Get toned & ripped - Breakfast nutrition

How do you turn the body into a fat-burning machine? Start with exercise, sure - but if you are feeding the machine a bunch of crappy foods high in fats or just too many calories, you will never get ripped because the energy balance is all wrong.

As a PT, you should be spending lots of time talking to clients about eating habits, ask them to keep food diaries for a few days at a time to get an accurate idea of what they are consuming. Lots of people skip breakfast - leaving their metabolism stuck in the mud all morning. Others eat cereals filled with sugar or toast with big chunks of butter on top... Ouch.

Changing client eating habits is incredibly challenging - it takes more than talk. You need to support clients with any strategy that might help kick them along. Try taking pics of foods with a mobile phone & SMS them to clients - gently suggest they pick it up next time they are shopping.

So... what does a fat-burning machine eat for breakfast? We want something with carbs for energy, we want fibre for intestinal health, and we want something slow to digest - it needs to be low GI so it gives slow release energy and the client is not going to feel full for a few hours.

I highly recommend you simply eyeball some breakfast cereals and pick one with unprocessed whole grains. Many "whole grain" cereals are processed into flakes or shapes - pick a cereal which actually has the original grain in it's unprocessed form. Lots of muesli brands have whole grains but beware you need to read the label of your muesli and avoid the brands that are high in fat.

OK... Once you've picked your whole grain cereal, walk to the health food aisle and buy a packet of psyllium husk. This is an ultra-high fibre supplement with wide ranging health (and fat-loss) benefits, if you've never heard of it check out this link and start reading. Adding fibre to your breakfast "bulks up" the meal (you tend to eat less calories) and it also slows down digestion, which leaves you feeling fuller for longer after you eat.

It will take some hunting around to find a whole grain breakfast cereal that has everything you want, tastes OK and is also affordable. My experience tells me that many of them taste like cardboard and some can be very expensive so you will need to experiment yourself with different products and you can then give advice to clients based on your own experience & with confidence.

Once you've chosen your cereal, you can add a table spoon of psyllium husk to the mix. Beware psyllium can have a laxative effect so perhaps start with a small amount & gradually increase as your body gets used to this massive fibre dose at breakfast. Psyllium as linked to all sorts of health benefits so it's well worth a try, stick with it for a few weeks and see how it makes you feel.