Back up your training with the right kind of fuel

Behind every layer of fat there are toned muscles trying to get out, and if you’re not eating the tight king of food to underpin your fitness programme, then a lot of your effort will go unnoticed- particularly around your belly. You need to realise that training is not restricted to the gym and the bike, but continues when you get home and open your fridge. The first thing you need to do is look at your fat intake, especially if your local curry house sends you a Christmas card every year.
It’s recommended that out daily intake of fat should be restricted to 90g. If you’re trying to lose weight you should be looking to halving this.
Within the 90g guideline we should have no more than 31g of saturated fats. These are the ones that are solid room temperature, e.g. butter, or the fat round a pork chop.
Saturated fats will not only add to the size of your waistline but will also raise your cholesterol level. There’s fat in just about everything you eat. But you can’t live your life without it. So just try to look for daily opportunities to cut it out of your diet and incorporate some of the following strategies when buying cooking or eating food.


· Whenever you can, grill, bake, poach, boil or steam as an alternative to frying. If you have no choice when make sure you use a non-stick pan to cut down on the added fat. If you’re frying an egg, for example, you only have to add a drop of oil to a heated non-stick pan, and then roll it around. Even better to ditch your bottle of cooking oil and buy a low-fat spray. The most careful pouring of oil will add around 15g of the fat to the meal, a spray will add only 1g per shot.

· Go easy when you’re applying butter or margarine to toast. You can either spread it thinly or use none at all under beans or jam; you’ll hardly notice the difference.

· Always look for the leanest cuts of meat, but be aware that every lean cut will require some trimming to get rid of all the fat. The best way to do this is to place the cut in the freezer for half an hour first. You’ll find that all the fat will turn white, making it easier for you to identify and cut off.

· Use love-fat mayonnaise wherever possible.

· Use skimmed milk for cooking, especially sauces that call for large amounts of milk, cream and butter. Dishes made from skimmed of semi-skimmed milk aren’t that much different from those made from whole milk. Substitute a cup of skimmed milk for a cup of cream and you’re cutting 60 calories out of the recipe straight away/ Alternatively, you can use low-fat yogurt or fromage frais.

· Make salad dressings from natural yogurt, herbs, spices, tomato juice, vinegar or lemon juice.

· Buy skinless chicken or turkey. About half the fat you’ll find in poultry is either in or directly under the skin.

· Dry fry mincemeat, and pour off the fat as it melts.

· Use half-fat hard cheese, cottage cheese or, if you have to, very small portions of stronger flavoured full-fat cheese.

· Eat more beans and less meat and you’ll get all the protein you need a lot less far.

· When you buy canned tune buy it packed in brine of water instead of oil, which adds a significant amount of fat to the meat.

· Substitute those mid-afternoon high-fat snacks like crisps or chocolates for a carbohydrate rich, low-fat fruit bun or scone.

· Turn yourself into a compulsive label reader when you’re in the supermarket; it’s the only way to be completely sure that you’re cutting back on fat. To qualify as low-fat the meal must contain less than 5g of fat per 100g, so if you see something marked ‘light’, ’lite’, ’reduced fat’, or ‘lower-fat’ don’t sling it in your basket automatically. Products labelled like this only have to have 25 per cent less fat than normal.

· Get into the habit of placing a couple of dishes of vegetables on the table for every meal and always be within reach of a bowl of fruit. This gives you even less of an excuse to fill up on fatty foods – and for every bite of vegetables or fresh fruits there’s less room for steak-and-kidney pie or cheesecake.


Of course you’re not always going to be in a position to dictate what you eat and how it’s cooked, but I still have a few tricks that mean I can have a night out without piling on loads of weight.

At the cinema: Don’t have salted popcorn, there’s about 45g of fat in a 100g serving. Sweet popcorn isn’t much better with 20g of fat per 100g. Have wine gums or fruit pastilles instead, which contain only a trace of fat.

At the restaurant: Have your vegetable without butter, and coffee with milk and not cream. There two insignificant changes will knock 20g of fat off your meal’s total.

At the curry house: Swap your beef kheema and naan for chicken tikka and rice. You’ll save at least 70g of fat.

At the pizza place: Skip the garlic bread and save yourself the equivalent of at least a tablespoon of butter, then blot the top of your pizza with a paper serviette before you eat it to save around 4.5g of fat per slice.

At the Chinese take-away: Leave the last half-inch of your meal in the container. By eating only the top of the food you get all the meat and vegetable but leave the fat in the foil.

At the kebab shop: Go for a chicken shish kebab which is basically grilled, skewered chicken in a plain pitta filled with salad and contains, on average, only 10g of fat. This really is the healthy option compared to the traditional doner kebab which packs at least 50g of fat.

At the burger bar: Go for a flame-grilled burger and ask them to hold the mayonnaise and you’re looking at only around 12g of fat.

If you’re trying to bulk up, the key is to base your meals around good quality protein – egg white, chicken, meat, fish – to maintain and repair the muscles after every workout, and include fruit and vegetables at every opportunity to supply the essential micro-nutrients. All you need to do then is add some carbohydrates, like bread, rice, pasta and potatoes, which fuel the muscles.

The only problem can be that your diet can degenerate into a series of bland meals if you don’t know how to spice things up a little, and it’s vital that things still taste good it you’re going to stick to a diet throughout your programme. For most guys there are just three seasonings: butter, salt and pepper, but you’ll be amazed at what you can do if you spend some time at the spice rack. Go for spice blends and keep things simple by having on for red meat, one for chicken, one for fish and one for vegetables.

There’s also a lot of help around for the low-fat cook these days in terms of recipe books and magazines which will provide you with hundreds of tasty meals that are low in fat and geared to specific goals. Alternatively, supermarkets have their own low fat-fat range of produce and ready-to-eat meals - although don’t take it for granted that it’s low in fat until you’ve read the label. I take advantage of both – and like baking a skinless chicken breast in foil with grated pepper and some lemon, eating it with wholemeal pasta or rice (because that kind of carbohydrate burns more slowly inside you).

When it comes to alcohol nobody is really a saint. You need to try and steer clear as much as you can. Drinking three ounces of alcohol reduces the body’s ability to burn fat one-third. And if you’ve been out on the beer all night you’re not going to be able to train effectively; you’re leaving yourself more prone to dehydration too. And of course alcohol, especially beer, is extremely high in calories, which get converted into simple sugars – that means fat. A pint of beer contains 200 calories, at least, and that’s just as much as a Snicker’s bar. So you need to count beer as part of your calorie intake, but don’t cheat on food so that you can drink more beer. Alcohol has few, if any nutrients and inhibits the absorption of nutrients from the food tou do eat, so drinking on an empty stomach will just bring on your cravings and you’ll end up snacking on crisps, nuts and kebabs.

If you’ve got a particular weight-loss goal then you should try and give up for a while – drive to the dinner party and you won’t have any choice but to stay off the booze. But if you are under constant training it is okay to have a few sips once in a while.