Five tips to help you transform your body in winter
by Nicholas Gala
At Elite Body Contouring, we are strong advocates to a healthy lifestyle: a nutritious diet, and effective fitness training to get the maximum results for the body you want.
Although many of our clients come to us looking to reduce the stubborn fat that sits directly under the skin (called subcutaneous fat), maintaining a healthy & balanced lifestyle is the only way to shed the unseen (visceral) fat that lingers around the body’s organs.
So we asked our friend Nicholas Gala, Sydney Dietitian, High Performance Coach at NG | Performance +Dietetics & ANB Pro Athlete, to explain in a few simple steps how we can learn to get to or maintain our ideal body shape through winter.
Nicholas came up with these five easy-to-follow tips to help you transform, or maintain the ideal body shape through winter.
The right weight-based training techniques will help get you into shape.
Increasing training volume and shortening rest periods improve you progress.
1. Get Off The Treadmill
Stop wasting endless hours in the cardio section and focus more on weight-based training. Yes you heard me right, weight-based training.
Don’t worry girls, lifting weights isn’t going to get you looking masculine, it isn’t in your DNA (just ask Kim K). Focus on progressing your compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, chin ups and presses. Progression doesn’t necessarily mean lifting crazy amounts of weights, it can be as simple as:
- Increasing your training volume (the number of reps or sets),
- Slowing the tempo (the speed at which the exercise is performed),
- Shortening your rest periods, and most importantly;
- Having fun with it!
2. Eat, Don’t Starve
Hey, this isn’t a licence to eat everything and anything in sight, but it is important to know that our muscles don’t grow and adapt when in starvation mode. Period.
Fuel your body with mainly good sources of whole foods and reduce the amount of highly refined, packaged and fast-foods consumed.
Food shouldn’t be just about ‘looking good’, it is about being healthy.
Include whole protein sources in your diet
Eat good sources of low GI carbohydrates in your diet.
3. Include Protein
Include protein in your diet – at the right times. Research suggests that providing the body with smaller, more frequent doses of whole protein sources is ideal for muscle adaptations. I highly recommend getting your protein from whole foods first before turning to extremely refined or processed protein supplements.
For those tracking their protein intake, aim to consume approximately 1.8-2.2g of protein per kg of body weight split across 4-6 meals per day.
4. Carbs Are Your Friends
Carbohydrates have been given a bad wrap in the past, however good sources of carbohydrates such as quinoa, sweet potato and basmati rice provide us with the energy to get the most out of our training sessions (especially when lifting weights).
Eating a good source of low GI carbohydrates approximately 30-60 minutes before training can provide you with the sustained energy you need to dominate your workout.
My ‘go to’ pre-gym snack is 2 cups of garden salad with 100g of quinoa or sweet potato, a drizzle of olive oil, and 2-3 thin slices of avocado.
Nicholas won the title of ABN Pro Athlete in September 2018.
Consistency is the key to getting the best results.
5. Consistency
Yes, cliché but consistency is key. Building muscle doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient, form good eating habits, train harder and smarter, and the results will speak for themselves.
Want to learn more?
Contact Nicholas Gala through his professional Instagram account NG | Performance + Dietetics, or email him at galatoulas.nicholas@
