If you want to learn how to live your life lean, look no further! This list contains of 9 strategies that have worked for my most successful Burn Bootcamp clients. You can adopt these strategies for yourself as a guide to a healthy lifestyle. Implementing these strategies consistently along with a dedicated fitness regiment will change your life. This blog is FULL of resources for you to expand upon these 9 new strategies to live your life lean, but this is the foundation….enjoy!
1. Eat Clean Carbs
I don’t know how the “low-carb” fad is still popular! Despite myself as well as other fitness experts efforts to debunk this myth, it is still hanging around. Carbs are NOT the enemy and are essential to muscular development. If you are training hard you can consum up to 2 grams per pound of body weight from clean carbs. Following the “carb categories” are free game.
Clean Carbs
– 60% of Intake – Dark Green Vegetables (broccoli, spinach, kale, asparagus)
– 15%of Intake – Tubers (Sweet potatoes, yams, eggplant, squash)
– 15% of Intake – Fruits (blueberries, bananas, apples and apple butter)
– 10% of Intake – Whole Grains with No Added Sugar or Sodium (shredded wheat, rice cakes, granola)
Stay away from refined sugars, starches, flour, and processed grains. These are the bad carbs that will cause bloating and create water retention. These bad carbs are the enemy and these carbs cannot be a part your lifestyle if you want to live lean!
2. Track Your Nutrients
The only way to be certain to reach your goals is to know the exactly what is going into your body. Download a free food tracker app (Lose It or My Fitness Pal) and input all of your calories for at least 21 days. It takes 21 consecutive days to really start to understand your nutrition habits.
To create a muscle building and fat burning enviroment internally you must monitor the following: calories, protein, fat, carbs, sugars, and sodium. Structure your diet like this…
- Daily Calories = your body weight x 12
- Lean Protein = your body weight x 1
- Good Fat = your body weight x .25
- Clean Carbs = your body weight x 2
- Sugars = less than 25 grams
- Sodium = less that 1250 mg
3. Eat Small and Balanced Meals
There has been much research over the past decade about the importance of small and more frequent meals. This science is old, outdated. and highly debated but in my own trial and error with clients, this lifestyle seems to be easier. It also eliminates an overload of carbs in one sitting which has a negative impact on your fat burning hormones. Whether 3 big meals, 6 small meals, or a combo of both…doesn’t matter, just don’t overeat!
Allowing your body to completely digest your food before your next meal is what is truly important to building a lean physique. Your meals truly should be based around your training sessions. Ideally, 75% of your daily carb intake comes before your training session, and 25% inbetween sessions.
4. Never Dramatically Restrict Calorie Intake to Lose Weight
This is often very tempting. Knowing you can drop a couple dress sizes in 10 days has a certain allure. I hate to burst your bubble, but this is extremely dangerous and you are essentially starving yourself when below 1,200 calories in a 24 hour period.
Trust me, this NEVER works in the long term. As you restrict hard you will not be able to maintain the depletion as a lifestyle. Thus, the pendulum swings and extreme binging comes next right after. Success comes with consistent moderation. If you want to burn some extra body fat then burn some extra calories in the gym!
5. Eat Low Calorie Foods First During Meals
This is a simple strategy, but if used correctly can go a long way in making you lean!
Here is what you do…
Recognize what foods (namely veggies) are lower in calories and eat those first during your meals. Of course, a prerequisite to this strategy is that you are eating well-balanced and kitchen prepared meals. Filling up on lower calorie foods first before moving to proteins and starches will effortlessly allow you to control calories.
“Lean and Green” foods first!
6. Include Protein with Each Meal
Build your diet around 1 gram of protein for every lb. of body weight. A healthy serving of lean animal protein (grass fed beef, venison, bison, chicken, turkey, or fish), cage-free eggs and egg whites, or a high quality source of protein powder should be included in small amounts with each meal.
This tip has two by products that will help you lean out…
1) You will fuel your body to promote muscular development and to use body fat as fuel.
2) By default, you will avoid high calorie meals and ultimately overeating because protein keep you “fuller”.
7. No Liquid Calories
Outside of water, unsweetened almond milk, unsweetened tea and protein shakes I recommend banning liquid calories!
If you want to be lean, then liquid calories have no place in your lifestyle. It is safe to say you are adding inches to your waistline if you are drinking dairy milk, soda, coffee and cream, beer, wine, liquor, and especially sweet tea (for us southerners). Doesn’t mean you can have it once and a while, but stick to 1 or 2 times per month!
8. Bagged, Boxed, and Prepackaged Warning
Be careful! Not all bagged, boxed and pre-packaged foods are bad for you. But 98% of them are. Here are some things to watch out for that will sabotage your lean body efforts.
– 7 ingredients or less. Generally speaking, food items with more ingredients just means more fillers, additives, and preservatives. None of which will lean you out.
– No sodium or added sugar. Look on the nutrition label for sodium and sugar numbers to be ZERO!
– Words you cannot pronounce. Look for “sciencey” words you cannot pronounce do not belong in your body. This is a red flag as most of these are highly processed or chemical foods.
9. Against the Masses
Look around you. Be self-aware. Notice what other people are doing and do the exact opposite. We are RIDDLED with obesity, bad health, and sickness. When it comes to food and exercise, we are obviously doing something wrong as a society. We are mentally craving weight loss but physically craving doughnuts. It’s not working!
Go out to dinner, notice what everyone else orders and order the opposite. See fast food lines filled up? Go to the hot bar at your local Whole Foods Market. See everyone walking on the treadmill? Get some dumbells and lift some weights.
Swim upstream and do what everyone else thinks is weird or different. At the end of the day, you will be the one with lean body and lifestlye they all desire. Pack your lunch when you go to your kids baseball games. Order lettuce wraps on your burgers. It is not being weird or ackward, it is called being a leader!
Hope these help! Email me with questions [email protected]
