If you want to look and feel lean these are the basic fitness tips you need to abide by in order to reach your goal. Since 70 – 80 % of how you look relates to how you eat, these tips are all food based. To get to a leaner you, you MUST eat clean.
1.) Decrease Your Carbs
I know I’ve said this time and time again but carbs can be your enemy when trying to lean down. Reduce your carb intake to 75 – 125 grams a day. If you don’t know how many you’re eating then I suggest using an app such as “My Fitness Pal.” Logging your food can change your world and your body when you finally see how much and what is going in.
Insulin and leptin resistance is caused by factors inherent in our modern lifestyle, including diets heavy in processed carbohydrates, sugars/fructose, refined flours, and industrial seed oils (source).
2.) Increase your good fats. Fat is not the enemy but the wrong fat is! This means you need to replace fats with grass fed butt or ghee (if you’re allergic to milk like me). You can also use avocado and raw olive oil. I don’t suggest cooking the olive oil if you can help it. If you need oil to cook in, use coconut oil. Since coconut oil has a high heat barrier, you won’t risk altering the chemical make up of the good fats.
What about nuts and seeds?? Don’t those count as good fats?
Lectins in nuts and seeds may cause gut irritation
Lectins are proteins that are meant to protect the plant. These little buggers may cause some gut irritation. A way to find out if this is the case is to avoid all nuts and seeds without doing anything else and seeing what happens (source).
I am one of those sensitive people that can’t handle nuts and seeds. My body rejects them and I end up with a bloated irritated stomach that’s bloated for days. If you want a flat stomach and a healthy gut, avoid lectin.
3.) Eat good carbs and remove processed carbs.
We weren’t meant to process our foods. Food is best in it’s original forms, so do your best to eat whole foods. These carbs include rice, potatoes and potato starch, yams, and vegetables (yes they do have carbs).
Food is fuel so treat it as a way to replenish your body, not as a way to ruin your health. Use these fitness tips to get the body you deserve!
Living Lean,
Adria
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