Feel Good Personal Training - Front and back loading diets

Feel Good Personal Training

Nutritional Tip – Front and back loading diets 

Many studies have shown that front loading your diet is the most affective way of loosing weight, toning and building lean muscle. This means having the majority of your calories at the start of the day. Back loading is when you have the majority of your calories in the evening. Front load by making sure that breakfast is your largest meal. Although it’s important to make sure that this is balanced with a small evening meal. Research demonstrated that a high-calorie breakfast showed an increase in healthy eating compliance and is more beneficial than high-calorie dinner for weight loss, insulin sensitivity, and hunger suppression. Particularly in morning meals that are high fiber and protein.

This is for a few reasons; firstly, eating first thing gets your metabolism working. If you deprive it first thing, the body’s metabolism will often slow down to compensate for the lack of energy. When you then come to eat later on, you are less likely to burn the fuel off and will more likely to store it as body fat.

Secondly, we don’t require a large amount of fuel before bed. If we have a large meal and then aren’t active after, that energy will be taken and stored away as fat. If we are active afterwards, research has shown that our insulin levels (which are responsible for storing energy in the form of fat) stay low, which promotes weight loss.

And thirdly, as we have planned are morning meal we are less likely to make a poor rushed meal decisions early morning or lunch time. 

The NHS recommends for the average female and male to have a calorie intake per day of 2,000 for females and 2,500 for males. If your calorie intake in the morning is low because you’ve skipped breakfast or have a small bite it means you have no possible way of front-loading your diet and therefore are loosing out on all the positive affects of front loading and getting all the negative affects of back loading. I would recommend trying to increase your calorie intake at breakfast to be one roughly third of your daily calorie intake. If you split your recommended daily calorie intake to the following it would be brilliant for toning and health benefits.

Females: Breakfast - 750, Snack - 150, Lunch - 500, Snack - 150, Tea – 450

Males: Breakfast - 850, Snack - 250, Lunch - 600, Snack - 250, Tea – 550

Here are some grab and go breakfast ideas

A veggie omelette and a piece of whole-wheat toast

A whole-wheat English muffin with low-fat cheese, a scrambled egg, and slice of tomato

Smoothie made with fruit and low-fat yogurt

Salmon on 1/2 whole-grain bagel with light cream cheese

Whole-grain cereal with fresh fruit and low-fat milk

Oatmeal made with skim milk, raisins and nuts, with 4 ounces of orange juice

Low-fat yogurt and a piece of fresh fruit

Yogurt Smoothie and breakfast bar

Hard-boiled egg and a banana

Hope you find this information interesting and helpful. For more information about one to one personal training sessions or online training programmes please get in touch. 

www.feelgoodpt.co.uk