By healthiergang writer Deborah Cimino, student in Nutrition Sciences.
5 Golden Rules for a Toned Body
Let's rediscover together the fundamental principles of a perfect combination: diet and exercise.
Disinformation. The key word that often leads thousands of women astray with the aim of improving their fitness and lifestyle.
Super fast low-calorie diets, immediate results, hours of training among a thousand aerobic courses; there are something for all tastes (step, spinning, box, zumba, bodypump…) in short, gyms are increasingly populated by assiduous frequenters of this kind of activity that is as fun as it is not very useful.
Often and willingly, most women recognize themselves in at least one of the wrong habits mentioned above.
Just like you, in the past I too have made numerous mistakes in the food and sports fields.
For this reason, I want to pass on to all who will read this article a few but fundamental winning principles for your goals.
1. Three Words to Keep Well in Mind
Determination, patience e steadiness: 3 keywords that you must prepare before starting any program to achieve your goal that must never be lost sight of.
These principles are not necessarily addressed only to women who need to lose a lot of weight, but to all those who want to see themselves more defined, with a more toned appearance aiming at the progressive increase of lean mass and well trained and nourished muscles.
2. What am I doing wrong?
The reasons that keep you away from your goal are basically:
- Wrong training (often totally aerobic);
- An incorrect diet.
If you want to tone your muscles, you need to feed yourself and not go hungry with 1200 kcal low-calorie diets. Because?
Your body would react with the exact opposite, feeling starved it will react with fatigue, muscle aches and swelling.
Here, hyper-training and low-calorie diet become the perfect combination for the defeat towards your goal. You will feel and see more bloated and associate weight training as bad for your body.
Here then appears the vicious circle of accumulation of liquids and the consequent water retention so feared. The diet must necessarily be normocaloric; even those who need to lose a few pounds: it acts on increasing metabolic strength (the ability to burn low) and not starving your body.
The calories, however, should not be increased casually, but must be given a correct distribution of the basic macronutrients to make the training functional.
3. What are Macronutrients?
They are the pillars of our organism. Protein, carbohydrates, grassi.
Proteins should never be lacking in the training of a sporty woman, both in the training phase and in the rest (break).
an average woman the amount varies according to body weight (1, 1,5 g of protein per kilo) resorting, if necessary, to due supplements, especially in cases of real body building training.
Carbohydrates must be increased in the "on" days of training and decreased in the "off" days of rest, taking advantage of the so-called "anabolic window" (the next 2 hours post-workout within which the carbohydrates go directly to nourish the muscle).
Finally, fats, of essential importance; often mistakenly demonized by many, in low-calorie diets (oil, dried fruit ..) as they are considered to be high-calorie.
The quantity of the same varies according to our objectives, if we are in a phase of definition they should be taken without exaggerating while still maintaining the minimum threshold; on the contrary, in the phase in which we have to increase muscle "mass" they must be increased to guarantee the hormonal stability essential for the woman.
4. Here are the Golden Rules!
Summarizing, therefore, what has been said so far, I recommend that you:
1. Do not resort to low-calorie or low-carbohydrate diets if you train consistently and seriously.
2. Increase carbohydrates on training days while slightly lowering fat.
3. Don't forget proteins, they must be constant in your diet.
4. Regarding the "timing of nutrients" (distribution of meals throughout the day), you can divide the meals as you prefer, paying attention to include all 3 macronutrients at each meal, returning to your personal daily nutritional intake. In terms of definition, the intermittent fasting methodology (intermittent fasting window based on 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of nutrition, focusing training on fasting morning hours) may be useful.
5. Find the right compromise between completeness of nutrients and digestibility of meals, trying to concentrate the most abundant meal in the post-workout.
5. The Force of Mind
In all of this, I feel like adding the mental and psychological factor, often overlooked.
Stress, in fact, turns out to be a big enemy in terms of training.
In fact, negative thinking sends nerve impulses to the adrenal glands which release a number of different chemicals into the blood.
In fact, the mechanism by which our body defends itself from stress is the release of 2 hormonal substances produced by the adrenal glands: adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline causes an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar and sweating; cortisol, on the other hand, inhibits the so-called inflammatory response and reduces immune activity.
A tip not to be forgotten
So let's learn to live training and healthy nutrition as a moment of leisure from our day and everyday life by implementing it as a healthy and correct lifestyle to feel better and see ourselves better!
