To increase muscle, burn fat and achieve balanced nutrition, complementary foods are essential! There are 4 nutrients in complementary foods that complement each other

Regarding dietary recommendations during fat loss, in addition to avoiding the complete elimination of specific foods, you should also replace your current diet with "high-quality, higher-calorie, and body-efficiently utilized" foods. I call this practice complementary eating. The Diet is a simple, effective and easy-to-achieve eating plan that ensures every meal we eat is effective in burning fat, building muscle and improving overall health.

What is complementary food?

Complementary food contains the following four components:

1. Protein (eggs, chicken, fish, beef, etc.)

2. Starchy carbohydrates (sweet potatoes, rice, oats, etc.)

3. Fibrous Carbohydrates (Fruits and Vegetables)

4. Fats (avocados, nuts, olive oil, etc.)

The reason why it is called complementary food is that each of the above-mentioned elements complements each other, thereby maximizing the nutritional value of the output.

-Protein can help build muscle.

-Starchy carbohydrates provide energy to the body.

-Fiber carbohydrates aid digestion.

-Fat reduces inflammation, strengthens the joints and heart, and helps prevent disease and cognitive decline.

Complementary foods not only increase the amount of natural ingredients in the diet, but also make the nutrition more balanced. When implementing complementary feeding, it is recommended to eat 3 to 4 times a day. Generally speaking, I would recommend preparing meals like this:

- Protein and vegetables make up the largest portion (a high-protein diet can make people feel full, help reduce excess calorie intake, and promote fat loss).

-Starchy carbohydrates and fruit intake must be less than protein and vegetables.

-Fat intake must be the lowest among the four.

If you feel hungry within 1 hour after eating, it means you didn’t eat enough. On the contrary, if you still feel full several hours after eating, it means you ate too much. In addition, it is unlikely that most people will eat 5 to 6 times a day, and according to research results, such an eating frequency does not help improve fat loss efficiency.

How complementary feeding works

The thermic effect of food (TEF) refers to the energy expended by the body to ingest (chewing, masticating, and swallowing) and process (digestion, transportation, metabolism, and storage) food. When you eat certain foods, the number of calories your body burns will be higher. In general:

-Fat is easy to digest because the human body will automatically break down fat molecules into smaller and smaller ones, and the energy consumed in the process is very small; the ratio of the fat decomposition process is 100:5, which means that for every 100 calories eaten, 5 calories will be used to digest fat (the same concept is applied below).

-Complex carbohydrates (including starch and fiber carbohydrates) contain many glucose molecules, and the body needs to spend more energy to digest them; the ratio of complex carbohydrate breakdown process is 100:10.

-Protein requires the most energy to digest because it is composed of 20 different amino acids, 9 of which are essential amino acids that can only be obtained through food; the ratio of the protein breakdown process is 100:25.

Protein requires the most energy to digest because it is composed of 20 different amino acids, 9 of which are essential amino acids that can only be obtained through food; the ratio of the protein breakdown process is 100:25.

According to the thermic effect of food, the more complementary meals people have in their diet, the fewer calories they eat and the more calories they burn. To put it bluntly, fat loss is nothing more than a tug-of-war between "calories consumed" and "calories absorbed." For example, 0.5 kg of fat is approximately equal to 3,500 calories; if you want to lose 0.5 kg of fat in a week, you need to achieve a calorie deficit of 500 calories per day.

There are two specific ways to achieve a calorie deficit: reduce your calorie intake, or maintain your calorie intake but burn fat by increasing your activity level. Although aerobic exercise burns more calories than weight training, for someone who wants to burn 300 calories a day, instead of spending more time doing aerobic exercise, it is better to eat 300 calories less a day. Not only can the fat loss goal be achieved, but the potential negative effects of aerobic training or a decrease in freshness can also be avoided. Once a calorie deficit is achieved, there is no need to do more aerobic exercise (just for fat loss).

The concept emphasized in this book is that "fat loss and muscle gain can be done at the same time": if no calories other than basal metabolism are taken in from food during the muscle gain process, the body will more easily convert the originally stored fat into the energy needed for muscle gain. However, for people who are already thin, a large caloric deficit can still cause muscle loss, even if they do heavy training and consume enough protein. To avoid this, we must make it a goal to consume plenty of protein in our diet and to perform weight training on a regular basis to ensure that we maintain (or even increase) muscle mass.

This article is from the book "Heavy Training Fat Loss Full Skill Analysis Textbook" by Gezhi Culture