11 BEST Health Tips to maximize your results

Seth Thurston Fitness Expert and Owner of Thurston Personal Training Explains.

Eating healthy and nutritious foods throughout the day gives your body consistent energy that it needs to stay alert, maintain proper vitamin/mineral balance, and build and preserve muscle mass. It’s imperative that you stay hydrated by drinking at least a gallon of water per day to be able to maximize your exercise performance and recovery.

Here are some recommendations to help you understand how to maintain a healthy lifestyle and maximize your results in the gym.

1. Eat 4-6 Times Per Day

   Do you really have to eat that frequently? Depends on the results you want. If your goal is to burn fat and feed lead muscle tissue for a defined, toned look, yes. If your goal is to lose pounds on scale but lose lean muscle tissues for the Skinny Fat look, well, maybe, not.

2. Eat a Protein Source With Each Meal

   Not only does protein feed lean muscle tissue but also it slows the absorption of carbohydrates allowing your body to use the carbohydrates as a steady source of fuel as opposed to storing it as fat. This is why protein shakes have become so popular for every lifestyle.

3. Resist to Urge To Do Just Cardio

   Want real results? You must resistance train, yep this means hitting the weights. Stimulating muscle tissue is necessary to achieve the toned look. Women, don’t worry, you will not become bulky by lifting weights. You will actually look much leaner and fitter as added lean muscle tissue increase your metabolic rate allowing you to burn fat quicker than cardio alone.

4. Do Cardio Following Your Weight Training

   The purpose of cardio is to burn fat as well as cardiovascular health. When carbohydrates are available in the muscle and liver in the form of glycogen, the body will utilize it as the main source of energy. During weight training exercises, you deplete glycogen stores. When your body is in a depleted glycogen state, you will utilize fat as the major source of energy thus making your cardio session more efficient at cutting fat following weight training. No, this doesn’t mean you should eliminate all carbs. One overlooked aspect of cardio is that you speed up your metabolism for a period of two hours after cardio is completed. So it’s not the calories burned during cardio but the additional calories burn over the course of the next two hours that maximize fat burning.

5. Recovery is Crucial to Achieve Results

   After weight training and long endurance activities, a post-workout cocktail is the key to stimulate muscle recovery and restore energy stores. The two hours post workout is what is called your anabolic window. The nutrients your body needs to grow and recovery are required within this window to optimize the workout, and do you really want to workout for an hour or longer and not optimize that effort? The body needs a fast acting protein to rebuild muscle tissue that is broke down during training. It needs carbohydrates to replenish muscle and liver glycogen. Failure to take in carbs will require your body to utilize the protein for energy instead of recovery or growth. Glutamine to enhance immunization support and muscle recovery is also recommended. Lastly vitamins to neutralize the free radicals that builds during training are great post workout. All of these can be combined in one post workout shake.

6. Healthy Fats Help Burn Fat

   Taking in healthy fats, not only help lower cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and triglyceride levels but also help promote fat loss. You diet should include walnuts, fish, flax oil, olive oil, almonds, avocados, and macadamia nut oil. If you are not taking in these types of food on a regular basis consider taking supplement forms of fish oil and flax oil.

7. Keep Carbohydrates to Whole Grains, Vegetables, and Whole Fruit

   To keep it real simple, never eat a carb without a protein and avoid the three diet busters - White, Enriched, and Sugar, Read the label, if it contains anything enriched, is white in color or has more that 20% of carbs from sugar in should be out of your diet. White bread, white rice, white potatoes are not recommended. Look for 100% whole gains in your bread and pasta; choose brown rice, whose yams over white potatoes. Avoid fruit juice and choose whole fruit instead. Fruit such as berries, apples, oranges, and pears are great during morning hours, try to avoid in afternoon and evening hour and go-slow and bananas and grapes as they contain high amounts of sugar and lower fiber.

8. Get Plenty of Fiber

   One of the most overlooked aspects of our diets is fiber content. You should get 20-30 grams of fiber each day. If you do not get this through your diet, look to supplement.. Fiber is crucial to maintain good intestinal health and to absorb nutrients properly.

9. Electrolytes and Water

   Electrolytes are electrically charged minerals in you blood and other body fluids that impact your level of hydration( amount of water in your body), pH levels of your blood, and muscle function. Electrolytes are important because they help carry electrical impulses (nerve impulses, muscle contractions) throughout the body. Heavy exercise can cause you to lose electrolytes through sweating, particularly sodium and potassium. If these electrolytes are not replaced, their concentrations in your body fluids will not remain constant and therefore will impact muscle and nerve functioning.

Water is an integral component of nutritional health and is required by the body to maintain normal functioning. Almost two-thirds of the human body is composed of water: 85% of the brain is water, 75% of muscle tissue is composed of water, 83% of blood is water, and 22% of bones are water.  It aids in brain function, flushes toxins and waste products out of the body, and carries nutrients to cells. Water also aids with regulating body temperature, transmission of electrical impulses across nerve endings, and digestion.  

10. Sleep

    Getting adequate sleep is a crucial aspect of a healthy lifestyle, and can benefit your heart, mind, weight, and much more! Studies have shown that getting at least 8 hours of sleep per night drastically improves your athletic performance and stamina, as well as decreases daytime fatigue and sleepiness. In addition, when trying to build muscle the majority of recovery and growth happens during your sleep, more specifically REM sleep.

11. Set Realistic Goals

    A good approach is to aim for 1% BF loss per week and understand that plateaus will occur. Your body has a weight set point and when you reach that point, the body will not give up more fat easily. When a plateau happens, continue your program, your body will eventually give in and reset your weight set point but not if you give up. Understand that not all meal plans work for everyone. Some individuals process carbs more easily than others while some work well with higher fats.

Seth Thurston offers professional fitness and rehabilitation training in Arizona for individuals, groups, boot camps and organizations.

At Thurston Personal Training Phoenix Arizona, we offer Men’s fitness program, women’s fitness program, complete body makeover fitness training, Competitive fitness training, Athletic training, Nutritional coaching plus many more services. For more information, speak to our qualified personal trainers who are fully dedicated to help you achieve your fitness goals.

At Thurston Personal Training, we care about your fitness results and work hard to help you achieve that. Call Us at: (623) 980-3485