TEN (10) TIPS FOR LIVING LEAN AND HEALTHY

1. TAKE BABY STEPS

The words baby steps refer to the mind-set you should have when following a fitness lifestyle, especially when you’re first starting out. Too many people think the only way they’ll be successful and get the body they want is if they do everything all at once—exercise every day or go from fast-food burgers and fries to chicken breast and vegetables overnight. Just thinking about these drastic changes is overwhelming, and it causes most people to throw up their hands and quit their fitness programs before they

even get started. Instead, you should look at fitness as a lifelong journey and make an

effort to think of improving one thing or doing one thing better fitness wise each day. Do that every morning when you wake up, and by the end of a month you’ll be 30 times better. One day you may say, “I’m going to do 100 stomach crunches today.” Be specific. The next day you might look at your diet and eliminate one or two high-fat, high-sugar foods you normally eat. Then the day after that you may decide to start doing some of the yoga stretches I’ll go over in the workout chapter. The specifics don’t matter. What matters is that you improve yourself and your fitness program each and every day. When you do that it becomes self-motivating. You see the positive changes and you want more, and things that would have seemed impossible at the beginning of the month will now seem easy and natural.

2. EAT UNTIL YOU’RE NO LONGER HUNGRY, NOT FULL

There is a very fi ne distinction between feeling not hungry and feeling full, and it took me a while to learn to notice it. To avoid overeating you want to leave the table when you no longer feel hungry, when the food is beginning to not taste as good as it did originally and you’re just continuing to eat it because it’s there. You don’t want to wait until you feel full. There’s a biological reason for this. It takes the brain about 15 to 20 minutes before it realizes that the stomach is full, and then it sends the message to stop

eating. That 15- to 20-minute lag time is what keeps a lot of extra pound son our trouble-prone areas—the belly and lower back in men and the waist, hips, and thighs in women.

If you stop eating when you’re no longer hungry, in about 15 to 20 minutes you will feel full. I know I do. If I wait until I actually feel full before leaving the table, in about 15 to 20 minutes it’s couch time for me. I feel really bloated and tired and just want to lie down for a long nap. This is a big sign that you’ve overeaten and that you’ve overwhelmed your body’s digestive process with the food intake. It doesn’t have energy left over todo anything other than try to handle the food overload, so it signals you to take a rest.

You shouldn’t feel exhausted after eating. Food is supposed to energize us. Since I learned how to tell the difference between being no longer hungry and feeling full, I have to say it works. I feel so much better after eating, and maintaining a lean weight is a lot easier.

3. DON’T STARVE AND STUFF

Starving is probably the worst thing most people do when trying to lose fat, and it sends the worst messages to our bodies.

1.    Starving ourselves or depriving our bodies of food sends them into fat storage mode, which is something no one wants. Our bodies are designed not to care how we look but to preserve our lives. When we starve them, they try to hold on to every last bit of fat reserves they have and fat burning just about stops. When we do finally eat again, we usually overeat and stuff ourselves, which really defeats our weight loss efforts since our bodies are now primed to store as much of that feast as fat as they can get away with, much more than they would have stored if we just continued eating normally.

2.    A starvation-type diet also causes the body, which is trying to preserve fat stores, to start catabolizing, or breaking down, other tissues like muscle, which is metabolically active and burns fat for energy. During a starvation situation muscle is the enemy. It’s burning precious fat that the body wants to hold on to, so it’s gotta go. When you start eating normally again, you’ll put on fat in record time, probably more than you ever had before, because you have less muscle mass to burn fat on a daily basis. In short, you’ve blunted your body’s fat-burning capacity.

3.    Finally, starving and stuffing creates emotional and mental turmoil. No one really wants to live like that.

4.  DO A.M. CARDIO

Doing cardio first thing in the A.M. is our fat cells’ worst nightmare. It’s the best time for burning body fat. In the morning, after a good night’s sleep and before we eat, our bodies are going to burn a greater percentage of stored body fat for energy rather than relying on energy from food we’ve just eaten. Our blood-sugar and insulin levels are low and stable, which isthe perfect environment for fat burning to occur. After we eat, especially after we eat meals high in carbs, our blood-sugar and insulin levels rise and fat burning stops.

When I first added morning cardio to my fitness routine, I started dropping  pounds of fat like a bad habit. If your schedule doesn’t permit you to do cardio first thing in the morning, you can add it after your workout or later at night. But try to make sure it’s done on an empty stomach. For variety you can use a treadmill, stair-climber, elliptical trainer, or stationary bike, or you can simply walk, jog, or run around the block a few times. I just make sure to keep it low impact so my heart rate stays in fat-burning mode. If you’re huffing and puffing, you’re probably working too hard and possibly breaking down muscle tissue. You should be able to carry on a conversation without losing your breath.

5.  DRINK WATER

Water is a magical drink. It helps transport vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients throughout our bodies, plus it flushes out toxins and other waste products. Our muscles consist of 70 percent water, so drinking lots of it helps keep them looking full and pumped. I like to drink lots of water, about a gallon a day, not only for its health benefits but also because it helps keep me lean. I drink it with and in between meals to curb my appetite and decrease cravings. I also learned another trick to stop overeating: if I’m getting ready for a photo shoot or personal appearance, I’ll have a full 8- to 10-ounce glass of water before each meal starting a few days prior to the event. I noticed it fills up my stomach and causes me to eat much less than I normally would if I didn’t down the water first. Water’s my best friend when it comes to sticking to a lower-calorie nutrition plan.

6.  BE A SMART SHOPPER

My sixth tip for living lean and healthy relates to shopping. We all do it, but we don’t all do it well. Be a smart shopper. First off, don’t ever go food shopping when you’re hungry. Your stomach will always override your brain. Cravings kick common sense to the curb, and you’ll end up with a cart full of sugar- and saturated-fat-fi lled garbage that you bought on impulse rather than planning. Second, don’t ever enter the supermarket without a list—and don’t buy anything other than what’s on that list, especially when you’re fi rst starting a new nutrition plan or fitness program. Think before you put something on your list about what benefit it will bring you and whether or not it will help or hinder you in achieving your fitness goals.

Third, try to shop in the outer aisles of the supermarket. Along the periphery of the store is where you’ll find more of the natural foods—vegetables, fruits, and protein sources like chicken breasts, turkey breasts, and egg whites. It’s when you venture into those inner aisles that you get into trouble. That’s where all the highly processed, high-calorie/high-carb/high-sugar nasties are. In general, the more highly processed a food is, the bigger the blood sugar reaction it’s going to give you and the further it’s going to put you from attaining your fitness goals. Stick with natural choices. Save these inner aisles for last when you just want to get a treat or “cheat food” that you’ve been craving, or avoid them altogether.

7.  MAKE BETTER “BAD” CHOICES

Now that we know how to shop, let’s stick with the nutrition theme. Fitness is supposed to be fun, and eating healthy will actually be more fun than eating poorly. Our bodies crave what they’re used to—the stuff we’ve been feeding them over time. If you subsist on fast-food hamburgers, milk shakes, and large brownies, like I used to, then that’s what your body is living on and that’s what it will crave. These cravings will change when you start feeding your body something different. When I first heard that I didn’t believe it either. I thought I was born to crave bacon double

Cheese burgers and jumbo fries, but I can tell you now that I wasn’t. I don’t even want them anymore. The problem is that it usually takes four to eight weeks for our bodies to get over old cravings and start craving the new, better foods. It’s like lag time. We might want to look and feel better now, but our bodies want the sugar and saturated fat they’ve been surviving on so they don’t react as quickly as we might like. During that time it helps to make better “bad” choices.

For example, if you crave ice cream, follow tip 1, take baby steps. Don’t make yourself miserable by eliminating it altogether; instead, eat it a little less frequently or have a smaller portion than you normally would—or choose a more waistline-friendly alternative like sugar-free, fat-free frozen yogurt. If you crave tacos, try a “better” alternative like what I call Fitness Made Simple Chicken Wraps, which have all the basic ingredients of a chicken taco except the deep-fried, saturated-fat-filled tortilla shell. That’s where most of the calories and fat grams are. Instead, I wrap the chicken and vegetables in a lettuce shell, which adds next to no calories. You can still dip this creation in your favourite sauces and it will taste great, plus you won’t feel guilty later, like you cheated on your meal plan.

I’ve learned you sometimes have to play little mental games to break bad habits while you’re trying to set good ones in motion. One of the tricks I came up with I call “Natural Days.” When I was trying to break out of my fast-food, pizza, and chocolate diet and get leaner, every other or every third day I would make a Natural Day, where I’d eat only natural foods: raw vegetables, a few fruits, protein sources like chicken breast, and nuts like almonds or all-natural peanut butter for “good” fat. It was like going through detox, but it worked. The protein and vegetables really filled me up, decreased my cravings for the junk, and helped me get leaner more quickly.

8.      KEEP “CHEAT” FOODS OUT OF THE HOUSE

Cheating can be a good thing. It’s fun and it can also be guilt-free. As long as we exercise regularly and eat clean the majority of the day, having a bite or two of something we’ve been craving is generally going to have no noticeable or visible impact on the lean physique we’re trying to build, plus it will help us keep our sanity.

There’s only one rule I follow when it comes to cheating: keep “cheat” foods out the house. I know if I had brownies or anything with dark chocolate and nuts in my refrigerator, I’d probably never see my abs again. If, however, I want a brownie but I have to go to the local bakery or supermarket to get one, that’s a totally different story. A craving is generally an impulse thing; it’s usually satisfied without much thought and then we feel guilty later. If I have to go out to satisfy my craving, it gives me a moment to consider if it’s really worth the trip. Once I think about the effort needed to get in the car, drive to the store, buy the brownie, and then go home and eat it, I generally fi nd it’s not worth the trouble and the urge passes. It sounds funny but it works. It’s all about having conscious thought take control over impulse. Keeping cheat foods at home within arm’s reach is just too tempting and sets us up for failure.

9.      VARY EXERCISE CHOICES

To keep your body guessing and continue to stimulate growth, vary your exercise choices. As with anything done over time, our bodies and minds get used to certain workouts, causing us to reach a plateau where we stop seeing the same benefits from our exercise investments. That’s usually because both our bodies and minds have become bored with the routine. They’ve been through it day in and day out, they know what to expect, and they’ve adjusted. To avoid getting stuck in an exercise rut, keep things fresh both mentally and physically by mixing and matching different workouts. I’ll give you some options in later chapters. Changing workouts on a weekly or monthly basis really helps me maximize results.

10.   THINK—AND THINK POSITIVELY

The one common thread that ties the mental, physical, and nutritional aspects together when we’re trying to improve our fitness is thought—conscious thought, not acting on impulse or out of habit. Too many people, myself included, fall into the trap of just doing the same things day in and day out—I call it “sleepwalking” through life—and then complaining or finding excuses about why their bodies or lives aren’t better. Bottom line: a large part of how you look and feel today is a sum total of what you’ve been doing up to this point, so if you don’t change what you’re doing, you’ll keep looking and feeling how you do right now. If you’re happy with how you are now, then that’s great; otherwise, it’s time to start taking control of your life and your body and stop sleepwalking. Think about everything you do each day—what you eat, how much activity you get, and so on—and start making changes for the better, no excuses. One of the first changes I made was to start thinking positively. Believe in yourself and you can accomplish anything. You achieve what you believe. If you can’t envision yourself with a great body living a great life, you’ll probably never get there, but if you keep that image in your head every day and work hard to achieve it, you’ll probably be surprised by how quickly it turns into reality.