Lockdown Life - Nutrition Tips For Fat Loss
Lockdown Life - Nutrition Tips For Fat Loss
Earlier in the week we posted some training tips slanted towards a fat loss goal with the intention of helping give some guidance on how you might make the most of the now just under 8 weeks to go until gyms reopen in Scotland (provisionally).
Here's some nutrition tips to compliment the aforementioned training tips.
Nutrition is fundamental to achieving a fat loss goal and these are some of the key components and tips we feel can be of big benefit.
As before, bear in mind that it is absolutely fine not to want to focus on fat loss during these challenging times.
Even if this isn't your focus right now these tips can help benefit your general health and set solid foundations for working towards specific goals you might have in the future when the world settles down a bit more.
Hopefully you find these helpful and they can provide you some motivation if you feel it is lacking at the moment!
Eat satiating foods
This is arguably our most important nutrition tip of all.
Satiety means the satisfied feeling of being full after eating. The key when we talk about satiating foods is controlling hunger as this can be a big determinant of your success when working towards a fat loss goal.
Some of the key characteristics of satiating foods that help for controlling hunger is that they:
🔹Allow for high food volume at relatively low calories.
🔹Are nutrient dense.
🔹Help keep you feeling fuller for longer due to factors such as high fibre content or high protein content.
Good examples include boiled potatoes, fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein sources such as certain cuts of steak, chicken breast, fish and so on. If you don't eat meant think grains, pulses and possibly certain meat substitutes in terms of protein sources.
Building the vast majority of your nutrition around satiating foods like the above can make a huge difference in controlling hunger, properly nourishing your body and in achieving your goals.
Make sure you get the protein in
Protein intake is another key foundation of working towards fat loss. There a few important reasons for this:
🔹It's important for body composition.
🔹It helps preserve muscle mass in a calorie deficit.
🔹It is very satiating.
We'll go into more details on this in future posts but for now the key point to bear in mind is to include a good quality protein source as the centre point of your meals.
Keep some high protein snacks handy
This can be a great way to help you get sufficient protein in each day, which as discussed above is very important for a number of key reasons.
It can also be very valuable as it can help avoid you snacking on what might be considered high calorie "junk" food and thus help minimise the calories you consume when snacking and help work towards the overall calorie deficit you need to have in place for a fat loss goal.
Snack on fruit too
Fruit can be an excellent snack when focusing on fat loss. It fits the criteria we discussed above for satiating food as it is:
🔹Relatively low calorie.
🔹Nutrient dense.
🔹High food volume (relative to the calories).
It's also tasty and can help fill the gap for those of you that find yourselves craving something sweet.
Minimise liquid calories
A good daily consumption of water is great for hydration and an excellent option for a fat loss goal from a calorie perspective as it contains none.
However, water can be too bland and boring for some. If you have found yourself consuming a lot of full calorie drinks in the past a good strategy for you might be switching from these to "diet" or "sugar free" options, as these contain little to no calories. This may well prove to be an easy way to take a big chunk of calories out of your diet and achieve the calorie deficit necessary for fat loss.
Get some coaching and learn more
Hopefully you have found these tips valuable, we will be elaborating more on each individual tip with dedicated posts on them soon.
As with any nutrition based tips please bear in mind they are based on a normal healthy adult with no underlying medical conditions, if in doubt always consult with a qualified medical professional.
If you enjoyed these tips and feel like you would benefit from additional motivation and help in achieving your goals, have a look at our
Online Personal Training
page and
drop us a message!
