Nutritional Advice
Any goal can be helped and accelerated dramatically by monitoring your diet. It does not have to be a strict diet or even an overhaul on your current one. Just a few changes here and there can really help make the difference.
Weight Loss
There are many ways to lose weight from fad diets, fasting, exercising or taking diet pills. Some of these approaches give you the desired effect of weight loss but at a cost to your overall health. So how to best approach weight loss dieting?
Balanced Diet
By restricting your body to specific foods and nutrients you can completely avoid the necessary nutrients that are essential for keeping us healthy. This can whack your body's homoeostasis out of check meaning that you may not be able to synthesise hormones or proteins or provide enough energy to keep you feeling yourself. This can lead to tiredness, ill feelings and usually only serve to demotivate you from your cause.
This is where the term 'balanced diet' originates. It is vital that whilst eating less calories we still give our bodies everything they need in order to feel happy and energetic throughout a diet.
With the help of a one week food diary and working with a client closely, we can work out easy changes to any diet which will keep you feeling good and point you in the right direction to achieve your goals.
Muscle Gain
It is widely understood that in order to gain muscle mass you must be doing the correct exercises matched with a healthy high protein diet.
The best way to start a high protein diet is to incorporate a good portion of protein with each meal.
For example, three poached eggs on toast for breakfast, a pasta dish for lunch and a good cut of meat with dinner. This will really help with bulking.
The next stage is learning what to supplement on and when to do it.
For someone who really wants to build efficiently we suggest a 30g serving of protein every three and a half hours.
If you find this too filling you can turn to using protein shakes for one hit a day. These are a good source of protein and when using a high quality product will not cause bloating.
Any high protein diet should also be supplemented with good amounts of fruit and vegetables.
Meal Ideas
Here are a few suggestions that you can mix and match.
Breakfast
• Poached eggs on brown toast
• Bacon and egg sandwich (2 eggs) brown bread
• Omelette (any toppings)
• Eggs on brown toast
• Scrambled eggs on brown toast
• Peanut butter on brown toast
• Peanut butter on crumpets
• Porridge (with banana is nice)
• Fry up (as a rare treat)
Lunch
• Beans on toast
• Chicken/ham/turkey/tuna baguette or sandwich
• Cheese on toast, ham on the side
• Pasta salad
• Smoked salmon
Dinner
• Make sure there is a good serving of meat or pasta with any dinner
• Meat sandwiches
• Lentil dishes
Tips
Buy a pre cooked chicken and take parts off it when needed for making sandwiches or just as part of a meal.
Make sure you eat enough veg and fruit with this diet as they contain the nutrients your body needs to access the protein and in turn to build muscle.
Snack Ideas
• Protein shake
• Protein bar
• Lots of peanut butter on crumpets
• Granola bar
• Jerky
• Mixed nuts (lots of them)
• Meat slices
A good high protein snack should always contain either a source of complete protein such as meat, or several sources of incomplete protein.
Incomplete proteins do not contain all of the amino acids (proteins) the body needs to build effectively. So you must mix your sources of incomplete protein to make sure you get all of the aforementioned amino acids.
BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)
BMR allows us to see how many calories we must eat daily to stay the same weight. By using this figure you can eat less or more of the right calories to help lose or gain weight.
If you have any questions about a healthy high protein diet please drop me an email.