One of my clients, who is also a good friend told me after my competition, "Girl friend, I'm ready to commit to my diet, tell me what I can eat and how much, help me out, I'm doing it this time!"   I'm not going to name her unless she says to, but she had a T in her name.  I have trained her for a few years.  She has one of the cutest figures of any of my clients ever.  You know who you are now.  Any way, she has a high standard, and she wants her lower body to be firm and tight, and she wants to get compliments for her genetically awesome arms like she used her her whole life and doesn't feel like she does anymore.  In other words, she'd like to look about 15 pounds, I figure, to look like she wants to look. So, girl friend, here you go!  Here's the scoop.  There are some "must do's."  1. You must measure and write down EVERYTHING that goes into your mouth that has calories!  Period. You don't estimate.  Weigh it if it's meat, pasta or potatoes, measure with a cup if it's rice.  Don't bother to measure salad, veggies, peppers, onions, stuff like that.  If you have a busy day like most people, measure several meals at once and put them in individual little containers to eat throughout the day as indicated in #2.  I KNOW! This is a lot of trouble.  I suppose if you would pay me enough, I would be willing to do this for you.  In these tough economic times, I have considered offering prepackaged meals to my clients, among other ideas.  Business gets slow in the summer.  2. You MUST eat every three hours!  Period!  You want to use your body fat as fuel, you MUST keep the fire burning.  This is so important.  You have the power to either make your body a fat burning machine or a fat storing machine.  Like our federal government, the more you give your body, the more it will spend.  3.  You have to operate your body on a deficit.  Again, like the government.  If you eat properly, the right things every three hours, you turn up the metabolism.  A high metabolism burns more calories, obviously, but if you eat often but SMALL amounts, it needs more fuel than it gets, so like the government, it will confiscate calories from your body.  Much like the middle class, your fat cells are the most vulnerable to be spent , so presto!  You lose body fat!  It really is this simple.  This is the most predictable way to lose body fat.  For you scientific or ma thematic minded people, there is a formula.  3500 calories equals a pound of body fat.  So deprive your body of 3500 calories per week, and you will lose a pound of body fat.  that is a 500 calorie per day deficit.  You can figure out how many calories you burn per day by using our handy BMR calculator, found on our diet page.  Get your BMR, subtract 500 calories, eat this amount.   4.  Eat plenty of PROTEIN!  This is what makes the body strong and beautiful.  You do NOT want to burn this for fuel, unless you want a soft, "skinny fat body"  with the same body fat percentage as your current fatter body that you don't like  The muscle cells are like the rich people.  The more you do for them, by giving them the protein they crave, the more they can stimulate the fat burning  machine which works to put the fat cells to work fueling your body.  5.  Work out!  Do some resistance training every day.  You need no equipment for this.  Use your body.  Do lunges, push ups, and sit ups EVERY DAY!  If you have only one piece of equipment, make it a chin up bar.  You think you can't do chin ups?  Yes, you can!  Maybe not perfect ones at first.  Cheat!  Kick your legs and use them to propel you.  As you get stronger, instead of increasing reps, do better and better chin ups, deeper push ups.  You can take one day off, but why?   If you are sick or injured, and need to rest, that is an excuse.  Get better soon so you can exercise as soon as possible.  6. Cardio!  Do SOMETHING every day.  Get off your ass and move.  There are various opinions on the importance of this step.  I will tell you my opinion is, it is not an absolute like 1 through 5 above.  HOWEVER, it will get you there MUCH FASTER!!   I rarely have anyone ask me the SLOWEST way possible to lose fat.  You want a hot body, and you want it NOW!  I know!!  Me too! 
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