Are You Doing These 9 ‘Musts’ To Get Lean?

1.  Start the day with protein.

Eating protein and good fats first thing is the ‘perfect’ breakfast to energise you and kickstart your metabolism and fat loss. Charles Poliquin’s meat and nuts breakfast has become quite famous simply because it is so effective at getting you lean as well as helping you to feel empowered, motivated, ‘on’ for the rest of the day.

2. When you lift, sweat.

Sometimes I’ll finish a weights session and not be sweating and a but dizzy. It’s pretty rare though. All too often I see women training at a ‘moderate’ intensity. Checking their phones or chatting between sets. Casting their eyes down when they catch sight of themselves in the mirror; still not happy with what they see. When you lift, you simply MUST be pulling out all the stops. This applies whether you’re doing high volume, high intensity, slow or faster tempos, small or large rest times.

Work. Your. Butt. Off.

Walk out knowing that you made every rep count every time. It’s all about the quality baby, never about how much time you spend in the gym.

3.  Speaking of which – you gotta lift.  

Look at your current exercise regime. 

If you’re going to the gym 4 days a week, at least 3 of those should be weights. If you’re going 3 days, at least 2 should be weights – even if it’s body weight strength movements when starting out. To be honest if it were me going 3 times a week, all 3 of those times would be weights.

Fact: lifting weights gives you the most bang for your buck. Is impossible to get ‘big’ from unless you’re also dosing steroids. Will make you lean, toned, firm. Sexy, confident, empowered. Click here to learn how to train for maximum fat loss and body sculpting results from home or the gym, in as little as 2 hours per week.

4.  Post-workout nutrition.

This is possibly the most important meal you eat all day. Maybe aside from breaky 🙂 Your muscles need almost immediate refueling after training or you will start to ‘eat’ muscle for energy. Which also results in holding onto or storing fat by the way. You simply must have an organic whey protein shake straight after training. Which means – STRAIGHT AFTER TRAINING. Like while you’re still in the gym! Add some glutamine and primal greens to it to aid recovery and bring down cortisol. Within the next 30-45 minutes you should also be eating a post workout meal. Protein, some greens, a little good fats. Carbs if you’re having them.

5.  Fruit.

I know.

It hurts.

But really – lots of fruit and fat loss do not mix. There are occasional exceptions. But if you’re consistently eating 2+ pieces of fruit per day, chances are you’d benefit from cutting it out. Just try it for a few weeks. But instead of focusing on what you can’t have, do this – commit to eating more quality protein every time you would normally eat fruit. See if you still need the fruit. If you must eat fruit, berries are the best choice. Low in sugar, high in phyto-nutrients.

6.  Shock.

You can’t eat the same day-in and day-out clean diet and never deviate from it and expect to get results. It will work for a time. But if you stay low-carb without ever having a break or a carb day, if you’re obsessed about every meal being perfect, you actually ramp DOWN certain metabolic hormones. You stop dropping fat. Your body holds on. One of the most important principles of fat loss on a clean eating diet is variety.

This is a key reason I give so many great options and meal ideas in my Look Great Naked Eating Plan (on sale till this Friday!).

This means, within the course of your week you should vary the clean foods you eat. Avoid always going for the same vegies and protein sources, the same fats. But it also means you need to shock your metabolism with higher carb days on occasion or at the very least with treat meals one or more times per week.

7.  Test. Assess. Measure.

This builds from the last point.

You can’t honestly claim anything about whether your current regime is working for you or not if you’re not testing, assessing, measuring. Ideally you will do this with a coach. But at the very least you need to learn to tune into your own body. Take some measurements. Note how you feel after eating certain foods, eating more or less or different combinations.

You are unique.

Get a coach to guide you, for sure. Everyone should have one. You’ve got enough in your life to focus on without having to also learn every little detail of nutrition and fat loss and figure out YOUR perfect mix. But in the end you still have to do the hard work. Which is paying attention, learning to trust in your gut and be able to ignore the constant and varied information-overload of how you ‘should’ eat or live.

8.  Deal with your STUFF.

I know you’ve got stuff. I’ve got stuff to do with fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, fear of how others will perceive me. I’ve got a background of a serious eating disorder which still haunts me on occasion, tells me it’s coming back for me. I’ve learned to deal with my stuff. I do this through almost daily journaling (an emotional purge) as well as through my writing for my blog or books and through working with my coaches on mindset, beliefs, getting rid of limiting behaviours or fears. If you don’t know where to start, simply start by journalling. You don’t have to know what to say. Words will come. Just commit to setting aside at least 15 minutes a day to detox your mind.

9.  Believe.

When all is said and done, I believe that changing your body and changing your life comes down to having a mindset of success and believing that it is possible for you.

This last point is pretty major.

If you can’t see even the slights possibility that you too could be ‘that girl’, that it could happen for you, then it is unlikely to just ‘happen’. If you know you need to work on your beliefs then consider working with me in one of my Fat Loss Strategy sessions, or working with your existing coach or practitioner on something similar. Fat loss is not all facts and figures you know and as mentioned in point #8 we do all have our stuff to deal with.

Bonus point #10! Take the confusion out of clean eating.

Struggling to get the body you want and just want to know once and for all how to eat right, effortlessly? My Look Great Naked Eating Plan will take the confusion out and show you exactly how to eat, what to eat and when to eat. It’s chock full of recipes, meal plans, tips and tricks and quite literally everything you need to know about making eating clean and getting lean work for you.

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