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.