Part 4........The diet!

The word diet congers up many different thoughts but generally it leads us to think that when a person states they are on a diet that they intend to lose weight. But the first thing we should all realise is we are all on a diet of some sort or another. Some of us are eating to get fit, some to gain muscle mass, some to lose fat, and others are simply eating. What we eat is our diet. What we should be aiming for is a ‘Healthy Diet’, one that enables us to reach our goals.

I thought I ate pretty well, I thought I had a reasonably healthy diet, that was until I recorded what I ate. I did this for about 2 weeks; it was a real eye opener. It’s amazing the calories I was consuming without even realising. I was rewarding myself not every day but about twice a week with sugary treats for going to the gym and training hard. When I worked out the calories I had consumed and the calories burned over the week, I was still consuming more than I had burned, I was storing calories, which in the long term means gaining body fat. So what did I do.......?

I began by cutting out the rubbish from my diet. By rubbish, I mean all the things that have no nutritional value and generally have a negative impact on or in your body.

I was eating breakfast if I had time, prepared food from my work place, lots of fruit and eating a meal at home in the evening and a couple of snacks. So the first thing I did was to replace the variety of snacks with just fruit. So no more sandwiches, crisps or cakes at break. I also forced myself to have breakfast. As missing breakfast meant I ate more at break time, which meant I ate more at lunch and so on. So for the first three weeks I just cut out the junk, no fast food, no crisps, no chocolate. This was a challenge as I worked many hours and generally grabbed food to go.

After three weeks of no junk I began to change the content of my 3 main meals. I began to eat my evening meal before 6pm, as calories not burnt before sleep, get stored! I then began to increase the protein content of my meals and reduce the carbohydrates. I also began to introduce protein shakes as a snack. I kept this going for about 6 months, during this time I didn’t lose a single pound let alone a kilo. I stayed 12 stone 2lbs.

I had cut out the refined sugar and rubbish food from my diet and trained hard, I became fanatical, and I didn’t cheat. I knew my clothes felt looser but didn’t know by how much, I was becoming demotivated by the lack of weight loss. I would whinge to my friends, they would say how good I was looking but I just didn’t believe them. I suffered and still do sometimes from always seeing a fat girl in the mirror no matter what size I am. So I bit the bullet and went for a body fat test, I was surprised to find out it was 21%.

I began to read more and study the effects of diet and training, I learnt that, I had lost fat but gained muscle mass at a similar rate. Muscle is 4 times denser than fat, so although I weighed the same my body had got smaller, 2 dress sizes smaller. This is the reason you should record your waist, hip, thigh, chest, calf, neck and arm circumference as well as your height and mass.

About six months out from the competition, when I realised that the competition was becoming a reality, the diet changed again, but that’s another story for later......

Before we all start a ‘healthy diet’ we should realise what we are already eating. Just as I said in part 2, record everything. This means your diet too, what are you eating today? So before you even start to cut things out, write down everything you eat, and I mean everything down to the last snack and each drink. This is your foundation, this will help you to work out what to add, change or cut from your diet. So before you do as I did, record everything that goes in your mouth for at least a week, then you’ll be ready to make changes that will enable you to reach your goal.

If you need any advice, just ask...... you can post a question here and I’ll do my best to answer it. I promise if I don’t know the answer I’ll find out for you.....