Beyond the dark tans and shiny smiles of the competitors, they offer great insight on health and fitness. The tips and tricks fitness competitors learn while they compete are not exclusively there’s alone. People like you and I can easily apply a few of their pointers to improve the quality of our health and fitness lifestyle. There are many different types of fitness competitions, such as body building, bikini, and natural competition categories.
Competitors spend months and months going to the gym at a frequent and regular basis. They are stringent with their diets because each morsel of food they consume can affect the result of their competition. It can mean winning or losing the competition.
Diet First
As much as we’d like to believe we can outrun a bad diet on the treadmill or just sweat the bad foods away – it doesn’t work like that. Only in a perfect world would diet come second, unfortunately that’s not the case. According to top fitness competitors, diet is always number one. You should manipulate your diet slowly and gradually first – abrupt change can take a body for a left turn.
- Get rid of the junk food, work on eliminating junk from your diet
- Limit cheat meals, one day per week to be exact
- Track your calories, protein, carbs, and fat – yes track all of it
- Reduce your sugar intake to only natural sources such as fruits , this rules out sweets like pastries and candies
- Aim for 35 grams of fiber per day – increase the amount of grams gradually if you are currently drastically under this number
- Protein rule of thumb: 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight
Your individual body type makes the amount of carbs unique to you. Each person has a unique body type. If you are sensitive to carbs and have a tendency to store fat easily you may want to keep grams of carbs as 1 for each pound of body weight.
Your weight and energy level should be the judge of what to tweak and alter in your diet.
