If I were to award a single food item with the title of ‘Fastest Way To Pack On The Pounds’, hands down the winner would be refined sugar.
Today we eat 20 times more sugar than people did 200 years ago! No wonder we are bigger than ever…
One of the reasons that your diet is filled with so much sugar is that some form of refined sugar is included in virtually every single processed food. This is yet another reason that it’s important to cut those processed and packaged convenience foods out of your diet.
Cutting sugar from your diet is easier said than done. Once it is a part of your daily diet, cravings strike, causing you to eat it even more frequently. But there is hope.
Here are 7 Ways To Crave Less of that Sugar that you’re eating that’s killing your results and keeping you from attaining your goal weight:
Eat More Protein
A diet rich in protein keeps you full, satisfied and less likely to crave sweets. A great way to make sure that you are getting enough is to plan each meal and snack around a protein. Plan breakfast around eggs, lunch and dinner around baked chicken breast, and make snacks hard boiled eggs or baked meatballs. Try the recipe below for a protein-packed, sugar-busting snack.
Avoid Artificial Sweeteners
One of the biggest fitness myths out there is the idea that calorie-free, artificially sweetened beverages don’t impact your fat loss results. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the truth is that the diet soda you’re sipping is making it harder for you to reach your goal weight. While the diet soda itself doesn’t contain calories, it has been proven to cause cravings for sugary foods. Put down the diet soda and instead pick up a refreshing bottle of spring water.
Steer Clear Of Saboteurs
The sad truth is that people in your life will try to sabotage your low sugar diet. You’ll run into that pushy person at the office who insists that you eat a donut, the well-meaning family member who dishes you up a bowl of ice cream, and the friend who comes over with a plate of her home-baked cookies. The best avoidance strategy is to sincerely thank the sugar-pusher for their gift, tell them you wish you could eat it, and then blame me – your trainer – as the bad guy who says that you need to cut back on sugar.
Try Dark Chocolate
For those moments when your sweet tooth is relentlessly badgering you for something sweet, ditch the super-sugary candies and stick with a small square of very dark chocolate. Chocolate that is 70% or higher in cocoa content should be the only candy that you keep on hand. The benefit of the cocoa, in addition to the lowered sugar content, makes dark chocolate an occasionally justifiable treat.
Stick With Fruit
What’s sweet, colorful and comes in hundreds of flavors? Organic, seasonal, fresh fruit, of course! As you remove refined sugar from your life, feel free to add in some natural sugar by way of fresh, local fruit. It’s amazing how satisfyingly sweet fruit is – it’s truly nature’s candy.
Change Your Palate
As you begin to limit your intake of refined sugars, you’ll find that your tolerance for sugar decreases. This means that something that didn’t taste sweet before – say a green apple – now has uncanny depths of sweetness. What’s happening is that your sweet receptors are becoming more finely tuned, now that you’re not overwhelming your palate with sickly-sweet refined sugar.
Workout Like You Mean It
A regular, challenging exercise routine will not only get you into amazing shape, it also reduces your cravings for sugar. The endorphin rush brought on by vigorous exercise is an even more powerful feel-good-feeling than the pleasure gotten by indulging in sugary foods.
Make challenging, consistent exercise a part of your life by signing up for my fitness program. I’d love to get you to your goals using my results-driven method.
Simply call or email me today to set up your first workout.
Here’s how to spend less time exercising, while achieving quicker, more noticeable results…
Focus. It sounds obvious, but this crucial requirement for an effective workout is often overlooked. When you’re lifting weights, focus on that specific muscle group. Researchers have proven significant increase in muscle activity when people focused on what they were doing, compared to thinking about unrelated topics.
Variety. Keep your muscles guessing. Do this by changing up your routine often. This helps to avoid plateaus and to continuously challenge your body. Try new exercises at new intensities and new weights.
Fuel. Stay on top of your food and your hydration levels. The best results are achieve when you’re drinking enough water and eating real, wholesome foods.
Strategy. The time of day that you workout makes a huge difference in your results. And no, I’m not going to say that there’s a universal ‘right time’ to workout. Your job is to figure out when your body is at its best and to make that the time that you consistently exercise. If you’re not a morning person, then don’t force yourself to wake up at 5am, try working out after work instead.
Audience. There’s a benefit to working out in a group setting. Researchers saw a significant increase in strength and endurance in the people who had an audience versus those training on their own.
Caffeine. Caffeine has been shown to help amp up workouts. If you don’t have any medical conditions that would otherwise make moderate caffeine intake unsafe, then drink a caffeinated beverage one hour prior to working out.
Music. Check this out: researchers found that personal music motivated weightlifters to complete two more repetitions on average than those who were not listening to music. That’s a great reason to listen to your favorite music while you exercise.
Comfort. Not only will you be happy to put comfortable workout clothes on, but you will also be able to focus better on your workout, rather than wondering if your pants will split when you squat.
Professional. If you’re not already one of my valued clients, then now is the time to become one. Working with a professional ensures that you’re being challenged and are seeing results. And that’s just smart, right?
If you don’t know where to start when it comes to exercise, I’m here to help.
It’s my passion to make exercise a part of your life that you look forward to and are rewarded by. Wouldn’t you like all of the healthy rewards of being fit?
Call or email me today and we will get you started on the exercise program that completely transforms your body.
There are two distinctly different approaches to losing the fat and getting into amazing shape. One of these approaches works. (Every. Single. Time.) And the other approach fails. (Every. Single. Time.)
I call these the Fitness Short Game and the Fitness Long Game. Let’s find out which game you’re playing…
Fitness Short Game: Those who choose to play short are looking for the quick fix. They are looking for the program that will give them dramatic fat loss results in the shortest amount of time. They want results, they want it NOW, and they don’t play to stick with it. This is the instant gratification crowd.
Fitness Long Game: Those who choose to play long are focusing on making lifestyle changes to sustain for the long haul. They are working on steadily adapting healthier habits and putting in the time and effort to maintain these improvements. They are patient and focused on their end goal, knowing full well that gratification will be delayed, and results will be permanent.
Which of these two strategies to you think leads to pounds lost and muscles sculpted? There’s no question that playing the fitness long game is the only way to successfully transform your health and your body.
Let’s take a closer look at what it means to play the Fitness Long Game…
1) Create a Long Term Vision
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step…and also with a selected destination. The first step in playing the fitness long game is to have a clear picture in your mind of what the success you are striving for looks like.
What will you look like when you’ve hit your fitness stride? How often will you exercise each week to maintain your fab new body? What foods will you eat to support your muscles and aid your fat loss? How many hours each night will you sleep? Who will you spend your time with?
The clearer your vision, the steadier your path, and the more likely your chance to succeed.
2) Learn to Delay Gratification
As you read above, no one attains a hot body through quick, miracle fixes. This means that as you strive towards your goal you will need to practice the art of delayed gratification.
This is not to say that there won’t be victories along the way, to fuel your fire and give you a boost of motivation. Pay attention to every little victory, such as every single pound lost, each size down, and compliments from friends and family. Learn to derive gratification from each inch of progress towards your goal.
Imagine how sweetly gratifying it will be to achieve your long term vision and lean into this feeling when the going gets tough.
3) Fall in Love with the Process
Why is it that you aren’t in tiptop shape right now? Because you’ve fallen in love with the process of being out-of-shape. You’ve fallen in love with the hours on your couch, the comfort food, the late night desserts and the extra hours of sleep in the morning.
Playing the fitness long game means falling in love with the process of getting fit. You must fall in love with the early morning wake up, the muscle pain, the sweaty clothes and the clean foods. Remember, this process is part of your long term vision for your fit life, and so accepting the new habits now, rather than later, will get you to your goals faster.
Won’t getting and staying in shape be that much easier if you LOVED the habits and actions necessary for your success?
4) Take Notice of All Progress
On week 2 of a 12-week challenge you will not wake up looking like a fitness competitor. You’ll wake up sore, tired, and probably hungry. The scale will tell you that you’ve lost a modest number of pounds, and you’ll mentally calculate the percentage left to lose. You’ve barely scratched the surface.
I’ll bet if you tried you could find half a dozen signs of your early progress. Sure, these may be undetectable to everyone else, but it’s your body so you can feel the change before anyone else can see it. Take the time to stop and congratulate yourself on every inch of progress in your journey.
No step is too small to celebrate.
5) Focus Less on What You Want and More on Who You Want to Become
What you want is to look a certain way, to feel a certain way, and to have others look at you in a certain way. It’s easy to imagine what you want. However, it’s who you become that dictates what you get.
Spend time focusing on the kind of person who achieves the things that you want to achieve. What are their daily habits? What do they do differently than you do? What can you learn from them? By focusing on the kind of person that you need to become, you will automatically achieve the success that you want.
Transform your daily habits to those of the person who has achieved the things you wish to achieve.
Are you ready to transform your body once and for all by playing the fitness long game? Call or email me now to get started!