The right pre-workout nosh may help you reach your slim-down goal. A new study in the Journal of Nutrition found that women who ate muesli, yogurt, and fruit before an hour-long workout burned 50 percent more fat than those who had an equally caloric meal of cornflakes, white toast and jam, and milk. That's because the muesli meal falls lower on the glycemic index (GI). "A meal high on the GI causes a spike in blood sugar, which your body must then use to fuel your workout," says study author Emma Stevenson, Ph.D. "But a meal low on the GI is digested more slowly, so your body has to pull energy from its fat stores." To stoke your fat-burning furnace, log on to glycemicindex.com for smart meal and snack ideas.
Ever wonder why most diets you've tried have failed to get you that ultralean, supercut-abs look? For most of you, the simple answer has to do with your approach to dieting plateaus - that is, what you do when your weight loss stalls.
At first, any sensible diet will have you losing weight steadily, but at some point your rapid progress will slow and then almost seem to stop altogether. And what's the typical remedy by dieters at this stage? Your instinct is probably to drop caloric intake and increase aerobic activity. While this approach may get you through a sticking point, in the long run you will feel like crop and rarely achieve the lean, cut, muscular look you're after. Moreover, cutting calories at such a stage will leave you vulnerable to rebound weight gain.
Key No. 1 Eat small meals often throughout the day
You can lose fat on a reduced-calorie, three-meals-a-day program; for many with complicated schedules, that's the only way to go. But such an approach will not turn your body into a fat-burning furnace, especially when you need to lose that last inch or two around the gut. To get truly lean, even ripped, in a minimal amount of time, eating smaller meals more often throughout your day is a much more effective method.
Spacing your meals every 2 1/2 to three hours provides a number of metabolism-enhancing benefits:
* Stable blood-sugar levels throughout the day. On a three-meals-a-day program, you risk fluctuating blood-sugar levels more than is ideal. The multiple-meal approach maintains steady blood-sugar levels and insulin release, leading to stable insulin levels. Elevated insulin levels inhibit fat-burning.
* Improved appetite control. Since blood sugar remains relatively constant, you do not suffer from pangs of hunger, which often lead to bouts of overeating on a three-meals-a-day approach.
* Better glycogen storage in the liver and muscle tissues. Improved glycogen storage prevents the body from cannibalizing muscle tissue as an energy source during training and helps to maximize recovery after training.
* Adequate nutrient stores to meet the body's momentary nutritional demands. Whether you're busy solving problems at work or pushing hard during a training session, optimal performance requires that your body have sufficient nutrients available to perform the task at hand effectively.
* Improved gastrointestinal transit time. Carbs and proteins are the first two macronutrients processed by the body. Fat takes the longest to break down. When you follow the five- or six-a-day meal plan, your body processes macronutrients more efficiently and more quickly. One of the benefits of this improved efficiency is that fat has less time to stay in your system, so less of it is absorbed and stored, while the remainder is expelled (to put it politely).
If you're worried that eating often is a hassle, consider the following: A small meal can consist of four ounces of water-packed white-meat tuna or chicken, a small baked potato and salad, none of which requires much preparation time the night before. And such small meals can be consumed almost anywhere.
The other thing to remember is that you should eat whether you feel hungry or not. Hunger signals a deficit of nutrients, and you always want to stay ahead of the curve.
Key No. 2 Get enough protein each day
While eating anything raises your metabolic rate, protein boosts it the most. Another reason for ingesting enough protein has to do with muscle loss resulting from a diet. As you probably know, the more muscle you carry, the more efficiently your body will burn fat. It follows that what you don't want from your weight-loss program is loss of muscle tissue. One way to minimize this loss is to get enough protein delivered in relatively precise doses throughout the course of each day.
How much protein is enough? For the guy whose idea of physical effort requires an extension of his elbow toward the television set, followed by slight pressure of the index finger on the TV remote, three balanced squares a day will do it. But if your definition of activity equates to a Men's Fitness lifestyle - basketball, tennis, resistance training, skiing, snowboarding, cycling - then eating like a couch caterpillar cannot possibly fulfill your needs. Your protein requirements become especially crucial if you're on a weight-loss program.
To maintain your training and performance at peak efficiency while continuing to get lean, assess your protein requirements beyond those suggested by the RDA. The 0.8 grams per 2.2 pounds of lean body mass recommended by the RDA may be fine if you lay around in a bubble like a blob of protoplasm, but the active Men's Fitness reader requires significantly more protein, period. And if you're shedding fat, you absolutely need to eat adequate protein if you want to turn your body into a fat-burning machine.
Highly competitive elite athletes, for example, eat between 1.5 and two grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (according to research, no benefits accrue beyond 1.5 grams). You probably don't have such needs; your safest bet is to ingest between 0.8 and 1.0 grams of protein per pound of lean mass.
Use the weight at which you think you would look good if you were lean (be realistic!), then multiply that number by 0.8 grams. If that number is, say, 170 pounds, your daily requirement is 136 grams of protein, which translates to 27 grams of protein per meal. That's slightly more than a skinless chicken breast or small can of water-packed tuna.
This is just a guideline, which means adjustments will be called for after you've monitored your intake for a month or so. If your training or fat loss has plateaued and you're positive you aren't suffering from overtraining syndrome, bump up your protein intake slightly. If you're gaining a little fat, cut your protein intake back. (There should be little need to go beyond one gram of protein per pound of lean mass.)
Here's an insider tip: Get in the habit of eating fish during your last meal of the day. Fish protein seems to be lighter for an evening meal and is a good way to replenish essential aminos while getting essential fatty acids.
Key No. 3 Juggle your carbohydrate intake
If you apply any formula for macronutrient intake too rigidly or consistently, your progress can stall, especially with regard to carb intake. Once you've established your daily carb requirement, the tendency is to ingest precisely equal amounts of carbs spread across five meals per day. In the early phase of a weight-loss plan, this approach works quite welL, training the body to expect a certain amount of essential nutrients on a regular schedule for maximum benefit.
But all good things have their downsides. The body is lazy: Once it has adapted to a pattern (achieved homeostasis), it will work just enough, no more, no less, to maintain that balance. To continue getting leaner, the body must not be allowed to become complacent. It has to be gently shocked into continued adaptation. That's why an efficient training program is altered ever so slightly on a regular basis. Your diet should likewise be altered, most notably with the primary energy source - carbs. Here a few ways to juggle your intake and keep your body adapting consistently.
* Go lower. Once every two or three weeks, lower your total carb intake (assuming you're not diabetic or prone to hypoglycemic episodes) to approximately 125 grams per day for two days. During this low-carb phase, your body launches into a search for alternate energy sources, hyping the metabolic process and shocking the body out of its homeostatic rhythm. In its hyped state, your body immediately starts to utilize the newly arrived sugar when you return to normal levels of carb ingestion, flushing your system's depleted stores. Because it has been glycogen-depleted, your body will quickly utilize sugar carbs for energy.
Don't go low-carb for more than a couple of days or take in fewer than 125 grams of carbohydrates per day. Carbs are essential for maintaining crucial heart and brain functions. Dropping below your suggested carb quota may not be safe. Depleting sugar stores can make you lethargic and irritable and slow your thinking, so go low-carb only on weekends, not during the work week.
* Do not limit carb sources to a few foods. Don't rely strictly on baked potatoes or white rice. Eat yams and sweet potatoes, brown rice and assorted grains (they burn longer); pack down tons of salads and vegetables (they require more energy to process than they contain). To keep your system working optimally - that is, to keep it guessing - don't get caught in a carb rut.
* Finish strong. Your last meal (even your last two) of the day should contain minimal amounts of slow-burning carbs, like potatoes and pasta, and should instead emphasize protein, especially fish. The carbs you do ingest at this time of day should be of the "wet" kind, those contained in cucumbers, leafy green salads, tomatoes and steamed asparagus, as each has a high water and medium-fiber content. High-fiber foods absorb a tremendous amount of water, leaching it out of your system, and since you can't drink while you sleep, wet carbs allow you to maintain relatively adequate levels of water during the night.
* Start right. Your first meal of the day and your first post-training meal should contain your largest carb intakes of the day. Your body's glycogen stores are depleted when you wake up; replenishing them ASAP is crucial to physical and mental functioning, and for starting up the metabolic furnace. A serious training session also depletes glycogen stores. Replace them within 60 minutes after a workout for immediate energy restoration and to ensure long-term muscle mending.
Key No. 4 Drink more water
Muscle tissue is 70 percent water. So if you want to get lean and hard, drink plenty of [H.sub.2]O. Water is essential for protein conversion and carbohydrate uptake; the chemical conversion of carbs to energy cannot take place efficiently without ample water. You can't load muscle cells with glycogen or deliver amino acids to muscle tissue without adequate water. For starters, your training efforts will suck. More important, fat, the vast majority of which is stored under the skin, is mobilized through a process called hydrolysis. As the word suggests, hydrolysis requires plenty of water - meaning that insufficient amounts of [H.sub.2]O in your body will hinder effective breakdown of fat.
Thirst signals the first stage of dehydration. You must stay hydrated and avoid thirst. If you become even slightly dehydrated, you're already behind the curve in your weight-loss efforts. Rehydrate immediately. Better yet, stay ahead of the curve, particularly before a training session. Consume a lot more water than you think you'll need before each workout, then drink water while you're training.Since you'll likely continue training while shedding fat, drink additional water to offset what you lose during a workout. One hour of intense training can lead to the loss of as much as three liters of fluid, the daily amount recommended for a sedentary guy. Between your training and dieting efforts, consider hydrating with a minimum of six liters per day just to maintain adequate levels.
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