* Drink lots of water (with every meal and between every meal). Try to drink at least a gallon of water a day. If you cant do that - 3-4 glasses - minimum.
* Avoid consuming liquid carbs (soft drinks, juice, and milk) after 5pm.
* Avoid simple sugars (sucrose and especially fructose). Fructose is used to refill liver glycogen stores, where as complex carbs (glucose) is used to refill muscle glycogen stores. Muscle glycogen does not hamper fat burning, but liver glycogen does.
* Eat a meal every 2 to 3 hours. Have chewy protein foods (such as meat), be your main source of protein, not liquid protein (such as protein shakes, or egg whites).
* Avoid eating carbs after 7pm (or before you sleep) because this will interfere with growth hormone (GH) release while you sleep. If you do eat a meal close to when you sleep, have it be just some slow digesting protein and fat. Protein also interferes with GH release slightly, but fat does not.
* Consume enough EFA’s (essential fatty acids), you can get them from fatty fish, nuts, or from fish oil supplements, such as flax seed oil.
* Increase your consumption of monounsaturated fats and decrease your intake of saturated fats, a good source of monounsaturated fat is extra virgin olive oil.
* If you have a job that requires lots of physical activity (manual labor), then make sure that every day for work, have a carb-loaded breakfast. Make sure you have plenty of muscle glycogen before you do lots of physical work, other wise, if you stick to the common low carb diets, you’ll lose muscle.
* Eat whole foods, such as chicken, steak, tuna, pork for protein, rice, pasta, bread, wheat, oatmeal, vegetables, grits for carbs, and make sure your getting enough healthy fats such as nuts and fats from fish. I recommend putting extra virgin olive oil on vegetables all the time, and supplement your fat intake with some EFAs (essential fatty acids) from flax seed oil.
* Do NOT cook your vegetables! Buy them fresh and eat them fresh, this is important. By doing this you are getting more nutrients such vitamins, minerals, potassium and antioxidants into your body, cooking them, or steaming them takes away vital nutrients from them. Eating them fresh will also increase your metabolism more since they will be harder to digest (remember the chew factor?). TIP: add some extra virgin olive oil over your vegetables to give them some better taste (I do this all the time). The same thing can apply to protein foods, for example, do not leave meats in a crockpot all day, that softens them up big time and makes it REALLY easy for your body to digest them. Only lightly cook your meat, just enough so that it is actually cooked, nothing more. Remember the more chewy the better!
(c) copyright. mikestewartfitness.com
eat healthy * lift heavy.
all rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment