Fitness Community Board

Remember the rule: the faster you lose it the faster you gain it back. So here you go, you already know that the miracle won’t happen overnight. And when it does if it does it won’t last. It will actually get worse since your body will now know that there might be a moment of starvation or of over-exercise and tries to save fat for the rainy day.

You body is clever. More clever than you think. That’s why people who diet have to diet all their life. And the more extreme their diet is the more often they have to do it. They say: you’re never off the diet If you want to be slim. I say you have to be clever about it. Your life is there for you to enjoy it. Feeling beautiful and being beautiful doesn’t take every day and suffering when you understand what you are doing and why. There are certain rules you have to follow but once you get used to them there is nothing to it.Diet and exercise are the basis of it of course. It is basic math if you ask me: what you eat you have to burn. I always think of our ancestors; it was always about survival, hunting food. They were always in motion and there was never enough to eat. When in our time the longest hunting trip we make is the trip to the supermarket and back. There is always food and there is always a variety of it. And the faster and sweeter the food the more attracted we are to it. It’s the survival mechanism working, saving energy and storing fat for the harder times.

So, what can we do to trick it?

1) Choose low fat food (but not fat free as we still need fat)

2) Make sure you eat every day at the same time; let your body get used to the schedule and stop being afraid of starvation. Let the stockpiling machine relax.

3) Eat your last meal before 7 pm (depending when you go to bed of cause). Everything you eat during the day you have to burn and it requires you to stay active and not consume any more food. If you eat at night and then go to bed normally everything you haven’t burnt stays in your body and goes in the reserve for later.

4) Eat carbs in the morning and protein in the evening. Carbs are harder to burn than protein; it takes longer and you have better chances to burn it during the whole day than in the evening. So in the morning you can have anything you want but in the evening you have to limit your menu to meat and salad.

5) Don't have a desert after the meal or in the evening. Sweets are carbs, they are empty calories; when loaded on top of the meal they turn all the food you have just eaten into worthless junk. You wouldn't top a stake with a chocolate syrup for example, why would you do it inside your stomach? If you want a sweet you can have one 2-3 hrs after your last meal and 2-3hrs before the next. It gives your body more energy to deal with the sugar and turn it into energy instead of storing it as fat.

6) Don' eat sweets often. A chocolate a day made my aunt clinically obese in a very short time. If you consume too many calories during the day and burn very few it’s normal that your body stores the rest.

7) Choose what you eat. You understand that some food is very good for you (like a vegetable salad or a slice of grilled chicken) and some is just empty calories (like pizza). It doesn't mean that you can't have pizza of course. On the contrary, you should have pizza. But you need to be clever about it. Your body learns and it's very good in math. If you don’t have anything nice for a month and then suddenly you eat a lot at Christmas, well, you know what happens. It happens with everybody every year. The trick here is to maintain the pace. Eat healthy most days of the week and let yourself loose let’s say every Friday or Saturday. Choose you own time to treat yourself and never skip. Also it helps you physiologically to survive all these days of being good; when you know that on a weekend you will be rewarded.

Exercise as often as you can BUT remember: if you do too much exercise and then suddenly stop you body reacts immediately to the change and starts storing fat for the future hard work. So whatever you do maintain the pace of your workouts. If you run every morning or go to gym 3 times a week you can’t take a month off as a break. Don't try and overdo it; be realistic about your physical abilities and find time to train consistently. A Tip: You haven’t got time to go to gym or money's tight? Workout at home! We are constantly populating our exercise library in order to give you as many options as possible.

Don't think that if you do 10 sit-ups it doesn't matter and it won’t help. Every little bit helps! If you do it every day in the end of the week you have done 70. If you do a set of simple things and you do it every day it can easily replace your going to gym twice a week. Don't be fooled by visual simplicity of it; it does work if you do it and do it daily. If you follow these rules you will see difference in a month. And then, in a half a year you won't recognise yourself. And the things you will be able to do. You push your body, you teach it to follow your commands and it does it. The mind is weak and it’s not easy to control it but remember that you are the boss here, YOU and only you tell yourself what to do and what not to do. Be friends with your body, love it and treat it with respect and you will see how different it will become.