Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Nutrition: My new perspective

During my 12 week transformation I learned some valuable lessons (sometimes the hard way), and tips/tricks from articles, books, websites, Turbulence Training members, etc.

Here are the most important lessons I learned and recommendations for creating your own nutrition plan:


  • You have to make the rules if you expect to stick with it. You can't take someone else's prescribed "diet" and expect it to work for all of your own personal needs.
  • The best way to create rules for your personalized program is to track your nutrition and workouts and repeat the behaviors that get desired results. This takes hard work and experimentation. See my post on "journaling".
  • Educate yourself about everything you consume. Take the time to find out exactly how many calories, grams of fat, protein, fiber, etc. are in a serving of the foods you eat on a daily basis. This includes researching restaurants before a night out.
  • Rid your diet of poisonous foods that are processed, packaged and full of artificial ingredients. It's taken a lot of hard work, but I've almost cleaned all artificial sweeteners out of my diet! Yes, this includes diet sodas!
  • Learn to like fruits and veggies - actually not just like, but LOVE. They fill you up for very few calories, provide you with vitamins and minerals, and can satisfy your cravings for something "crunchy" or something "sweet".
  • Commit to eating live food with every meal and snack. "Live" meaning raw fruits, veggies or nuts. For example, this could be lettuce and other vegetables in a salad, raw almonds for a snack or a piece of fruit for dessert.
  • Commit to eating lean proteins with every meal and snack. This has been proven to aid fat loss!
  • Eat 5-6 small meals/snacks throughout the day. This is recommended by nearly all fat loss experts.
  • Drink your water. I try to get in at least 100 oz of plain water a day.
  • Don't get too hung up on macro-nutrient ratios, etc in the beginning. Just try to eat a well-rounded variety of healthy, whole foods and things will fall into place.
  • It's OK to eat carbs and healthy fats! You don't have to cut these things out of your diet to have success.
  • Allow yourself a planned cheat once or twice a week (just a meal or snack, not an entire day). Complete deprivation leads to nothing but failure.
  • Getting that fit look you want really is 90% nutrition. They say, "you can't exercise out a bad diet". They were right! Here's an example of my typical eating during the contest:
    Meal 1: Vitamins/supplements, Oatmeal with whey powder and ground flax seed, 1 banana, coffee with Unsweetened Almond Breeze, green tea
    Meal 2: liquid egg whites, orange, cup of red grapes
    Meal 3: 3 oz. salmon mixed with soy mayo, 2 rye crisp crackers, 10 oz broccoli, 3 strawberries
    Meal 4: fat-free cottage cheese, apple, baby carrots and sliced red bell pepper
    Meal 5: Baked whitefish fillet, butternut squash, 2 c. romaine lettuce salad with 1 T.balsamic vinegar, light cheese, and raw broccoli
    Meal 6: Pear and tea before bed.
    Totals: 1,501 calories, 100 oz. pure water

    My favorite nutrition references:
    In particular, I found the Turbulence Training Nutrition Guide by Dr. Chris Mohr that comes free with the Turbulence Training program to be very helpful and easy to follow. Great for anyone just starting out, and his simple formula for figuring out how many calories you should eat in a day was a life-saver!
    Click HERE for Turbulence Training

    I gleaned some great tips and tricks from articles by Dr. John Berardi, a performance and nutrition expert. You can access his site and products at the links below below. His Precision Nutrition program and other products are some of the best resources for fitness/sports performance and nutrition!
    Click HERE for Gourmet Nutrition
    Click HERE for Precision Nutrition
    johnberardi.com

    Calorie counting books I use:
    I keep this smaller one in my car/purse. Click below for information.


    This larger reference stays in the kitchen. Click photo below for information.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Keeping a Journal



To get my transformation started I knew I needed to start journaling again. I know from this experience that there is no better way to assess your current situation and track your progress than to keep a detailed account of your nutrition and workouts. Here is a photo of my journal: small size, with a hard plastic cover and an elastic closure. It's easy to carry everywhere and durable.
I bought this one right at Borders.

While participating in the contest, I journaled every day for 12 weeks. Now, of course this isn't something that someone would need to do all day, everyday for three months like I did, but it is usually recommended that you track your diet for at least two weeks to really gage what you are eating and make the necessary
adjustments as you progress. When it comes to journaling your workouts, it's a great way to keep track of the weight you are lifting, how many reps you are able to do and even how you feel pre and post-workout. I'll elaborate more on each of these topics in my next posts.

Today, I'm still journaling, but without the contest I'm a little more lax with how detailed my entries are (I've developed quite a few codes and a lot of short-hand now!). In my journal I also have all of my measurements and stats from day one. I love to look back through my little book and see how far I've come, how much strength I've gained from my workouts, and if I have plateaued I can look at my diet over the last week or two and see why. I've practically filled up my entire first journal and have another waiting for me. I wouldn't want to continue on without one. My journal has become part of my routine. It's an awesome tool.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

What DIDN'T Work

Before I get into exactly what did work for fat loss, I think it's important to understand what wasn't working for me (and I'm guessing other people as well).

My last failed attempt to lose body fat included the following exercise regimen (yes, this was all at once):

  • working with a trainer for an hour twice a week
  • doing 5-6 days of intense cardio (45-60+ mins)
  • taking a one-hour Spinning class once a week
  • two Pilates classes a week
  • some additional weight training on my own
...all while working my desk job 50+ hrs a week and taking MBA classes. I'm exhausted just listing it all! And, after all of that hard work, I still looked in the mirror and didn't see what I wanted. I was so frustrated. How could a person put in so much effort and get little to no result?! What I was doing was inefficient and just plain overload for my body and mind. I couldn't keep it up. What really changed my perspective about my exercise routine was a free report called "The Dark Side of Cardio" and the 5 Fat Loss Myths. It's free when you visit the TT site. It's a must read for any over-worked cardio addicts out there!
Click HERE to access Turbulence Training

During that time, I was also trying to eat only 1,200-1,300 calories a day. I was hungry and cranky and would binge out of pure deprivation on the weekends. I've been “dieting” (hate that word) pretty consistently for about 5 years now. I’ve tried everything: Atkins, South Beach, Three-Hour Diet, The Abs Diet, Bally Total Nutrition, etc. There has been so much trial and error, that playing with my diet has become this strange hobby! The biggest problem with most of these diets was the main components involved some kind of deprivation or strict schedule. It just didn't fit into every day life and was hard to keep up over a long period of time. I would see some result and then eventually gain the weight back (and then some). Sound familiar?

During that time, not being able to do it all (insane amounts of cardio and low calories) and shed body fat was even starting to effect my self-esteem. After a while I just kind of gave up…well, gave up that ridiculous lifestyle, but not the quest for the perfect way to burn fat and keep my sanity.

Friday, April 25, 2008

What is Bye Bye Body Fat???

My Motivation...

I want to learn to live in a way that helps me to look and feel my best all of the time. I want to be in optimum health, fit, and thin, and yet live a normal life: eat out with friends, work a 9-to-5 desk job, have free time outside of exercise, etc. I decided that there had to be a secret out there to achieving this, and I was going to find it!!! I’ve scoured the internet and online fitness communities, read countless books and magazines, bought all kinds of DVDs and equipment and tried numerous programs. I’ve had successes and failures, and to this day I’m still experimenting to find the most effective, straight-forward approaches to fat loss. After all of this time spent, I finally feel like I'm figuring it out. This is an account of my journey into living a fitness lifestyle.

Here's where I am today...

Well, not today exactly. It starts back in December, '07. The holidays were nearly over and I had had enough to eat and drink to last me for months. I had practically abandoned any type of exercise plan and my weight was up. By chance, I happened to listen to an online interview with Craig Ballantyne and everything he said struck a chord with me. He had developed a program called Turbulence Training that delivered everything I wanted: fat loss using workouts that only took 45 minutes at a time, 3x a week. It went against everything I had come to believe would work: long cardio sessions 6x a week, practically starving myself and lifting light weights with high reps. My curiosity was definitely peaked! I checked it out, read the testimonials and I was sold. The possibility of having more time to myself and getting that fit look I wanted sucked me right in.

I actually ended up joining the 12-week online transformation contest hosted by Craig. I entered thinking the camaraderie of the other contestants and the accountability would be great to get me back on a fitness plan. I was right! Check out my 12-week befores and afters below (Jan-March 2008)! This blog will share how I said "bye bye" to body fat and what I'm doing now to maintain my transformation and get even closer to my fitness goal.
Click HERE to learn about Turbulence Training