Category Archives: Diet

Maximum Fat Loss And Muscle Maintenance Foods

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Egg whites

Finally, the last food you want to make a staple of your ab diet are egg whites. As a quick and relatively cost effective form of protein, they are rapidly digested by the body so your muscle cells can get the amino acids they need.
Additionally, there are a vast number of ways to cook and prepare egg whites, further increasing your meal options while on the diet. As many dieters already know, when meal selection becomes scarce, that’s usually about the same time that dietary adherence also falls by the wayside. Anything that helps to avoid this issue is going to serve to keep you on track. The fact that egg whites don’t take long to prepare further increases the chance you’ll turn to them instead of a double cheeseburger from your local drive-thru.

Peanut butter

Peanut butter is one of the foods that many dieters find themselves craving as they progress on their diet. And it can actually be a terrific choice when it comes to food selection in your quest for visible abs.

Two big advantages that peanut butter has to offer are that it is has a very high satiety effect and it is chock full of healthy fats. It will only take one or two tablespoons to give you hunger control that lasts for hours and help meet your good-fat requirements.

Since you likely won’t be spreading this over a bagel, consider mixing it into your oatmeal, using it to create a tasty Thai sauce recipe for your vegetable stir-fry or just eating it plain, as is.

Be sure when you purchase your peanut butter that you look for the natural variety, as they will contain fewer added sugars that can be particularly problematic when trying to lose fat around the waist.

Spinach

Since you’re likely to be eating a lot of salads on your way to getting ripped abs, you need to try to make the most of these. Spinach is a nutritional powerhouse — it contains a high amount of carotenoids, such as beta-carotene and lutein, as well as quercetin, which is a phytochemical that presents antioxidant effects. In addition to that, you’ll also get folic acid, vitamin K, magnesium, manganese, and more protein from spinach than from many of the other vegetable options.

As a side note to your spinach intake: try to eat it cooked once in a while as the cooking process really serves to bring out the antioxidant effects it carries.

Unsweetened oatmeal

When it comes to the carbohydrates you do take in, you want to make the most of your allotted calories. While there are other sources that are slow digesting, free of sugar and will work for fat loss, oatmeal is going to provide you with more volume per calorie, thus helping you feel full.

At only 147 calories per cup of cooked oatmeal, it beats rice and baked potatoes, which come in at 216 and 180 calories, respectively.

To enhance the flavor of plain oatmeal, try adding in artificial sugar, cinnamon or even mixing in protein powder to really boost the taste and make it more of a complete meal.

Coconut oil

One type of oil that many people rarely even think about eating is coconut oil, and it can actually be beneficial when added to your selection of ab foods.

The primary reason why coconut oil is a good ab food is due to its composure of medium chain triglycerides that are handled by the body differently than most other fats. They are able to be used as energy much quicker than the usual fats are, thus, if you are not eating very many carbohydrates for energy, this can help to prevent that energy slump you experience.

Don’t make the mistake of not factoring the calorie content though, it is a fat and will still supply your body with nine calories per gram. Be sure they are replacing other fats or carbohydrates in your diet, so that they’re not just added in with the ones currently there. Another interesting thing about coconut oil is that for the first week or so of consumption, it slightly bumps up the metabolism before the body adapts to it. So, even if you decide not to incorporate it into your plan long-term, using it for a week might just help give your diet that extra kick you need at this point.

Apples

If you’ve cut down your carb intake, and as you move toward the 5% to 8% body fat range, hunger will likely be an issue. Your body simply does not like being this lean and it’s going to fight you. Hunger is a good way of doing so.

Further to the point, on diets that are very low in calories (like diets full of ab foods), you are definitely going to be in a catabolic state (tissue breakdown). This can spell trouble for the muscle mass you’ve worked so hard to attain and it needs to be minimized.

The liver is the primary determinant (after total calorie intake) of whether you are in a catabolic or anabolic state. As such, the type of carbohydrates in fruit is treated slightly different than, say, the carbohydrates in rice or bread, and will send a much stronger signal to the liver to not be in a catabolic state.

You may still not be able to cross over into an anabolic state since that’s near impossible if you are eating under maintenance, but you can minimize the damage done to your tissues. Fruit will help you do this; shoot to eat one to two pieces a day.

Apples as ab food work great because they won’t raise blood sugar very much and will supply you with plenty of fiber, which helps with the hunger issue.

Low-sodium cottage cheese

Protein is an integral component to a fat-loss diet because it’s the single macronutrient that is going to promote muscle maintenance. You can cut both fat and carbohydrates down, but without enough protein your results will be less than optimal.

However, all proteins are not alike. When dieting to very low caloric digits, hunger is going to be calling your name. You want to minimize this by selecting ab foods that are going to digest the slowest and keep you satisfied the longest. Dieting on ab foods gets tough when 20 minutes after a meal, you’re ready for the next.

Cottage cheese is a terrific source of casein protein — one of the slowest digesting protein sources out there. When shopping for your cottage cheese, opt for a low-sodium variety. While salt is not necessarily always a bad thing, depending on your current health status and the rest of your diet, in the case of abs, we need to minimize water retention as best as possible.

At about 500 mg of sodium per half-cup of regular cottage cheese, water retention could prove to be an issue.

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Grams Of Protein You Should Be Eating In A Day

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Protein-sources

Have you ever found yourself wondering, how many grams of protein should I eat in a day?

The answer to that can be relatively simple or complex. There are some questions you should ask yourself before you ask how many grams of protein should I eat in a day? Ask yourself, what are my goals? Do you lead a sedentary or active lifestyle? Once you have decided what kind of goal you have in mind and have answered what kind of lifestyle you lead then you can have a better understanding of “how many grams of protein should I eat in a day?”

Active vs. Sedentary Lifestyle General Guidelines:

Although daily estimates for how many grams of protein should I eat in a day varies, a general guideline for people that lead a sedentary lifestyle is that you need to consume about 0.8 grams per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of ideal bodyweight (the weight you would like to be). A general guideline for the more active person who is looking for gains in strength should be to consume 1.2 to 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of ideal bodyweight.

If you are a sedentary male weighting 140lbs you should be consuming 50.4 grams of protein per day.
Calculation= (140lbs/2.2) * 0.8 = 50.4 grams

If you are an active male weighing 140lbs you should be consuming 76.36 to 89.1 grams of protein per day.
Calculation= (140lbs/2.2) * 1.2 = 76.36 grams
Calculation= (140lbs/2.2) * 1.4 = 89.10 grams

What is your Goal?

The question of “How many grams of protein should I eat in a day” really depends on your goals. Do you want to lose weight, gain strength, increase performance or just increase your quality of life?

Dieting and your ideal bodyweight:

Using the above formulas can also help you answer the question of “how many grams of protein should I eat in a day?” if you want to lose weight.

If you lead an active lifestyle and currently weigh 140lbs you should be eating about 76 to 89 grams of protein per day (based on the above calculations). If you want to decrease your body weight to 130lbs you should be eating 71 to 83 grams of protein per day.

If you lead a sedentary lifestyle and currently weigh 140lbs you should be eating about 50 grams of protein per day (based on the above calculations). If you want to decrease your body weight to 130lbs you should be eating 47 grams of protein per day.

Strength and Performance:

If you want to gain strength or increase your performance more than likely you will want to eat more protein than the average person. Consuming about 1.2 to 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of ideal bodyweight (what you want to weigh) is the advice usually given by seasoned bodybuilders. Just remember to balance your protein intake with the right amount of carbohydrates.

If you lead an active lifestyle and currently weigh 140lbs you should be eating about 76 to 89 grams of protein per day (based on the above calculations). If you want to increase your body weight to 160lbs you should be eating 87 to 102 grams of protein per day.

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Common Diet Myths

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Dropping carbohydrates is a good way to lose weight

Many people who try protein-heavy, carbohydrate-limiting diet myths report dramatic weight loss, but at what expense? By focusing your diet on high-protein foods like meat, cheese, eggs, and pork rinds (all foods that are high in cholesterol) you could be risking a heart attack, and buying right into this diet myth. By cutting out carbohydrates, which the body craves for a reason, you can become irritable, nauseous and weak. Lack of fruits and vegetables, a key source of dietary fiber, can lead to constipation. And eating too few carbohydrates puts you at risk of developing ketosis, a condition in which fats in your blood (ketones) build up, leading to gout and kidney stones.

Low-fat food is healthy

The diet myth behind low-fat food’s popularity is simple: Less fat equals fewer calories, which equals a healthier alternative to the full-fat version, right? Not necessarily. Low-fat versions are often full of added ingredients, like sugar and flour, there to improve the flavor of the newly fat-deficient food. However, extra doses of refined carbohydrates like sugar and flour can just cause you to become hungry again much faster. Sometimes, low-fat foods even contain more calories than their full-fat cousins, in which case you’d be better off indulging in the regular version. To be sure that a low-fat version is really healthier for you, you’ll need to do some grunt work. Compare ingredients and nutritional information in both varieties. If the low-fat food beats this diet myth, then feel free to stock up.

Skipping meals is a good way to lose weight

Skipping meals is not only unhealthy, but you’ll also often ingest more when you eventually do eat because you’ve been starving yourself all day. Besides, scads of studies prove that people who eat a wholesome breakfast and small meals throughout the day weigh less than those who buy into this diet myth and skip meals and eat fewer times throughout the day. The reason? Inconsistent eating makes it hard for your body to regulate its metabolism. By going hungry, you’re making your body believe that it’s time to enter starvation mode, and it does this by conserving calories and storing any extra calories as fat. Even if you aren’t giving it any more of either, it’s going to store what it currently has and not burn the extra you want burned during the day.

Don’t eat after 7 p.m.

This has been a long-standing piece of diet myth weight-loss advice: any food you eat in the evening will automatically be stored as fat. The truth is that calories can’t tell time. Your calorie count over a 24-hour period matters more than that bucket of popcorn you had at 10:30 p.m. What might be more important to note is not to eat just before you’re about to hit the sack. Once asleep, your body functioning is much leaner than it is during the day; while sleeping, you just don’t burn the same amount of sugar/fat/calories that you would if you were awake. So, a big bowl of pasta with cheese might not be the best midnight snack.

Cholesterol is bad for me

Without good cholesterol in our blood, our bodies wouldn’t be able to create new cells or make new supplies of crucial hormones — that’s what high density lipoprotein (HDL) is responsible for. Low density lipoprotein (LDL) (aka “bad cholesterol,” this is the notorious artery-clogging cholesterol) we could do without. Most LDL cholesterol comes from saturated fats like butter, meat and pastries, while HDL (the good stuff) can be derived from unsaturated fats like nuts, seeds and vegetable oils.

I can lose weight quickly by cutting out calories

When you drastically cut calories, your body won’t lose weight in a healthy way. As with people who regularly skip meals, your body will go into starvation mode. Your metabolism will slow down as your body holds on to the fat it would need if you really were starving. Any fat you lose will take muscle with it, which causes your basal metabolic rate (the amount of calories your body needs to support its functions) to decline. That’s why healthy weight loss is a slow process and requires muscle-building exercise to go with it.

Fat is bad for me

As in the case of cholesterol, there are good kinds of fat and bad kinds of fat. Fat is a key player in the overall health of the body, and it has a diverse resume. Fat helps clot blood, cushion organs and build cell membranes. Just make sure your diet is rich in unsaturated fats like olive oil, flaxseed oil, trout, salmon, and avocado.

If I exercise I can eat what I want

Thirty minutes of bike riding doesn’t give you a guilt-free pass to the buffet. While exercise does burn calories, you’re still susceptible to weight gain if you’re eating large portions of unhealthy food. A half-hour on the treadmill doesn’t come close to balancing the calories contained in the average super bacon cheeseburger meal with onion rings and a strawberry milkshake. That doesn’t mean you can’t indulge every once in a while — just don’t make it a pound-packing habit, and don’t expect your normal exercise routine to pick up all your slack.

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