Making Your Diet a Lifestyle

Consistency is the foundation of virtue. - Francis Bacon

My Desk Job Attack Phase
That it is and perhaps the hardest thing to maintain as a habit for most of us.  Consistency is indeed key. Looking back to when I had my first epiphanies about health and fitness, I was in college.  My body was tired of having soft serve frozen yogurt every night for dessert. I was tired of feeling full all the time. Those were the days when my abs remained hidden when I worked out everyday!  When I graduated and got a desk job I felt more sluggish and had stopped eating dessert often. I felt weight creeping back on me after hours of inactivity. I had to do something. I began to start my day with the advice of a friend of working out on an empty stomach. So every morning before work I'd pop in this "Bootcamp Ten Minute Solutions" dvd and did it relentlessly every day. I couldn't help myself, it felt good and made me feel less stressed about sitting down all day. For someone that had typically worked out in the evening, I saw more instant results in simply changing my workouts to the morning and working out on zero calories. I walked on the treadmill, created my own circuit training routines, and continued my workout dvds. Doing all those things regulated my weight loss to the point where I started to see myself becoming more toned. After a couple of months of doing that, I added a protein shake for breakfast and then once I arrived at work I'd have my oatmeal OR a bowl of mixed fruits with one tablespoon of peanut butter (which i still swear by as it satisfies me best without feeling heavy!).  For lunch it would usually be chicken and veggies and my midday snack was yogurt and nuts. Then for dinner I'd have a shredded chicken salad. It was my favorite Trader Joe's demo recipe. Spring mix salad with grilled shredded chicken and peanut dressing. I happily lived off of that for dinner for a year! I continued to bring 4 meals with me to the office before I had become formally educated as a trainer. And very quickly without distraction or interruption (which is a blessing to have!) this became my lifestyle.If I could go back and change anything in this phase I'd add drinking two bottles of water with each meal or 7.5 bottles (of 16.9 oz) this = 1 gallon. This one thing did make a difference in dropping fat pounds and getting tighter...noticeably in my competition training.

Getting Into a Routine
The result of my attack phase: I started to drop pant sizes and usually after one to two months this slows down and it did. But I was content with my progress. In hindsight, I was still skinny fat because at the time I only did cardio and bodyweight exercises and no strength training. So I wasn't building as much muscle as I could have. But, it was the simple knowledge of planning my routine and sticking to it that made my progress visible. I ate 5 meals a day and if I got hungry at night I'd have salad with shredded grilled chicken and balsamic vinegar. At the time, I couldn't afford to get more food than protein powder, berries,salad, chicken, eggs, peanut butter and oatmeal. I was thrilled to be in control of not having any junk food in the cupboards that I'd grown accustomed to my mom bringing in the house--and at times, in copious amounts. And when I moved out, my sister would come over and open my cupboards for snacks and could find nothing but peanut butter! Being in control and having full control of what I ate made me so happy. I did it so easily without temptation. I couldn't afford junk food! How many people ever say that?! What was different about this time than others was that I made a conscious choice to be healthy. It was that I had been itching to do it after months of living with my family where my control over food in my surroundings was limited. I was dying to take control of it all!!! Perhaps determination is key too!! lol..I had visions of what things would be like once I got my own place and made the effort to stick to my new lifestyle of eating more organically. It got me excited because it was an experiment. An experiment to see what would happen if I elimintated ALL the junk and just ate organic, nutritious and complete foods?

The result was, I started to lean out. I learned more what worked for my body in having different foods from time to time. But even then, I knew that for my body type to keep my carbs low were and are still a vital key to staying lean. And for many years with this knowledge this is one golden rule that I live by with little error as it has become a habit. I can say that with less rigid plans of a competitor's diet (that includes more strict meal timing or water intake) this was far easier to continue to live by.

Staying Active Daily
Before I had ever learned or was made aware about bodybuilding, bikini and figure competitions I worked out daily for an hour from the time I was 15 without any breaks longer than two days to now! Yes. I am one of those workout freaks that HAD to work out every day or I felt fat. Its also been through working out and not changing my diet in the past that I learned how to maintain my weight. Working out without changing your diet will = weight maintenance. For ten solid years, from high school to college to post-grad era, I had stayed the same weight give or take 3-5lbs. I changed my body composition a variety of times but still, I had mixed feelings about that. I remembered all the hard work I'd put in to simply maintain what I had. You MUST do something different in order to get different results. Its been this fact that has made it hard to get quick results in any program because my body is used to moving and moving vigorously. With that said, everyone's body gets used to doing the same thing over and over again. You might get discouraged if you are trying to lose weight doing the same activity you've always been doing. But fret not! :) I advise that everyone try a different activity daily, or, if at the gym do 3-4 different cardio machines at various resistance levels for 5-10 minutes each until you reach 40 minutes. HIIT training, also known as High Intensity Interval Training is also a great source to jumping your metabolism. For example, a workout that starts with a 2 minute walk, 2 minute jog and 1 minute sprint that repeats until 30 minutes would be considered a moderately challenging HIIT training routine that works in dropping weight fast!

Always do your warm up, then strength training first for at least half an hour (this puts you in a fat burning zone so by the time you get to cardio you are burning more than just the food you ate for the day) then cardiof after strength, for 30 - 45 minutes depending on your goals. Daily activity should be at least an hour for anybody with specific goals!

Tips on Maintaining a Lifestyle Diet


Golden rule: The more consistent you are in varying your workouts and maintaining your diet, the more changes you will see.

• Educate yourself on strength training exercises, workouts, your body, your intake and your output
• Start adding more real food to your meals (fruits like berries, apples and grapefruit and green veggies) and removing the junk like butter, gravies, and excess "bad" fat
• Try to keep your fats low (also another golden rule I live by) and if you must start slow, start with ALWAYS keeping your SATURATED fats low. There was a time I counted saturated fat gram intake cuz I was so afraid of it!! Now, I just read labels.:)
• READ your LABELS. You should recognize most, if not, all of the ingredients. If this isn't the case it is NOT real food.
• Keep your sodium low. If an item has more than 250milligrams of sodium per serving, trust me, you can live without that!
• You definitely need to put down the salt shaker. I have lived life for the past two years without salting anything. If I have, it was not a conscious move and I forgot to tell the waiter to make my protein "naked". 
• Stop drinking your calories, unless its a protein shake first thing in the morning or the last thing before bed.  Even in those times, God knows I'm one of those people who likes chewing my food NOT drinking it. So I keep my protein shakes to a minimum and hardly ever consume alcoholic beverages, real soda, juice, or any other sugared drink. Work on your lifetime habit to drink water alone, with lemon or iced tea with lemon or stevia if you must sweeten.
• Aim to drink a gallon of water, steadily throughout the day every day. You could lose ten pounds doing just that!
• Take your supplements! The following are key to seeing any changes: Fish oils, CLA (conjugated linoleic acid aka egg yolk fat(the only trans-fat that burns fat off your abs), Vitamin C, Vitamin B (all of the various kinds), Green Tea extract to name a few that I saw results with in weight loss and definition
• Sleep 6, 7.5 or 9 hours. Those are the hours that are sufficient hours of rest in completing your sleep cycle as they are 1.5 hours long for each cycle. When I first started following these sleep pattern rules I woke up consistently more energetic than sleeping for 8 hours or 6 and a half. Don't wake up 30 minutes into the next sleep cycle. You'll never feel awake.
• Cook your small meals in advance and space them out consistently apart from the next for appropriate fat burn and complete digestion. Small meals mean 150 - 350 calories per meal as an average. I suggest 4 - 6 depending on the calorie content and when you start your day.
• DO have a cheat meal or two a week so you don't crazy if you are rigid with your diet often. This relieves stress and confuses the body leading to more weight loss--ONLY if not overdone or in excess.

More blogs to come this week on Competition Dieting tips that Transformed me from Skinny Fat to Bodybuilding Brat!! :) Stay tuned and feel free to post questions on here or Facebook.


"Its not just a workout or a diet, its a lifestyle!"