Wednesday, June 15, 2011

EAT LIKE ROYALTY (and still lose weight!)


Now that we are officially half way through the year (yes it is the sixth month, 15th day already!) most people’s fitness and nutrition New Year’s resolutions have either lost steam or stopped completely. Honestly, that’s why I don’t make New Year’s fitness resolutions – because there is WAY too much pressure surrounding them. Here is something you can do though – take baby steps toward reaching realistic lifestyle goals so that the changes will be more permanent!

My first piece of advice for people trying to lose weight this summer is to focus on changing ONE habit at a time. You can start by taking some advice from the royal family. Royal family, you say? How could they help? Well listen up …

This “Royal Family” eating style was passed along to me from a fitness mentor of mine and it has worked wonders with many of my clients. The trick:

EAT LIKE A KING FOR BREAKFAST, EAT LIKE A PRINCE FOR LUNCH, AND EAT LIKE A PAUPER FOR DINNER

Come again?!

Yes, that’s right – Eat your biggest (most royal and grand – LIKE A KING) meal of the day at breakfast, then eat your lunch like a prince (smaller portion than breakfast, but still substantial enough to fill you up) and end the day eating like a pauper for dinner, making it your smallest meal of the day (try to cut out or limit carbs at this meal as well).

So why is this eating style so effective?

When we wake up in the morning, our bodies are in starvation mode and they need fuel (think about it, your body has basically been in hibernation mode for 6-8 hours without food intake). So take comfort in knowing that you can eat a BIG breakfast to jumpstart your morning. Now, that doesn’t mean you can eat carb loaded waffles with sugary syrup every morning (after all you need to put premium fuel in your body’s tank in order to run optimally). The point is to make breakfast your biggest meal of the day so that it will provide your body enough fuel to get you through till lunch (*as all of my clients know, I also highly recommend small snacks between each big meal, but that’s a conversation for another day…).

As lunch time rolls around, start thinking like a PRINCE. A prince would not eat as much as a king, but after all he is still in the royal family, so he certainly will not go hungry. Consider eating ½ to ¾ of your breakfast amount (and again please pick healthy choices - even though you are cutting your portion, a smaller portion of highly caloric or fatty food is still unhealthy!)

For dinner, you are going to want to eat like a PAUPER. Think about that for a second – paupers are poor and thus cannot gorge like a king or eat moderately like a prince. Make this YOUR SMALLEST meal of the day and LIMIT YOUR CARBS (including alcohol). Remember, your body’s fuel system has almost come full circle since waking up and it is gearing itself up for hibernation (sleep mode) AKA - it will be storing food and excess calories to have energy for the next day and consequently you will not be able to burn off as many calories as in your earlier meals.

Last but certainly not least, I want to reiterate that this is an eating style that should be practiced with only healthy foods! This is not going to work if you are eating foods high in calories and fat! But paired with a fridge stocked with clean and nutritious foods, this eating style will prove THE MOST ROYAL IN ALL THE KINGDOM!

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