When will it be warm again?

I'm feeling very swimming pool deprived right now. I'm still making it happen by going to the gym and burning the calories on the elliptical. I thought that the pool made my whole body tired compared to just my legs on the elliptical. Oh a side note though, I think I should be out of the 200s by the first week of March.

I've noticed a trend with my food lately. The days that I seem to have the most weight-loss are when I eat my largest meal at lunch the day before. So today's tip of the day does not have any scientific evidence backing it up but it seems to be working for me.

TIP OF THE DAY:

Eat your largest meal of the day at lunch with lots of small meals through out the day for an effective weight loss plan. Small meals should range from about 250-400 calories depending on how many calories you are allowed per day.

Okay so my explanation for today's tip of the day is purely my own logic so if anyone else has other ideas I'd like to hear them. So this is my reasoning why eating your largest meal of the day at lunch is effective. So you eat your largest meal of the day at lunch because the average person has their most metabolically active time through out the bulk of their day from late morning to early evening. Most people go to the gym or do their recreational activities in the afternoon or after work. If you eat your largest meal at breakfast you'll feel hungry even with all your smaller meals through out your day. If you eat your largest meal at dinner, depending on when you eat dinner you may not have time to fully digest your large meal before going to bed. Having your largest meal be lunch seems to be the best middle ground. You only feel slightly hungry a few hours after dinner. And you definitely have enough energy to get you through your day after lunch. This tip seems to make the most sense for weight loss and probably wouldn't be as effective for muscle gain if that's your goal.

Try it out and let me know if it works for you. Time to sign off. Get your sweat on and happy dieting.

- Joel via iPhone

Nutrition Stats:

Diet planning.. What's too low?

Hello everybody, how is everyone doing? It was another great day in San Diego. The weather was great with plenty of sun. Definitely a wonderful day for swimming. I was able to increase the number of reps for the push up sets that I do between laps. Starting to feel the effects a little bit already. All in all it was a good workout day. I also stepped on the scale this morning and I liked the number that I saw. I'm hoping by the end of the month I'm out of the 200s.

I think we'll be rapping up the diet planning tip of the days pretty soon. There's other tips and aspects that I can explain but I'll wait til I start implementing them into my own program before I go into them. But today we'll be talking about counting calories and what is too low for calories.

TIP OF THE DAY:

For those who are very strict with themselves and try to keep a really low daily calorie intake, do not go below 1200 calories per day.

The reason I mention this is because as the body adapts to the caloric intake and the body changes it's body fat percentage, the body is going to require less calories. The human body is a very smart and adaptive machine. The human body naturally wants to store fat so when the body changes it wants to go the path of least resistance. So even if you are losing weight for a while at a certain your body will learn to adapt to it and slow the body's metabolism down. The reason I say not to go below 1200 is because anything below that the body enters starvation mode and severely slows down the metabolism which can actually cause you to gain weight. Most people when they diet and they stop losing weight, they adjust the their diet lower. And if you start your diet at 1200 calories, you have no where to go from there. If you body has adapted to an extremely low, there are ways to reset your metabolism. But we'll go into that another time.

If you have found a good amount of calories that works for you and your weight loss starts to slow, try changing up your workout routines. In that way, you can jumpstart your metabolism again and make the most of your calories. No matter what, when you lose weight your body is naturally going to not need as many calories. But by increasing your muscle mass from your workouts, hopefully the daily caloric burn is still maintained a higher level. One lb of lean muscle burns more calories than one lb of fat.

Well that's all for now. Until next time, get your sweat on and happy dieting.

- Joel via iPhone

Nutritional Stats: