What's In Your Trolley?

As I have mentioned previously nutrition is the most important factor, outside of motivation and consistency, in a fat loss program.

You could be using the best workout in the world (i.e. one of my MELT-style studio or BootCamp sessions ;-) but you won't lose fat if you are eating according to the "Supersize Me" diet.

So if your current nutritional plan is preventing you from losing fat, then it's time for you to start working on building better eating habits. This can be as simple as committing to one small nutritional improvement per day (such as replacing your lunchtime diet coke with water) and one large nutritional change per week (such as setting aside time on a Sunday to prepare a weekly menu and meals).

It is the consistent application of good choices that will lead to proper nutritional habits. Once you have established good nutritional habits, you'll find yourself making better choices on a daily basis.

But you need to have a plan to make this work, just like how you have a plan for your workouts. Your nutrition plan should include the contents of every meal, as well as your grocery list for the week.

This will enable you to have meal alternatives for nights when you might need to be running from one event to the other with no time or healthy snack alternatives when you are on the road between meetings.

It's important that you make your plan something you can follow. If you are currently eating 7 meals per week at Ronald's golden arches, it wouldn't be realistic to plan to replace those meals with carrot sticks and tofu this week.

A better plan would be to substitute a couple of those meals with
healthier sandwich options and then work on improving things even more in the following weeks.

So here's a three-step guideline on building a better nutrition plan:

1) Prepare a weekly menu.

Outline each meal and snack for every day of the upcoming week. Take into account the possibilities that you might work late or get invited out to lunch.

The more options you have and preparations you make, the better you will be able to stick to your fat loss plan.

2) From your menu plan, you'll now know what foods and ingredients you need to make it through the week.

Make your grocery list and stick to it (see a sample of mine below).

Food shopping is your first opportunity to break some bad
nutritional habits. You can't eat chips, crisps, or cakes if you don't have them in the house - so don't buy them and you'll avoid any future temptation.

3) Prepare the meals or prepare the ingredients so that making the actual meal doesn't take a lot of time.

Like shopping, it's best to do all of these preparations at one time (such as on a Sunday or another day off).

My shopping list includes:

Fruits
-Apples
-Satsumas
-Blueberries
-Melon
-Bananas
-Grapefruit
-Raspberries

Vegetables
-Peppers (red, yellow, green, & orange),
-Spinach
-Asparagus
-Broccoli
-Mushrooms
-Frozen mixed vegetables
-Tomato pasta sauce
-Salsa

Protein Sources
-Chicken breasts
-Turkey breasts
-Salmon fillets
-Lean beef mince
-Skim milk
-Low-fat, low-sugar yogurt

Carbohydrates
-Wholemeal bread
-Porridge (no sugar added)
-Whole-wheat pasta

Other
-Green tea
-Unsalted, not roasted, Almonds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds

You'll notice that most of the foods on my list come without a food label.
Most of the foods that you should avoid come in a bag or a box.

But when you do purchase something with a label, make sure to avoid two of the unhealthiest ingredients created by man:

1)High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
2)Hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil (the sources of trans-fatty acids)

You might have heard of these two ingredients. They are strongly associated with obesity and other lifestyle-diseases (such as diabetes).

Building a shopping list that contains very few bagged or boxed items is something to aim for.

So start small and make some positive nutrition changes today, and they will become helpful nutrition habits for the years to come.