This is probably the hardest part of any diet or fitness program. When you lose the focused, determined mindset and get back to regular living. I, of course, made it particularly hard for myself by going on holiday the minute I finished bootcamp. This meant that as well as all of the food and drink temptation, I also didn’t work out for 2 weeks! And I can definitely feel the difference. Now I’m home I’m back to the gym and yoga and trying to get on course again. No way am I going to let Bootcamp go to waste!
Here Fleur Borrelli (nutritionist) and Rhys Brooks (trainer) give us the rules to make maintaining weight loss and muscle gain possible.
Fleur – Glynis has worked incredibly hard over the past six weeks to get in shape, so what is the best way to maintain it? By following her Bootcamp regime (see previous Bootcamp articles) Glynis managed to maintain her metabolic rate and has also substantially increased her muscle tone. This will help her to keep burning fat once she moves on to a more lenient programme.
To maintain the lower fat mass the following things are crucial:
- Eat only two or three meals per day including plenty of high quality protein and lots of fresh vegetables.
- Be mindful of how you eat i.e. we can get away with more of a varied diet and some ‘healthy’ treats every now and then or a chilled glass of rose or two, BUT only if they are part of a meal.
- This brings us to the most important rule – No Snacking! Once snacks sneak in between meals then there is less opportunity for the body to shift fat and it’ll begin to store it instead. (Having done a DNA health test, Glynis is very aware of having a genetic susceptibility to weight gain around the middle and so doing regular exercise on an empty stomach will help prevent this from happening)
- Last but certainly not least is water – rather than sipping through the day it is important to keep water intake high when needed i.e. when thirsty. For every litre of water we lose from our cells, we gain one kilo of fat.
Rhys – In order for Glynis to maintain the great results from her bootcamp, I have recommended the following exercise program.
The program is a combination of heavy weighted multi-joint movements followed by an assortment of smaller isolated movements that focus on body areas where Glynis wishes to add shape. The program supersets all exercises (i.e. each different exercise is performed one after the other in a group with no rest between each one. After each group there is a 60 second rest and then the group of exercises is repeated another 2 times.) This creates a greater metabolic cost helping to maintain her body fat levels.
I have also added 20 minutes of treadmill and cross trainer work at the end of the weight session. This will help burn the triglycerides (fat) that would have been freed into the blood stream after the work out. With the right nutrition Glynis will be able to maintain or even improve her body shape further.
Exercises include:
- walking lunges
- squats
- hip thrusts
- dead lifts
- dumbbell chest press
- chin ups
- tricep dips
If you would like to try these exercises but aren’t sure what they are, any trainer at your gym will be able to show you.
Comments 2
Hi… Brilliant website and so informative.. Always look forward to Saturdays wherever in the world I am… Help:- maybe I’m not looking in right place but your ‘bootcamp’ articles..?? I try and go back to glean information as it’s not all in one place and it’s very time consuming.. Any suggestions on how to quickly access ‘bootcamp’ weekly articles… Many thanks Pam
Author
Oh no and I thought I’d made it easy! The Bootcamp articles are under Health! If you look under Articles and see all the choices you’ll find it. I think I might start a new heading “Diets”!