A lot of gym goers make the mistake of thinking that all it takes to get a flat stomach is a bit of exercise in the gym a few times a week and hey presto your stomach will be rippling. I even find myself at times battling with some of my clients to explain that is not the case, there’s a lot more to it. It has to be more of a conscious lifestyle change meaning eating healthier, drinking more water, sleeping more and monitoring alcohol consumption. When it comes to getting fit, toned, losing weight or gaining muscle it is 70% nutrition and 30% exercise, hence the title “Abs are made in the kitchen not the gym floor”. You could be one of those people who train relatively hard on a regular basis who seeing great transformation is a challenge for and all it could take is tweaking the way in which you eat, which will end up making a huge difference. When setting up STONEiMAGE Management LTD I was very conscious to have a dietician as part of the lifestyle improvement team as the nutritional side is pivotal. I could be the best trainer in the world giving you the best workout ever (and I am very good at what I do) but without me planting the seed of thought into your mind that you need to look at the areas outside the gym as well as inside to make your desired transformation, I wouldn’t be doing my job properly which would result in lack of change. Don’t get me wrong exercise will see you make improvements both appearance and health wise but the improvements can be so much more efficient and better with a correct nutritional plan.
Basic issues like the regularity of your eating, the portion sizes you consume, the time of day you eat, your hydration levels and obviously what you are eating all play a role in how your body burns or stores the food. The common thought is the less you eat the more weight you lose or the less frequent you eat the better but that is not the case. Our body is so clever that our metabolic rate decreases if we go long periods without eating to avoid burning too much calories and basically falling into starvation. It is at this point when the body begins to store food as fat which is slower releasing of its energy. If you think of your body as a burning furnace, you don’t wait for the fire to go out before refuelling you continually add wood or coal to the fire to keep the flame going. Our body is the same, rather than waiting till you are really hungry before eating with your metabolism slowing down, eat regularly (every 2-3hrs) and eat smaller portions to keep the metabolic furnace burning.
Those are just the basic aspects of nutrition which I have studied and touched upon but to really get to grips with nutrition, making sure you’re receiving the right nutrients for the body acquire the expertise of a specialist ie a dietician. Your nutrition will be the difference between great results and mediocre ones and I like my clients to be the best they can be.
For nutritional tips from STONEiMAGE Dietician Patricia Caprice @Vitalamine on twitter or email [email protected]
Written by Erron Dussard of STONEiMAGE
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