What to Eat to Get Your Summer Body (And Keep it)

  I without a doubt get more questions about nutrition, or what to eat to lose weight, more than I ever get about exercise or strength training.  It seems as though this topic confuses people the most, when in fact it is probably the easiest to understand.  When I google the word "diet", I get back about 570 million results, about 60 million more results than when I google the word "exercise."  It's no wonder people are confused about nutrition; there's just too much information to read through.

Fad diets, magical weight loss elixers, exotic fruits and shakes that strip away belly fat, it's all really just a distraction.  In this post, I will cut through all the informational fat, and tell you exactly what you need to do to really lose weight and keep it off.

First off, losing wieght really only involves one key concept; calories in vs. calories out.  If you want to lose weight, you must consume less calories than you burn.  That's it.  If you think you're an exception to this rule, please trust me when I say that you are not.  I'm not trying to be mean, I just really want you all to understand this.  And all this talk about eating more throughout your day to "keep your metabolism going" to lose weight is not particularly true either.  If you want to lose weight, find out how many calories your burning in a day, eat less than that and you will lose weight for that day.

Once we understand that we need to eat a little bit less, there are certain foods we should be eating so that we can speed the process up.  The first is that we need to consume more protein. 

Good choices of protein include chicken, lean choices of beef, tofu, fish, yogurt, protein powder or any other source you can think of.  An increase of protein in your diet will help support your muscle tissue, speed up your metabolism, and make you feel full!  If you can manage to have some sort of protein with every meal, you'll be on the right track.

Next thing we need to do is decrease the amount of carbohydrates we're eating. Consuming sugar and processed grains will promote an environment for fat storage and fat gain in your body.  So we need to gradually cut out the white bread, pizza, pastries, cereals, and alcohol to solve this problem. 

The key word here is gradually.  It will be very hard to be successful if you try and make a dramatic changes to your diet.  Focus on changing one thing at a time, like making sure you have an egg or protein shake for breakfast every morning instead of a bagel and cream cheese, and keep the rest of your diet the same.  Once you've mastered breakfast, you can move on to changing something else.

Lastly, to ensure that your getting the proper nutrients, you have to increase the amount of veggies and healthy fats in your diet.  Veggies will ensure that your getting the proper amount of vitamins, minerals, and fiber in your diet, and healthy fat sources like olive oil, avacado, fish oil, and nuts will help to speed up your metabolism.  Try to replace a carb with a veggie for every meal to make it easier for you.  Instead of a baked potato with your steak, replace it with some broccoli or summer squash instead.

That's it.  For your fat loss goals that is all the information you will need to be successful.  In my next post, I'll give you some actual meal ideas to help you meet all of these requirments.  Drop any questions you may have in the comments box, and I'll be sure to answer them!