These are the top 5 things that you can do to look like a supermodel.
Eat a healthy diet
This seems obvious but if we delve a little deeper and distinguish what is a healthy diet we can actually get some results and a slender waistline and slimmer curves.
The golden rule is to reduce insulin release. Now, insulin is an important hormone to control your blood sugar and you need some released at regular intervals every day to be healthy, but what you want to avoid is large surges of insulin from eating sugary starchy foods like sweets, pizza, doughnuts, croissants, bread, chocolate, pasta, cakes and biscuits. You should also cut down servings of rice and potatoes as well. The more that you produce insulin each day the less fat burning you will get.
The best way to do this is to eat a Low GL diet or a Paleo diet both of which focus on eating healthy lean protein sources like meat, fish and eggs, as well as healthy fats, like olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds and food low in sugar such as all green vegetables, some fruits, nuts seeds, beans and legumes.
If you centre your diet on these recommendations you will start to lose excess fat from your tummy, thighs and arms, drop a dress size or two and start to look and feel a lot better about yourself.
Exercise 4 times a week
We all know we need to take exercise and the general advice is to get 30 minutes of exercise a day. However if you want that supermodel body this is not enough. You will need to do a good hour of exercise at a high intensity at least four times a week – yes four times a week. Research has shown that weight loss results can be up to 70% greater when training four times a week compared to three times a week.
After you have warmed up you need to do two types of exercise 1) high intensity interval training and 2) resistance training.
High intensity interval training means you exercise very hard for a period of time, say 30-60 seconds – be it sprinting, walking uphill on a treadmill, spinning or even doing step ups on a step block, followed by a period of active rest for 1-2 minutes to get your breath back. This could be walking, cycling at a slow pace or just marching slowly on the spot. If you can do this for 20-30 minutes you will get a great workout and you will be burning fat for hours afterwards compared to going for a 20-30 minute jog.
Next you need to do resistance exercise. This means pushing, pulling and lifting things, be it a dumbbell, a kettle bell, resistance bands or just your body weight. You need to do exercises that use lots of muscle such as squats, walking lunges, deadlifts, kettle bell thrusters or chin ups that are used on our outdoor personal training group exercise classes. These exercises use much more fat as fuel then doing some biceps curls whilst sitting on a bench or doing tricep kick backs, and will give you leaner legs and a toned bum to look great in those skinny jeans
Sleep
You’ve probably all heard you need to get your 8 hours sleep each night. If you don’t you can often times look very tired with dark circles under your eyes and lack that vital energy to get you through the day. But now science is helping us understand that a lack of sleep can make us fatter and sicker. People who get the least amount of sleep are more likely to suffer from heart disease, cancer and other diseases.
But as we want to look like a supermodel a lack of sleep actually causes us to eat more through the day, with a tendency to eat lots of sugary snacks to boost energy. When we don’t get enough sleep we produce a substance from our stomach called grehlin. The less sleep we get, the more grehlin we produce. Grehlin’s job is to tell the brain we need to eat and hey presto you end up eating way more food than you actually need. We’ve all done it, only got 5 or 6 hours sleep and been ravenous all day. Well, now we know why. So make sure you get those 8 hours of sleep each night.
Take supplements
First and foremost we get our nutrition from our food, making healthy choices such as meat and fish, vegetables, nuts and seeds and some fruits. But due to our uniqueness some of us need more vitamins, minerals and healthy fats than others and our food is also less nutritious than it was 50 years ago because a lot of our food travels from all over the world – being picked unripe or losing nutrition on its journey; and because our soil has less nutrition in it to feed the plants.
So we should all be taking at least a daily multivitamin and mineral. Getting a little boost of these nutrients can add the finer details to looking like a supermodel. A little boost of zinc, magnesium, B vitamins can give you healthy hair and nails and some omega 3 can give you fresher healthier looking skin.
De-stress
Stress makes us age faster, greying the hair, wrinkling the skin and giving us a paler complexion. So it makes sense in order to look your best to practice some stress reducing techniques.
Science tells us that stress is relived by have an outlet for our frustrations such as having a hobby or diversion. This could be exercise, playing an instrument, watching movies – whatever – but taking some time for yourself is a big help. Stress is also reduced by having a real or imagined sense of control and having social connectedness, so this is where being organised so that work and family life don’t get on top of you and spending time with friends and loved ones. It’s amazing how much better we feel after we have laughed so surround yourself with happy funny people and you will have a greater sense of well being that translate into a fresher healthier looking body.
