Fitness Figure Competitions - Dieting Foods For Fat Loss

During the lean down process you will hear all sorts of things which work or don’t work for others but there will always be those who do different, nothing is right or wrong, just relative to the person. In general, competitors will omit dairy, fruit, processed foods and most grainy carbs excluding oats, brown rice, quinoa and a select few. Wheat is almost always omitted. Those who omit these do so because it causes them to swell or bloat taking away from tone and making them look ‘soft’ instead. In many cases these omissions begin up to 6 months out depending on your body at that time and how much work you have to go. The degree of omission or taper is individual again!

Plan to eat every 2-3 hours, know where you can get food when on the run or have a back up cooler with items ready to go when you have to eat in a hurry or on the road. Pre cooked chicken, tuna cans with opener, broccoli and the like would all be great considerations for your cooler. A shaker cup and protein powder is the minimal to carry around, this way you can get water and have a protein drink if all else fails. You really do not want to EVER miss a meal, this goes against you! Fitness is best achieved when the body is at a positive nitrogen balance and having protein every 2-3 hours promote this avoiding catabolism. Plain, raw almonds are a great item to keep on hand for munching but just make sure you carry ½ cup or less so that you do not have too many to finish off or then you may end up eating too much fat, good fat or not! Overdoing anything is not good but balance is hard with so much restriction! The higher protein intake also helps with limiting hunger and cravings.

Water is important and you want to take in no less than 2 liters per day especially if you take supplements. I find that I tend to only drink water during contest prep because this way I can try for a 2-3 liters per day and am not full form other non nutrient dense liquids which may contain caffeine which strips you of nutrients, sugars and bad sweeteners. Filling up on coffee or pop is useless, although it is a weakness of mine and many of you! Some like to cut water for lean down, I do not suggest you cut to low if you do it at all but starting with a plan way ahead of time will most likely mean you do not need to resort to any drastic water cutting and may even be able to keep up with minimal fruits up to contest.

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By Linda Cusmano