I Have Cleaned Up My Diet But It’s Not Working!!!

You have made that move to a ‘Real food’ diet some time ago and are now minimising the processed foods and sugars, but you can see you’re holding onto some additional weight that you still can’t shift. How then can you continue on this weight loss journey?

Bad habits

I realise often when I want to lean out after a while of overindulgence, I have slipped back into the habits that make it hard for me to lose the fat and these are three disciplines I revert to that get me the results!

1. Eat a big breakfast full of protein.

My all-time favourite is a huge green smoothie combining a vegan protein powder, banana, oats, ginger and kale. If I’m not having this then its definitely some eggs with avocado and spinach. Breakfast allows us to literally ‘break-the-fast’ and gives our body the opportunity to replenish nutrients used in our sleep. When we skip breakfast, we do not give our body the fuel it needs to power through the day and knowing it needs energy, it will send us to the quickest source (i.e. sugar) or maybe even the caffeine fix. Without breakfast, we often find that later in the day, our body starts to play catch up and instead, we find ourselves eating late at night as the body reminds us it still needs the extra fuel not taken at the start of the day. This is not particularly helpful to fat loss as it is unlikely that we can burn this late eating energy, hence that supper is stored as fat.

2. Avoid constant snacking by spacing out meals by at least four hours.

Yes, I know, you read somewhere that you could eat small meals often! However, studies from the British Journal of medicine concluded that there were no reviewed benefits of having six meals a day. By constantly fuelling the body between meals, we are actually teaching the body to burn the food as fuel instead of our fat stores.

3. Avoid late night eating

Give yourself a 3-hour window from your last meal and bedtime. This will create a more natural ‘fasting’ period where the body has a chance to utilise more fat stores, rest the digestive system overnight and create a hunger in the morning to have that big protein filled breakfast to help power you to lunch!

By following these steps with a diet full of a variety of foods that haven’t been highly processed but contain a large number of nutrients, you will not only allow your body to work more optimally but become a fat burning machine!

Contributed by Elika of Elika Fit.