Begin no later than 7:30 am for the first four weeks, then every 3 hours (five times a day is sufficient). These frequent meals are what will put your fat burning engine into high gear. It is the small, or no breakfast, then skipping meals throughout the day that suppresses your metabolism. If you do not put fuel in the car, it has nothing to burn. Eating three times per day or skipping meals will only slow your fat-burning process and promote the loss of lean body weight (LBW). Your body will actually eat away muscle tissue and store fat.
2. YOU MUST PLAN
It is the first step to a healthier lifestyle. Planning your meals will omit non-nutritious foods, and replace them with foods more conducive to your health goal. By planning, you make certain you will stay on a successful eating pattern.
3. YOU MUST DRINK AS MUCH WATER AS POSSIBLE
Incredible as it may seem, water is quite possibly the single most important factor in losing weight and keeping it off. For less water retention and permanent weight loss, Dave Parise CPT recommends that you drink .65 fluid ounces multiplied by your current body weight. Here is why:
Multiply your bodyweight by .55-.75 (the higher value applies to people in a warmer climate, this calculator splits the difference at .65). The resulting number is the amount of water you should drink each day in ounces.
Dramatic changes in body composition (your muscle to fat ratio) can occur without a drastic decrease in overall weight.
5. YOU MUST TAKE INTO CONSIDERATION YOUR LIFESTYLE AND CURRENT HABITS
With our help, support, and recommendations, you will achieve increased self-awareness and modify your behavior.
We want you to utilize this information as a learning tool. We want you to think, because there are more then 30,000 diets registered in the U.S. Every time you turn around our minds are being flooded with more diets and gimmicks. We ingest too much confusion and therefore, we do not understand what it means to eat well. With all the fitness and diet guru’s bombarding us with a new fangled celebrity diets…the confusion and false hopes escalate to proportions that leave us with another failure. It is a way to brainwash us into thinking there is another way for a quick fix. This is an insult! In addition, I personally take that to heart, and so should you! Diets do not work period! This is why there is diet book after diet book and people are still searching for answers and are still struggling. The answer is not in the diet book but in you.
Think of this text as being your book, your chart, your guide to personal growth and excellence – the kind of growth you never believed possible.
My intentions are to help you change how you think so you can change the way you act, so you can change your life for the better. A positive way to enhance your life is open to you. You will not only grow yourself, but you will also show the people around you how they can grow, too. There is no limit, I assure you. You will learn how to increase your self-efficacy – your ability to make things happen – in all areas of your life.
The foundation of all human action is human thought. Our thought process forms the foundation on which we build every facet of our lives. Therefore, it is important for each of us to understand how our minds work – how we got the habits and attitudes, the beliefs that may stand in the way of releasing our vast inner potential and leading fulfilling and purposeful lives. Our beliefs and expectations about ourselves, our health, our families, our organizations – indeed, our world – directly reflect in our “performance reality.”
Unfortunately, some of our foundations are not built with strong materials or are not made to withstand long-term sustainability. Our foundations like “I am a good person, I like myself, I treat myself with respect, I should have good things happen to me, I want to be healthy, etc. are cracked or at the brink of collapse.
When this happens we start feeling frustrated with our thoughts about our lives, or dislike with ourselves, certain situations/ or relationship/careers. Life has many triggers for people, which seems to take them into a downward spiral, once they appear. One of the ways to cope with these feelings, which always boil to down to fear or hating yourself, is to overeat, under eat, control your eating to obsessive manner, stop the program or to come up with excuses as to why you can not reach your goal. The biggest culprit of all is “I know what I am supposed to do; I just do not do it”.
Therefore, the question becomes why you do not do it? It is not because you are not smart or determined enough. It is because your brain (neurology) is avoiding dealing with anything that causes fear, pain, stress, anxiety etc. This is much more powerful than trying not to overeat on the couch in front of the TV. at night. You will use food to deal with any structural tension that comes up in your life.
Understand that there is always a benefit to a habit/belief or how you deal with things or else you would not do them. If you are afraid to fail at things because you were yelled at as a kid for any type of mistake or had to do everything perfectly growing up and you could not because no one is, perfect then your brain may come up with many excuses as to why you cannot eat well or exercise. The same is true if your parents or caretakers told you that things you did were not good enough. The scenarios are different for people but the outcomes are the same.
I do not have time to go to the store to buy food
I am very busy
It is too hard
Therefore, if you set yourself up to not succeed you do not have to worry about letting yourself or anyone else with unbridled expectations down. Thus avoiding more pain or suffering. However, this vicious cycle is never broken and ends up causing even more pain because now you are frustrated that once again you cannot reach a goal you have set and feel even worse about yourself.
Understand that how you feel seems very real, which is why you thoughts and actions reflect these feelings. However, you need to examine these feelings as to how they became to be part of your reality. First, determine what triggered your feelings or your general state of mind. What were you feeling, why were you feeling this way, and where did it come from.
More often than not, we take the blame for situations or tell ourselves we are crazy or going out of our minds for how we are feeling since we do not know why. It is like the wizard in the Wizard of Oz, until the curtain came down and revealed the truth, everyone thought he was this great and all-powerful wizard and were frightened of him. He was just a man who created the illusion of something powerful. Suddenly, is was not mysterious or frightening anymore. The truth really does set you free.
"In your childhood these behaviors were safe guards or what you probably needed to do to survive as best you good but as an adult they are not working"
More than likely you did not learn to dislike yourself, or tell yourself to be perfect all the time, or blame yourself for everything. This is something you learned or experienced or saw as a child and overtime developed behaviors and attitudes/habits around it to get through it. In your childhood these behaviors were safe guards or what you probably needed to do to survive as best you good but as an adult they are not working. Moreover, now you carry these behaviors and thoughts with you but these are not yours to carry and after a while, they become too heavy. You can unveil the curtain as to why you have these behaviors or feelings but you will have to do the work as who they came from and why. This does not mean that you need to blame your parents or caretakers, just recognize that it came from them and you no longer have to keep sabotaging yourself.
Start recognizing these in different aspects of your life and you will allow yourself to reach your goals. You may tell yourself that this is too hard or too much work on your part but it will only get harder in the long run…unfortunately, you can pay now or pay later. Is it harder to lose 5lbs or 40 lbs., do you like being in your downward spiral or would you like to break the pattern? This old pattern is a great way to avoid the truth, to avoid ever losing weight or feeling better.
Once you work on this process, you can change your old patterns and negative thoughts and behaviors. You can replace them with new positive ones and let go of some of your fears. This will allow more time in your life to think, plan, visualize, and evolve into something that will make you be the person you have always known yourself to be, instead of looking over your shoulder for fear of the next bad experience or situation to happen. This will enable you to reach goals but most importantly experience a little more aliveness and happiness in your life. Moreover, helping you maintain a healthy eating lifestyle and exercise program for life.
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About the author:
Dave Parise is a recognized leader in the fitness industry. On the cutting edge of exercise today, Mr. Parise has been noted as one of the “Top 15 Trainers” in the United States and across Canada by the Association for Fitness Professionals, I.D.E.A.
Parise has 20 years of experience in Human Performance and Exercise Science. His creative culinary innovations with organic whole foods have been rated “very delicious” by top chefs in New York. Dave was born and raised in Hamden CT.
Dave Parise C.P.T., C.E.O. Results Plus Personal Training N.A.S.M. R.T.S. 1,2. C.S.C.S. www.resultsplus.com 203-288-8822
3. YOU MUST DRINK AS MUCH WATER AS POSSIBLE
When this happens we start feeling frustrated with our thoughts about our lives, or dislike with ourselves, certain situations/ or relationship/careers. Life has many triggers for people, which seems to take them into a downward spiral, once they appear. One of the ways to cope with these feelings, which always boil to down to fear or hating yourself, is to overeat, under eat, control your eating to obsessive manner, stop the program or to come up with excuses as to why you can not reach your goal. The biggest culprit of all is “I know what I am supposed to do; I just do not do it”.
