Well today is April 16th and already for the past few weeks I have been getting a tremendous amount of new weight-loss clients because everyone everyone once to lose weight and get ready for the summer. For some of us that might be just losing 10 pounds and for others that made me losing over 50 pounds.
The place where I always begin is focusing on people's nutritional habits. This means their daily diet what they are eating everyday. What they are eating for breakfast, lunch dinner comma snacks and yes this does include beverages. The number one mistake that I see everyone making when it comes to nutrition is that everyone thinks that they should be eating oatmeal or some type of cereal first thing in the morning. This is totally not true. Most of the people I work with come into me eating the microwavable cinnamon and raisin flavor oatmeal and this is not real food. It's almost worse than eating a candy bar. This type of oatmeal has been processed several times and then they put sugar in it and different flavors. I had one fellow come to me saying that oh it's cinnamon and I read somewhere that cinnamon is good for decreasing blood pressure and that is very good for me. He was partly correct on that.
Cinnamon in its natural form is very good for you and it is used by homeopathic and holistic practitioners to help people lower their blood pressure. But when it's in microwavable oatmeal I can assure you that it's not real cinnamon it's just a flavor of cinnamon. These food manufacturers spend millions of dollars on research and development finding different chemicals different products that taste like real food but they're nothing but chemicals. These chemicals do a really good job of fooling your taste buds and your brain that you were eating yummy cinnamon but it's just a chemical it's really not sending it. And if it is real cinnamon it's been processed and isn't loaded with sugar.
This is why my number one rule for my weight loss clients is that they stop eating oatmeal. The one exception is if you were eating the steel-cut Irish oatmeal be organic oatmeal that is usually not that bad. But you do have to control your portion size for this. Usually a half a cup of the steel cut organic oatmeal measured after it has been cooked is a normal portion size for most people. Anything more than that overload your system and will put you into fat storing mode instead of fat burning mode. However, I usually recommend to my weight loss to clients that they eat a breakfast of good healthy protein and good healthy fats and finish it off with some vegetables. Yes you can eat vegetables for breakfast.
For quite some time now I have been skipping breakfast and I have been okay with that and I have been maintaining my body weight and most of my clients also skip breakfast and they maintain their body weight. But for some reason I have been hungry first thing in the morning.
I really should dissect my diet a bit more because this probably means that I am not eating enough good healthy fat and good healthy protein and that I am probably eating more foods that convert into sugar then I should be eating. Butt of late, life has been tremendously stressful and even though nutrition is my profession I am susceptible to the trials and tribulations of normal everyday life and food is what I go to when I am totally stressed out.
And with eating this extra food have gained weight but it seems that I have gained more muscle instead of body fat. My upper torso my chest, back, biceps, triceps and even my lower extremities my thighs and my calves look much more muscular than I have looked in quite some time.
For the past year I've been focused on staying as lean as possible while maintaining an aesthetically pleasing appearance. Sometimes I have taken it a bit too far and I looked a bit too thin and when that happened I changed my portion of proteins and carbohydrates and try to gain a bit more muscle. But sometimes it's a delicate balance between being lean and physically fit and being too thin.
So for the past few weeks for breakfast I have been having two eggs and a side of turkey bacon and even a little bit of hash browns. But I have not been eating the fried hash browns that are filled with oil I have been either making my own with half of a small baked potato or I have this fantastic Diner in my neighborhood that I will usually go to and they make the hash browns from scratch.
The main thing is that what you are eating and how it metabolizes in your body and hot it affects your hormones is the key to weight loss and good health.