AFTER A WORKOUT YOUR BODY HAS NEEDS, SO GIVE IT WHAT IT NEEDS!

After a workout your body is like a sponge.  The receptors on your muscles become sensitive and absorb glucose at a higher rate.  With the help of insulin and it's response to the food you eat your body will absorb whatever you give it.  Whether it is energy lost through resistance training or aerobic exercise, you must replace energy with mostly natural sources of energy your body needs.  This is based on your fitness goals.

Your post weight lifting workout meal should include at least 30 grams of a whey protein supplement followed by a healthy low sat fat portion of meat with a serving of preferably green vegetable.  Remember that your workouts must be intense and every workout, you have to make progress.  BREAK YOUR MUSCLES DOWN!

Your post cardio workout meal does not have to consist of a whey protein supplement, but you must supply your body with a balanced meal like a low fat portion of meat and a slower digesting carbohydrate like sweet potato, pasta, brown rice, or green vegetables.  Aerobic exercise must be intense also and should last 20 - 30 minutes at a heart rate of 80% of your maximum heart rate.

To keep your body from storing fat and allowing it to respond better to your diet, watch the amount of saturated fat you are eating each meal.  Avoid processed foods, dairy products like milk and cheese, and fatty meats.  Combining saturated fat with carbohydrates will decrease your bodies insulin sensitivity.  Insulin is made to respond to glucose and fuel your lean mass.  Combining saturated fat with carbohydrates forces your body to store most of this energy as body fat.  Remember, your goal is to fuel your lean mass.  Saturated fat in your diet makes it hard for your muscles to absorb energy needed.  Post workout you have to eat healthy so that your body will respond better and your muscles get the right kind and amount of energy to reach your goals.

HEALTH TIPS:

1.  Avoid eating cheese or mayonnaise on sandwiches (usually the meat has sat fat in it)
2.  Avoid fatty meats like pork, lamb, chicken thighs and legs, fatty steaks
3.  Have Low Fat or Skim milk in your cereal
4.  Use Olive oil or canola oil when cooking
5.  Whole foods are healthy but eliminate the sat fat in whole foods like milk, eggs, cheese, pasta, breads!

How To Avoid A Weight Loss Plateau

 

 No matter how hard you try to get to where you want to be, you always end up plateauing. A plateau is a point reached in your fitness regiment where there is a lack of results. This causes you to become less motivated and committed to your routine. For the first month you lose a lot of weight and eventually around the third month you hit a plateau. A plateau can turn the possibility of you reaching your fitness goals into a dream. If everyone continued to get results from their routine, fitness would not be a trend and more people would commit to following a plan consistently. This would also reduce the risk of a lot of health problems that result from obesity. A commitment with satisfactory progression is what everyone wants but is not easily attained. A plateau does not have to be inevitable and you can continue to get results.

Here are some tips that will help you avoid a plateau:

· Variation! Change up your routine constantly so that your body will never adapt to normal activity. A change in frequency, intensity, and duration all contribute to keeping your body guessing. Your body can adapt very fast to something you do all the time at the same pace. You doing the same activities can effect your joints negatively also, which can lead to you taking time off due to discomfort or injury.

· Rest and recovery! Very important but widely ignored. Do just enough but never overextend yourself. Doing too much can cause fatigue and a lack of time to recovery fully before the next workout. Short and intense is always better than long and exhausting. Sleep is important! Doing different exercises can aid in recovery.

· Eat Right! Following a nutritional plan that compliments your daily activity level is important. Too much or too little food can lead to a lack of results. It is important to give your body energy when it needs energy. Your body functions better on all natural sources of energy.

· Lift weights! Resistance training helps you to maintain your lean mass which is in control of your metabolism. More lean mass results in a higher metabolism. The biggest mistake is to depend only on aerobic exercise. As we age our metabolism slows down gradually as well as the deterioration of our lean mass. There is a direct correlation between the two. Your lean mass controls your metabolism.

· Professional Guidance! A personal trainer can introduce new exercises to your routine and also give you that extra motivation to increase your intensity. What works for everyone else might not work for you. From one-on-one professional guidance you can get a personalized aerobic/ anaerobic plan as well as nutritional guidance.