Drink 8-10 cups of water per day. Water helps to keep you feeling full, keeps your muscles hydrated, and also readily moves toxins through your body to be eliminated.

Eat within your calorie limit. This ensures that your body will not store the excess as body fat, because your specific metabolism, can and will, only burn a certain amount of calories. So if you consume more than your metabolism can burn off as energy, your body will store that excess as body fat.

Eat to nourish means to feed your body healthy whole foods so that it performs at its ultimate level. Healthy whole foods would be considered: Meats, chicken, fish, eggs, nuts, fruits and vegetables. You want to choose foods that are going to give you the most amount of nutrients, for the least amount of calories. You want to get “the biggest bang for your buck”, per se. For example, an egg vs. a slice of cheese: both contain 7 grams of protein, but an egg has only 55 calories vs. a slice of cheese has 100 calories. Another example would be romaine lettuce, as opposed to iceberg lettuce. They both do contain around the same 20 calories per cup, but romaine has many more nutrients than iceberg. Remember, you want to feed your body, not your mouth.

You do not want to choose foods that are considered empty calories. Such food choices are cakes, cookies, candies, etc. You do not want to choose supposed “fat free” foods. They all are very refined, processed, high in sugar and calories, but low in nutrients. I personally, also, consider pastas, potatoes, bread, rice and cereals to be in the “empty calories” category. They each have minute amounts of protein and nutrients, and the body breaks them down so quickly to sugar, that I try to avoid all of them.

Before consuming a certain food, ask yourself, “Am I feeding my fat, or am I feeding my muscles?” If you are feeding your fat, is it going to be worth it? The guilt (& empty calories) are going to be with you a lot longer than the pleasure.

We have only one body. Treat it like gold! Everyone takes care of their cars, houses, etc, etc. but does not take the best of care of their one and only body.

Eat every 3 hours to keep your metabolism turned on. When your body is digesting, absorbing, and processing the food, it is creating body heat, while doing work and burning more calories.

If you have to, set a timer for every 3 hours. If you are home, maybe set the timer on the microwave to remind you that you need to eat again, but don’t snack in between. Wait your 3 hours.

Eat 5 – 6 small meals per day so that steady flows of nutrients are always feeding your muscles, and the rest of your body. Also, when you consume small meals, your body can utilize all the nutrients and burn off the small amount of calories you have just provided, as opposed to 3 larger meals, where your body can not possibly burn off all of the calories that you have just supplied at that sitting. So, any excess of those three large meals will be stored away.

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Do not skip any meals, especially breakfast. While you are sleeping, your body slows down all metabolic processes. You want to turn back “on” your metabolism. You want to tell your body that you are awake, and to start running that engine (metabolism) and burning at an efficient rate.

If you skip other meals, your body actually, slows back down your metabolism, as a survival mechanism. Your body protects you from harm. If it is detects that nutrients are not being consumed on a regular basis, the body thinks that you might be stranded somewhere without nourishment, and it will slow down the metabolism for survival.

Your body will also hoard your body fat, as a survival mechanism. Remember, when you are restricting or skipping meals, for fuel, your body will first tap into your glycogen (sugar) stores, in your muscles, then it will start tearing down your muscles into amino acids, and it will actually, preserve your body fat. Because your body knows that when your body fat is gone, you are gone. So, if you skip meals, you are not burning fat; you are burning off lean muscle tissue.

Eat according to the next 3 hours activities. This means if you are going to consume some complex carbohydrates, eat them earlier in the day so that your body has more time to burn them off. Also, do not eat heavy meals or excess calories before resting or going to bed. You want to have time to burn off any calories that you have consumed. You do not want to store any body fat.

Feed your muscles protein every 3 hours. Being that the more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism, we do not want to lose any precious muscle, whatsoever. Everyone does have lean muscle tissue, whether they work out or not, and we want to preserve that lean muscle tissue, that we do have. Consuming protein every couple of hours spares your lean muscle tissue. Because if you do not supply your body with enough protein, your body will actually tear down your lean muscle tissue into amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) for other needed building and repairing processes in the body. The body needs amino acids. So, if you do not supply these needed amino acids, by way of protein, often enough, your body will get them itself, from your precious muscles.

All meats, fish, chicken, cheeses, eggs, nuts, and peanut butter, etc supply protein. It can also be supplied to the body by supplementing your diet with STARBODIES Whey to MUSCLE Protein Shakes. You just mix 2 scoops of STARBODIES Whey with water (& flax seed oil), and you’ve consumed a whopping 44 grams of needed protein.

With everyone’s busy schedules, often it is very difficult to get the needed amount of protein that our bodies require. For instance, say your protein requirements, to build more lean muscle mass, equaled 150 grams of protein. That would equal 30 grams of protein per meal, times five meals. With food alone, that amount of protein would be very difficult to consume. An ounce of turkey, or any meat, has 7 grams of protein. So you would have to eat about 4.5 ounces of turkey with each and every meal, to meet your protein requirements. But you would probably exceed your calorie requirements by consuming such a high food intake.

STARBODIES Whey to MUSCLE Protein Shakes make it so easy to meet your protein needs and still stay within your calorie requirements. Each shake supplies you with 44grams of protein per serving, 200 calories, and only 2 carbs. Just mix with water and drink. It’s as easy as that!

I always start each day with a STARBODIES Whey to MUSCLE Protein Shake and a tablespoon of flax seed oil mixed in my blender. That way, I get my flax seed oil in for the day, as well as having my protein for breakfast. Then, throughout the day, I choose quality lean proteins for my meals, and supplement my diet with one other STARBODIES Protein Shake.

I can’t say enough about meeting your protein requirements to feed those fabulous muscles.

Starve your body fat by not consuming simple carbohydrates. When simple carbohydrates are consumed, the body breaks them down very simply and easily to glucose (sugar). Then the blood sugar rises, which triggers the hormone, insulin, to be released to take up the excess sugar in the bloodstream. The body has to do something with this excess, so it stores it as body fat.

Being that there are only three fuel choices for the body to choose from; carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, if you do not supply your body with any simple carbohydrates, it will then use proteins to build and repair, and the fat for the energy. When the body breaks down and uses body fat for energy, this is called ketosis.

Add fiber supplementation to your diet. Fiber helps to regulate your blood sugar and insulin levels. Fiber is not digested or metabolized by the body, so when it is combined with a food that is more of a simple carbohydrate, it helps keep your blood sugar stable longer, so the body will use that food for energy, rather than store it as fat. Again, remember, this simple carb will break down to sugar very simply in the body…..blood sugar will rise……. insulin will be released to take up the sugar, and………store it away!

I personally, carry fiber tablets in a little vitamin box in my purse. This way if I ever am (on occasion) going to be faced with a “cheat food,” or simple carbohydrate, I will then be prepared to take a fiber tablet, in conjunction with the simple carbohydrate. This is to combine the simple carb, with fiber, to make it more of a complex carbohydrate. I do not want my blood sugar to rise.

Do resistance (weight) training to gain lean muscle tissue. This is where the “Use It or Lose It Principle” comes in. Atrophy is the loss of muscle tissue from disuse. If your muscles are not stimulated with some type of resistance training, you will lose them.

Hypertrophy is the increase in muscle size resulting from resistance (weight) training. The muscles grow to adapt to the stresses (weight training) that you put them under.

Remember we want lean muscle mass because, muscle = metabolism.

Do interval cardiovascular training, which are short explosive bursts of energy. Such training is alternated between high and low intervals, for short periods of time. Quick explosive training, like sprinting, recruits more muscle fibers to help your muscles adapt to the stresses that they are under, which in turn, helps them grow. Whereas, endurance, long distance training, tears down (and wastes) your lean muscle tissue, for your energy supply, to complete the enduring cardiovascular exercise.

Enduring that long distance cardio training seems very counterproductive if it wastes lean muscle tissue, when we are working very hard by weight training, to build lean muscle tissue, to raise our metabolism!