Stepping to the Bright Side: How to Eat Chocolate Cake

Greetings, lovies!

HOORAY for Friday :)

Mine started with breakfast:

plain greek yogurt, raspberries, chia seeds, coconut, pumpkin butter and TJ's High Fiber Cereal

So much fiber.

True "twig cereal"- love it.

And coffee from home- no weekly Starbucks for this girl.

To be honest, it was better than Starbucks, so THERE!

After class, I went to the gym for 30 minutes of cardio.

Post-gym snacks on the go:

Then I headed to Target where I took advantage of a pre-holiday bakeware sale. I went in needing only mixing bowls, and came out with:

for less than $70!!!

I'll take it.

All these goodies helped greatly in the recipe that lies ahead...

In nutrition class today we talked about achieving and maintaining a healthy weight.

If you're curious where you stand, you can check it out here.

A big part of this discussion had to do with BMR, short for basal metabolic rate- known to most of us lay people as our metabolism.

Specifically, BMR is defined as "the minimum level of energy required to sustain vital functions such as breathing, digestion and circulation."

What do you need in order to attain the energy that's required?

FOOD!

(Which is why any sort of deprivation diet you might put yourself on- Atkins, extreme calorie cutting, etc will be completely counterproductive to any weight loss goals you might have)

The fact is *you need to eat calories to burn calories*

Makes sense, right?

Food is essentially fuel for your body. When you deprive yourself of fuel, your body starts to freak out. Sure, you'll lose weight in the short term because your body is going into starvation mode- not a good place to be.

As soon as you start eating again, your system is overwhelmed by the whole process and, as a result, slows to a snail's pace. You end up burning calories at a much slower rate and storing more fat than you used to for fear of future bouts of starvation.

Your body is one smart cookie.

Moral of the story? Don't mess with your bod by neglecting to give it the fuel it needs to get through the day. If you do, it will go into survival mode and start storing up anything and everything you consume for fear of running (and eventually not running) on an empty tank.

How can you avoid the starvation problem and instead make your MBR soar like it never has before? Allowing you to eat to your heart's content and still keep the weight off?

Follow these tips!

Develop lean muscle. Muscle burns energy quickly! People with a decent amount of lean muscle are not only required to eat more to maintain their energy levels, but their muscle tissue burns tons of calories- even while the person is at rest.
EAT! Obviously we've been over this one but I'll say it again: Food is to your digestive system as the elliptical is to your endurance. Take a couple days off and you'll find that you can't do as much as you could for as long as you could a week ago. So keep your digestive tract constantly moving, working and in shape by eating smalls meals and snacks throughout the day!
Get aerobic exercise. Cardiovascular workouts that raise your heart rate not only release endorphins, but rev up your metabolism for hours after the workout's over.
Eat breakfast everyday. This is very important, folks. When you wake up, your body hasn't been working for a good 6-10 hours (depending on how much sleep you get). You need to kick it into gear at the start of the day, otherwise it'll be slow going if you try to crank it up around noon. Boil an egg, have a banana and cereal- anything! Just get it started.
DRINK WATER! It's like greasing the hinges on a squeaky door. To keep your system moving with ease, it needs some good old fashioned lubrication.

So get that metabolism going and indulge in something like THIS, completely guilt free: