Hello Bootcampers! I’m sharing the following information I found on a fitness blog by a trainer named, Daniel Rosenthal. This is exactly what I’ve been preaching for over 2 decades! Don’t get side-tracked by transient, fad diets that promise you quick results. REMEMBER, ‘quick’ doesn’t last! There are no shortcuts to success – just hard work and persistence. More so, there is real truth in an often-quoted saying offering social wisdom, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”
If you invest in your health, learning how to eat clean and train most efficiently, you will have all the tools you need to achieve your fitness goals for a lifetime.
“You don’t want to lose weight.
You might think you do. But you don’t.
You actually want to lose fat.
”Weight loss” is too broad a term. You could stop drinking water for a day (a bad idea), and you’ll be a pound or so lighter.
But that’s just dehydration.
Or we could surgically remove a limb, and hey, you’ve lost 15 lbs!
No.
We want fat loss. We want to lose fat and look more toned, more defined, or whatever the current fitness buzzword happens to be. Basically, we want our muscles to be more visible, our stomachs flatter, and our limbs less jiggly.
So, how do we do this? It’s actually pretty simple…
Now, you might be thinking, “yeah, yeah, I already know what you’re gonna say: eat less, move more, right?”
Right, but also wrong.
Eat less, move more is a gross oversimplification. Because how you eat and how you move really matter.
It’s the difference between fast failure and slow success.
Oh, I forgot to mention: fat loss is slow. If you lose 0.5-1 lb of fat per week, you’re doing really well. Stupendously well.
Slow is a good thing. Because slow means sustainable. And sustainable means you’ll keep the fat off long-term.
So, let’s break this whole thing down into three categories.
1. Nutrition.
2. Training.
3. Recovery.
1. Nutrition
You gotta change how you eat.
I don’t care how hard you train, eating whatever you want isn’t gonna work.
Trust me, I’ve been there. And so have a lot of my clients.
There are three things to think about:
I. CALORIE DEFICIT
Of all the advice I’m going to give in this article, this is the most important: you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
It doesn’t matter how “healthy” you eat; if you don’t figure out how to eat at a calorie deficit, nothing’s gonna change.
To figure out how many calories would put you at a calorie deficit, take your target weight in lbs and multiply by 12.
Wanna get down to 150? 150 x 12 = 1800 calories per day.
II. 80% NUTRITIOUS FOOD, 20% LESS NUTRITIOUS FOOD
Get 80% of your calories from nutritious food. Nutritious food tends to be lower-calorie, which means you can eat more of it without taking a big calorie hit. It also keeps you feeling full, fuels exercise, and also helps you recover from exercise. Plus, eating lots of nutrients will make you feel like you have more energy day-to-day.
Here’s a list (off the top of my head) of nutritious food:
- meat (unprocessed)
- fish
- eggs
- veggies (including frozen)
- fruit (including frozen)
- potato (any colour)
- rice
- olive oil
- butter
- coconut oil
- oatmeal
- peanut butter (as long as the ingredients list just says “peanuts” and “salt”)
If you’re still not sure whether a food is nutritious, ask a grandmother. Or leave a comment at the bottom of this article with your question.
Once you have the first 80% taken care of, you can get the remaining 20% of your calories from less nutritious food: pizza, fries, beer etc.
Less nutritious food keeps you sane and lets you be social while losing weight. Which is very important if you want to be successful long-term.
III. PROTEIN WITH EVERY MEAL
Protein is important. You’re gonna need it to help you recover from your new exercise regime (more on that below) and to keep appetite at bay.
You see, eating at a calorie deficit is going to lead to some hunger. Eating protein is going to minimise that hunger because protein is more satiating than carbs and fat.
Aim to eat 1g protein per lb target weight. So if you’re aiming to get to 130 lb, eat 130 lb protein per day.
This probably sounds like a lot, and you’re not sure how you could get that much protein.”
So bootcampers, download that calorie-tracking app (LoseIt or MyFitnessPal) and START TRACKING until this becomes second-nature to you….and it will!
Tomorrow, I will share the rest of the blog.
Happy Wednesday!
Miami Women-Only Fitness Bootcamp 
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