Fat Shedding Meal Plan Needed ASAP

Yes, here's your meal plan:

1) Eat a balanced diet.

2) Eat at the right times.

It's really that simple. The key part is to eat, or refuel, when your body needs it most. After you finish a strength training session, your muscles will have sustained damage as well as depleted their energy stores (your body stores energy molecules like glycogen in your muscles for easy access). To help your muscles repair and grow optimally, you should eat something with a ratio of about 4 carbohydrates to 1 protein within 45 minutes of finishing your workout. This is called a "recovery snack," and something that is around 100 calories like the Clif Bar Mini is perfect.

Also, before you train, be sure you have eaten within he last 3 hours, and preferably within the last hour.

Does anyone have suggestions for a meal plan that reduces/sheds fat? I will begin weight training (for 1 hour) 3 times a week and doing cardio 4 times a week beginning this week. I'm on a mission, but there is so much information out there that its really getting confusing.

:flowerforyou:

Eating Clean heathly unprocessed foods. Eat whole foods, lean meats, low fat dairy, fruits LOTS OF VEGGIES, WATER, GREEN TEA, Heathly fat like nuts and oils.

Key tip. Eat healthy fats.

I'm 4 months away from being done my schooling to be a certified holistic nutritionist.

DO NOT BE AFRAID OF HEALTHY FATS.

You need to eat fat in your diet. What this does is that it helps ensure you are providing your body with it's necessary 3 Macronutrients (Carbs, protein and fat).

So yes, that also means you need to eat carbs - complex carbs that is (whole grains, brown rice, even potatoes).

What complex carbs and healthy fats do for your body is that they help regulate/slow down your bodys absorption of sugars you eat (natural and added), which means you won't have any highs and then lows (sugar crashing) throughout your day. They help regulate your blood sugar.

Also they both also help satiate you after you've eaten your meal. This means only good things when it comes to weight loss. This means you will feel fuller on less food, and won't walk away feeling hungry or having cracings 20 minutes later.

I can tell you with 100% certainty and any doubt in my mind, that if you eliminate or avoid all carbs and fats, you will depleat your body of these nutrients, and as a result crave them.

When you crave carbs you will likely reach for a simple sugared carb that is not going to do your body any good, in combination with that craving for carbs, you will also crave sweets if you do not provide your body with healthy fats. This together will result in a sugar binge.


I hope this was helpful for you.

If you want more specifics for healthy sources of fats, send me a message :happy:

Simple really lots of protein, few carbs unless its within 30 mins post workout...

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. Your body needs carbohydrates for more than just post-workout recovery. Also, you CAN ingest too much protein. Depending on what kind of strength training you're doing, I seriously doubt that you need more than 60-80 grams of protein per day. You do need, however, to eat at least 3 times as many carbohydrates as you do protein.

If you deprive your body of carbohydrates, it will metabolize protein for energy, but this is bad! Protein takes something like 4 times as long to convert into an usable energy source than carbohydrates do, so if you are carb-deficient, you will be tired and sluggish when you want to be springy and ready to workout. Furthermore, your body may turn to breaking down your lean muscle tissue for it's protein/energy source (catabolism) before fat if you deprive it of carbs, and you definitely don't want that.

So to be clear, do NOT deprive yourself of carbohydrates. In a given day, you should eat more carbs than protein, period.

Couldn't agree more.

Well said ChessRonin

Newfiedan

Congrats on your lbs dropped and muscle gained!

I think its great that you were able to clarify what you meant when you said "few carbs" because like you said there are lots of people on here you have been abusing carbs and or eating the wrong kinds of carbs. It was simple enough for someone feeling confident in their knowledge of carbs to get confused about your meaning, imagine what someone feeling less confident in their knowledge and just starting out on their journey to become confused on how to properly fuel their bodies.

I think for everyone on here it is great to look to eachother for support, while remembering that we are all individuals with individual needs, we are all genetically unique. This holds true for what we need to eat to get ourselves back to health, and to keep ourselves healthy. So it is important for us all to know that what might have worked for one person might not work for everyone else.

Simple really lots of protein, few carbs unless its within 30 mins post workout...

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. Your body needs carbohydrates for more than just post-workout recovery. Also, you CAN ingest too much protein. Depending on what kind of strength training you're doing, I seriously doubt that you need more than 60-80 grams of protein per day. You do need, however, to eat at least 3 times as many carbohydrates as you do protein.

If you deprive your body of carbohydrates, it will metabolize protein for energy, but this is bad! Protein takes something like 4 times as long to convert into an usable energy source than carbohydrates do, so if you are carb-deficient, you will be tired and sluggish when you want to be springy and ready to workout. Furthermore, your body may turn to breaking down your lean muscle tissue for it's protein/energy source (catabolism) before fat if you deprive it of carbs, and you definitely don't want that.

So to be clear, do NOT deprive yourself of carbohydrates. In a given day, you should eat more carbs than protein, period.

That's only part true. Strength training will recover the muscle turnover and you can always pre-fuel an intense activity right before you start and during with a fast carb like straight glucose. Once your body learns to use fat as fuel there is no sluggishness. Sluggishness will be caused by the insulin swings of large amount of high gi/gl carbs. 3 time as much carbs as protein is just plain silly.

4:1 ratio recovery drinks are really only for after high intensity high calorie burns. Just protein after strength training is usually fine. There's no reason to ingest 50+ grams of sugar after lower intensity workouts. If there's nowhere to put all the glucose(muscle, liver, blood) it will be stored as FAT.

Thank you so much for this discussion! I don't really have anything to add but I wanted to comment so I can basically bookmark this discussion and refer to it later. What are your opinions on frozen meals like Lean Cuisines? I know it's not exactly clean food but i can't imagine taking the time everyday to prepare my lunch for the next day. The frozen meals are just SO EASY! I'd love to switch to a more clean, whole foods diet but that is time consuming and expensive. Any suggestions?

Oh I'll be messaging you soon with some tips and suggestions! :happy: