Eat great food and a great body naturally follows! If you are serious about getting results from your fitness program and desire living your best life, exercise combined with balanced nutrition is essential! Some people believe that simply losing weight will make them healthier. They’re wrong. You must fuel your body using nutritious food choices for optimal wellness and long-term weight loss!

ealthy living is not as difficult as it might seem. Making health a priority is the first step towards reaching your goals. You can’t achieve maximum results (i.e. pounds, inches or fat loss) from a boot camp without changing your eating habits. Exercise increases appetite, causing you to eat more, which makes it difficult to get results if you don’t address your food choices at the same time. Getting results may take longer, causing you to give up before you reach your goal.

Week 1: Detox your body and your kitchen
Detoxifying or cleansing your body benefits overall health, vitality and rejuvenation. An effective detox program can increase energy, treat disease, or jump start a weight loss program. A cleanse can often eliminate those subtle and mysterious chronic symptoms of non-optimum health.

The process of detoxification involves dietary and lifestyle changes to reduce the intake of toxins and improve elimination. Minimize the toxic load by avoiding chemicals from food or other sources, refined food, sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco. Drinking extra water and increasing fibre by including more fruits and vegetables in the diet are steps in the detoxification process.

Detox your kitchen
How would your kitchen score in a nutrition audit? How many temptation foods like chips, cookies or chocolate bars would I find? How many sweet or fatty treats could tempt you from achieving your health goals? If it isn’t there, you can’t eat it. Set yourself up for success; make it easier not to fail by cleansing your house of all the foods that are not part of your new life.

Week 2: Focus on food
Just because you exercise, doesn’t mean you can eat whatever you want. Working out will help to gain muscle, but unless you choose your food wisely and use portion control, you may not notice a change in your size because your increased exercise may cause you to eat more. Eat every two to three hours, starting one hour after rising. Your body is a furnace – to keep your metabolism fired up you need to feed it!

Week 3: Fibre, fibre, fibre
Psyllium, flax and chia seeds offer dietary fibre providing bulk to promote bowel regularity, help lower cholesterol levels, control blood sugar, and reduce weight. Consume 30 grams of fibre daily. High fibre foods are typically lower in calories so you tend to eat less; you feel fuller, the body works harder to digest them, metabolism speeds up and fat burns quicker.

FRUITS AND VEGGIES
8-10 servings per day.
Eat at least one serving of fruit or veggies per snack and two per meal.
Try to eat more vegetables than fruit.

PROTEIN
5-6 servings per day.
When you are working out protein helps you feel full and it repairs and builds muscle. Choose lean meats such as chicken and fish (skin and visible fat removed), beans, lentils, and chickpeas.

CARBOHYDRATES
6-7 servings per day.
Carbohydrates are not all bad, but are easy to over-eat and are often used as comfort foods. Substitute grain products with starchy vegetables. Choose low glycemic carbohydrates such as apples, oatmeal, brown rice, pears, whole grain bread or bagels, low-fat yogourt, protein enriched whole-wheat pasta, microwave popcorn, sweet potatoes, hummus.

FATS
Get 20-35% of your daily calories from fat.
Fats should be polyunsaturated or unsaturated e.g. nuts, avocados, olive oil, flaxseed oil, natural nut butters. Unsaturated fats are ‘heart healthy’. Eliminate all saturated and trans fats from your diet.

Week 4: Hello hydration!
Your body is composed of 60-70% water, playing an important role in how well your body functions. Water assists digestion with absorption and assimilation of food, in excreting waste from the bowel and kidneys and regulating body temperature. Your blood is 92% water and is an integral part of your body's transport system distributing nutrients around the body.

Your brain does not differentiate
between hunger and thirst so if you are not consuming enough water each day, feeling hungry may in fact be a signal that you are thirsty!

Water naturally suppresses appetite and lack of water can lead to over eating. Your brain does not differentiate between hunger and thirst so if you are not consuming enough water each day, feeling hungry may in fact be a signal that you are thirsty! Drink at least one half of your body weight in ounces. For example, if you are a 150 pound person, you need to drink 75 ounces.


Drink water consistently throughout the day, rather than all at once and be wary of caffeinated beverages. They are diuretics that cause your body to lose water, so have an extra glass of water for every caffeinated beverage you drink.

Week 5: Evaluate your progress
Inventory your eating patterns. Carry a notebook and pen. This week, write down everything you eat to measure how you are doing against your plan. Writing down what you consume forces an awareness of what you are putting into your body. Just this simple act will make you eat healthier.

‘Boot camp’ your life by focusing on something new each week. Do not give up and remember it takes 21 days to form a habit! This is not a diet, it is a lifestyle change. Do yourself a favour. Throw out the old excuses and make some changes today! H&L