mill to lose 460kcal – do the maths! This all depends on your weight of course but you see how tough this can be! You have to work REALLY HARD and 3 to 4 TIMES LONGER to remove calories consumed in such a short period of time! What this means is that it is important that you become a food label reader to find out how many calories you are consuming so that you can manage your intake! You’ll want to eat healthier than the mentioned Sausage Egg McMuffin anyway in order to get proper nutrition in your body!

As mentioned earlier, I’ve studied many of the most popular diets as well as many popular fitness apps which give great tips on eating well balanced meals, much of which I will comment on in a later in one of my upcoming newsletters. My conclusion in short is that not all diets are suitable for everyone, in other words ‘one shoe does not fit all’. However after accepting the idea that there are many truths found in the various diets and having extracted what is common in them is very powerful, useful information that I use in my consulting about what is beneficial for your health!

Get in touch to find out how I can help you with your nutritional needs and help you become a more mindful eater.