Chipotle! So Good, but Healthy Too?

It's highly unlikely that you haven't fallen into the Chipotle bandwagon yourself or at least heard of it
anyways. I think this place is delicious and I eat there at least 2 times a week! Question is though, is it healthy? You can see all the signs inside the restaurant saying things like "naturally raised chicken, beef, pork... No anti biotics... no rBGH... Grass fed beef" and so on... So in that aspect of things, sure it is good quality food, it's made fresh, and brought up clean, so I'd say it is "healthy" for you. What about when we talk about dieting though, is it still considered healthy? The answer is yes and no; just because something is healthy doesn't mean that you can't still get fat off of it, and with a lot of the ingredients chipotle offers you have to weary of that. I put a link straight from the Chipotle website, it's a nutritional calculator which will tell you exactly all the nutrients and calories in whatever you get!

Just a couple of tips...
- Always go with the bowl, as the tortilla has 9grams of fat and a ton of sodium!
- Go with chicken as it has the least amount of fat and sodium compared to the other meats they offer.
- Try and hold off on the cheese and sour cream (this one is hard), if you have to get it, get one or the other not both; as they both combined have 18.5grams of fat!
- If you're going low carb, cut down on the beans and rice.


http://www.chipotle.com/en-us/menu/nutrition_calculator/nutrition_calculator.aspx

The Ultimate Fat-Burning, Butt-busting, Belly Toning Secret!

Are you looking to lose pounds of body fat, lose inches off your belly and waist, and get a nice, sexy, beach-ready body? Here’s the secret…. There is no secret!

The #1 absolute key to losing weight and looking great simply put is hard work! You may be working hard and busting your ass in the gym, but that is only part of the equation, the major part of the solution is DIET, DIET, and DIET. The only thing that you need to know to lose weight is that you must expend more calories than you consume. Your body needs calories or in other words, energy from food, just to function and perform at optimal levels; these functions include but are not limited to, heart function, brain function, digestive function and more, even breathing requires calories. The average human body needs anywhere from 1500-2000 calories a day just for maintenance, and it gets this energy from either food or stored energy in the body.  This stored energy can come in the form of fat, glycogen, muscle proteins, or a mixture of all three.

When losing weight the proper way to go about it is to target and reduce mainly body fat, this way you’ll look good, feel good, and be healthier. Though if you eat too little, starve yourself, and/or workout too hard you can actually keep your body from burning mainly fat and instead it will target muscle proteins and glycogen; you’ll still be losing weight but mainly skeletal muscle and you could end up looking what’s called “skinny-fat”.

The proper and safe way to go about losing the weight is to aim for a loss of 1-2 pounds each week (a little more if you’re on the obese side of things, and a little less if you’re already fairly lean). A pound of fat consists of approximately 3500 calories, so in order to lose one pound of fat a week you’d need to be in a calorie deficit of 500 calories a day for 7 days, make sense? 500Calories x 7Days = 3500Calories, so if you’d want to drop 2 pounds every week you’d need to be in a calorie deficit of 1000 calories per day to add up to 7000 calories (and no more) or 2 pounds of that lovely fat by the end of the week. This is the best approach to attacking weight/fat-loss for average to overweight individuals; it’s safe, effective, you’ll be able to function at almost 100%, and you’ll lose little to no muscle at all if you follow this route. If you get impatient, if you go too hard into diet mode, if you spend excessive time in the gym killing yourself doing cardio, you’re not going to get 100% of the results you want, you’ll feel like crap, you’ll drop a lot of strength and muscle, you’ll most likely plateau at some point and stop dropping the pounds and possibly even reverse weight loss.

In the next articles to come I’ll continue to go more in depth about these details, certain diets, why they work/don’t, and for a lot of you ladies out there I’ll talk about why it’s important to have and spare muscle because you’ll actually burn more calories with it!

                                                                    

Why You’re Not Losing Weight

Are you putting in all of the hard work but not seeing the pounds come off? Whether you just started dieting and exercising to get healthier or you’ve been dieting for a while and the progress has slowed to a stop; here are several possible scenarios:

1) You’re eating too little…  A lot of people today don’t realize that they actually don’t eat that much,

" Eat 4-6 Smaller
 Meals a day"

and what they do eat is usually crap. It’s understandable, it’s a busy world today, some people work 2 jobs, some people have kids, school, and so on; a lot of the time it’s hard to get a decent meal in, or exercise for that matter, and many just opt out for fast-food or something similarly unhealthy. So what happens when you have a primarily sedentary lifestyle (sitting in an office all day, minimal movement, watching TV), and consume little calories, and from poor sources (processed foods, foods high in fat, fast food etc.), overtime the body’s metabolism will slow down to accommodate the lack of energy (calories). So when a person in this scenario decides to start dieting, eating fewer calories to lose weight, they don’t realize that they’re only making the situation worse by slowing the metabolism more. Eventually the body can go into starvation mode and virtually store and hold all the food you eat, stopping you from losing weight, and possibly even causing weight gain.

The solution is to roughly track your calories for a week or so; and if you’re eating fewer than 1,000-1,500 calories a day depending on your size, weight, and so on you could be putting your metabolism in danger of slowing down severely. What you need to do is spike your metabolism and get it going again, think of it as kind of like jumping a car when the battery goes out. To do so you need to gradually up your calorie intake, and try to make the source as healthy and “clean” as possible. Another way to help up your metabolism and keep it elevated is to eat 4-6 smaller meals a day anywhere from 400-600 calories a piece, rather than the conventional 3-meal breakfast, lunch, and dinner routine. This coupled with anywhere from low to high intensity exercise which gets the heart rate going faster, will in turn get your metabolism churning again and burning more calories allowing your body to start shedding some pounds! There are also special “fat-burning foods” and meals out there that are good for upping the metabolism and getting you to burn more calories but I’ll get into that another time.

Fruits are great... In
Moderation

2) You’re eating too much… Yeah no kidding captain obvious some of you may say, but today there is so much bull poop surrounding weight-loss. A magic pill or herb comes out every other week claiming to be the key to burning fat and losing weight, or people think that they can’t lose weight because they have some disease or disorder that they heard about on Dr. Philoproz, and so on. Now for some they may have a genetic disorder or disease that makes them gain weight and keep it, but I highly doubt that it’s everyone having trouble to lose weight; simply put you’re eating too much! The mistake that many make is not considering what they DRINK has calories as well. A 12oz. can of soda has around 140 calories as well as 40 grams of sugar and caffeine too, which will only make you feel more hungry; the same with juice. Alcohol as well holds many calories and it can also suppress the oxidation of fat (use of fat for fuel), it can mess with your hormones, and it can stimulate your appetite making you feel more hungry. So when you’re at dinner and you have a couple of glasses of wine you’re probably going to be inclined to eat more of your food. Another biggie is snacking, you may not realize just how many extra calories you’re building up every day by snacking; and also you need to remember that fat has more calories per gram, 9, while proteins and carbs only have 4 calories per gram. So if you eat or snack on foods with high fat content you’re going to be getting in more calories.

The Solution… Cut back a lot if not completely on all flavored drinks, and replace them with water, try to minimize if not cut off snacking especially if it’s crap food, evenly spread out and distribute your meals into 4-6 meals a day at 400-600 calories per meal. Track your progress, weigh yourself every morning upon waking and take the average every 7 days to determine if you’re losing weight. Remember no more than 1-3 pounds a week otherwise you could end up in something similar to scenario 1 up above. If you’re still not losing weight then continue to gradually reduce your calorie intake and or up your exercise intensity. Just remember one thing folks, nothing happens overnight, you have to be patient, I promise you if you take your time and do it the right way you’ll be way better off and looking better in the long run! These two reasons are the biggies when it comes to weight loss, but there are many smaller variables that can affect it as well such as lack of sleep, stress, and so on, which I’ll get into soon – stay tuned!