Are you undereating?

As I observe and work with many people who are eagerly trying to lose weight, I am amazed to find out that when it comes to nutrition, many of them are undereating rather than overeating. Ironically, due to the nature of the metabolic process that allows a human body to burn fat, undereating will hurt your chances of losing weight just as much as overeating.

The reality is that you need fuel to burn fuel! If you are determined to lose weight and you exercise intensely and regularly, your body will not give you the results you want if you are trying to "pull through" the whole day on cereal and a couple of protein bars. It's especially when you exercise, you body craves those essential vitamins and nutrients that will allow it to speed up the metabolism and accelerate the fat burning process during the work-outs and at any other time throughout the day.

Therefore, you must eat an adequate, recommended amount of all the essential vitamins and nutrients every day in order to support your body's needs for energy and in order to maintain high metabolism which is the main catalyst of burning fat. You can easily find the commended daily calorie intake, considering your height, weight, age and body size on the internet and you should follow that recommendation by eating equal or greater amount of food as your exercise routines become longer and / or more intense.

Fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins must be part of your daily diet. You must never find yourself in a position of starving and feeling that you are depriving yourself of food when you being an intense, daily exercise regimen.

The worst thing a person who wants to lose weight can do is skip breakfast and not eat anything until noon or later, like so many people unfortunately do. If I could compare it to operating a car, this kind of start of the day will put your body into "slow rpm" mode - where it will go into starvation mode, so that when you finally feed when, while being extremely hungry, the food will not be processed properly and the body, anticipating that it will be starved again, will attempt to store that energy as fat in the body instead of using it, as it would have, if you ate in the morning one or more small meals before afternoon, and kept your body's metabolism up the whole time.

Undereating will not only slow down your metabolism, but it will also significantly hamper your body's ability to recover form workouts. That in turn, will slow you down and will prevent you from exercising as hard as you want and need in order to achieve your weight loss goals.

So, give your body all the nutritional elements it needs to burn fat, build muslce and feel energized and ready for exercise and other daily tasks.