There's something you won't hear in most fitness magazines, infomercials, or advertisements when it comes to diet and fitness training. Being lean is 70% diet. That is of course unless you're a professional athlete and you want and can afford to train 6 to 8 hours a day. If not, then you had better address your diet if you want to lean down. Now I'm not saying that you don't have to exercise, you most definitely do. You need to build your body so it actually looks good once you've stripped all the fat away. You need to build shape and muscle and tone but neither exercise alone or diet alone will get you the body you want!
A diet shouldn't mean suffering. A diet should be delicious. A diet should be filling. A diet should be nutritious. A diet should be made of whole foods. A diet should have fibre.
Often times it is easier to start with a very structured, healthy diet plan where each meal, recipe, and even the drinks you consume are all laid out for you so you don't have to do any thinking. If you get a good meal plan with these kinds of details that is a great start to make a permanent change in the way you eat. Remember the word diet doesn't refer to a short-term fix like the way so many of us choose to use the word. Diet simply refers to the way you eat.
Here's the dictionary definition:
di•et
[dahy-it] noun - food and drink considered in terms of its qualities, composition, and its effects on health
Here are some simple tips to help get you started on a permanent change to the way you eat:
1. Drink 3 litres of water a day - this will mean you drink less pop and juice which are sources of empty calories and weight-gaining sugars 2. Never miss breakfast - this starts your metabolism revving for the day 3. Eat only proteins and leafy veggies for dinner - in other words, eat your carbohydrates throughout the day, not at night 4. Don't eat late - your metabolism naturally slows down near the end of the day, if you eat late it is more likely that food will get stored as fat 5. Eat Whole Foods - this means eat foods that are not processed (eat vegetables, meats, whole grain breads, and fruits and nuts for snack)
If you follow these simple rules you will start to notice a big change in your body fat levels soon.
As for exercise many of us don't have a whole heck of a lot of time to workout. The good news is you can get a lot done in a short amount of time. If you are very busy here are some tips to help you get in a good short workout.
1. Do body weight exercises - choose a few exercises that allow you to work your whole body and start off easy. Do 10 reps of each exercise and add 1 rep every day for the next 90 days until you are doing 100 reps a day. Remember you don't have to do all the 100 reps at once. Break them up throughout the day just so long as you hit your target amount of reps by the time you go to bed. Even at 100 repetitions this won't take you more than 15 minutes in total. (If chin ups are too hard to do just yet, do Hindu push ups instead)
Example Exercise List: Push Ups, Lunges, Crunches, Chin Ups
2. For cardio start off with walking if you have been particularly inactive for a while. Start by just adding it in to your regular day. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Walk to work if you can. Walk to the store instead of driving. Fit it in wherever you can.
3. After some time start skipping. Just ten minutes of skipping will work wonders.
If you follow these diet and fitness training tips you can make big changes to your body in no time. If you really want to jump start your path to fitness it would be best to get a detailed, healthy diet plan in addition for following this simple body weight workout plan. It doesn't sound like much but over time these little changes will be dramatic.