Advice from a Nutritionist and Personal Trainer: Become a Fat-Burning Machine!

From fearing fat to cutting carbs; fitness trainer and nutrition coach, Lindsay Beale, exposes myths and shares the true ways to achieve your best health and self, and dream physique.

After entering the industry of exercise teaching in 1987, Lindsay Beale then naturally progressed into Personal Training and nutritional coaching through desires to expand her knowledge in order to help more people of her age. “I think because I have been through much of what my clients are struggling with, it gives me the benefit of empathy alongside the logistical understanding” Lindsay professes. She currently conducts a CFL (Challenge Fat Loss) program and helps over 60 women each month - ranging between the ages of 25 to 65 - to reach their ideal health, including a notable individual whom she helped pull back from the brink of diabetes.

Lindsay is living proof of her own theories, and sitting across from me in this small-town-favourite coffee shop, she transformed my understanding of food. If you put into practice all the food facts she knows to be true, pound-loss progress and happy health will be undeniable and liberating.

Get a Spring Clean

Clean eating is a relatively new concept that is rapidly strengthening in its prominence. But what does it actually mean to eat clean? In short: eat as close to nature as you possibly can. I don’t mean go out and eat your lunch under a tree, although I’m sure that would be an enjoyable experience, it simply means sticking to foods that have been least tampered-with. Lindsay’s philosophy? “Eat near to nature and you can’t go wrong. That’s the best way.”

Fat is Your Friend

When we want to fine-tune our figures or shed a few pounds, it is usually our conclusion to simply cut down on the fat we intake. Seems logical right? Surprisingly, this is counterproductive. “Food that is close to nature is higher in the good fats that will satiate you” Linsday explains to me, leaning over her decaffeinated full-fat milk cappuccino. So, what does this mean? You will feel less hungry less often, and will therefore ingest less food.

If there's one meal that seems to gain more traction across social media trends than any other, it's the famous Avocado Toast. Now whether you knew the logic behind the legend or not, there's a reason the Avo is so faAVOurable.

Fats can in fact be extremely important to our cell and brain health. Now, make no mistake this is not an encouragement to reach for doughnuts and cookies with the justification that ‘fats are good for me!’, the fats that are important to our body are the natural, (clean!) fats; avocado, cheese, nuts, and cream. “Cheese and cream are the first things people drop when they want to lose fat or tone up, switching to ‘low-fat’ products” Lindsay adds. The issue with this substitution is that foods proclaiming to be ‘low-fat’ are not only further away from how nature provided them, but they are also topped-up with sugar to make up for the loss of the fats’ taste. The same rule also applies to products that claim to be ‘sugar-free’: chances are, they’re loaded with fake sweeteners to pick up the lacking sugar’s slack. The same effect on our body as refined sugar, but actually more ‘poisonous’. So, what is the effect of refined sugar on our bodies?

Curb The Cane

Eating sugar releases opiods and dopamine, Lindsay explains that this chemical reaction is what links sugar to addictive behaviour. We know that dopamine is hormone that, when released, triggers that ‘pleasure’ pang in our brains: eating high sugar foods trigger the brain to release these feel-good chemicals such as dopamine. Now here’s the catch, these sparks of satisfaction are short lived, and so you soon start searching for ways of achieving that ‘high’ again: reaching for your biscuit barrel, that tub of ice-cream in the freezer, or the confectionary cupboard (don’t lie, I know you have one.)

Now I would be a hypocrite if I was to claim I had never turned to the comfort of a Cadbury’s chocolate bar as a pick-me-up treat, but after speaking with Lindsay I find myself not taking that decision quite so lightly. How many times have we all congratulated ourselves via an indulgent moment with a chocolate box? Guilty! But it turns out the reason for this is chemical: sugar activates the receptors in the brain that sense ‘reward’, and unfortunately, each time we circle around this habit, we reinforce those pathways that cause sugar cravings. So, we covered how we are all prone to getting spun in sugar’s binding web, how does this effect our body's fat percentage?

"Eating too much of any food will cause fat gain, as any food that exceeds our body's fuel used throughout our day is stored as fat. The genetic reason for this is, if we think back to our cave-inhabiting ancestors, that stored fat can be used for energy at a time when food isn't available. But let's be real - this isn't a commonly-faced issue for the majority of our modern, instantly-gratified society (#nonfirstworldproblems).

Sugary products invite us to eat more than we need as they release those feel good chemicals. Excess food of course equals more excess fuel to store away, a.k.a excess fat.

On top of this, when our blood is flooded with sugar the hormone Insulin is released to regulate our blood sugar levels. When this hormone is continually released, we are edged into a crash and crave cycle: searching for more food and - yup, you see the loop - we're further-encouraged to eat more than we need. Plus, "Insulin is a fat storage hormone" Lindsay explains, "so if you have too much in your blood stream too often, it makes fat loss very difficult." In short, as long as your Insulin levels are high, your fat burning hormones take a back seat.

So, relating back to our new-found enemies, those misleading ‘fat-free’ products, it’s now easy to see how those are in fact the exact WRONG ways to lose fat, and maintain healthy bodies. “If you’re wanting to shed the fat and keep the muscle definition; ditch the stupid sugars.” Needless to say, Lindsay doesn’t sugar-coat her advice.

Become a Natural 'Fat-Burning Machine'

You may have heard the term 'Intermittent Fasting' floating around this past year or so, perhaps you've even tried it yourself. But isn’t fasting just starvation? - a common misconception around fasting that is only recently dissipating, rippling into the mainstream from the health and fitness world. Fasting in fact differs from starvation in a crucial way: control. It’s the voluntary withholding of food, in a structure that allows your body to burn fat rather than slip into starvation mode. So how can fasting benefit our fat loss? By allowing our body to burn off its excess. “When we eat, more food energy is ingested than we can immediately use; this excess is turned into fat. If you don’t eat within that fasting frame, your body will simply ‘eat’ its own fat for energy.”

Lindsay also stresses the importance of understanding that resorting to unpredictable rates of ‘fasting and feasting’, you will tamper with your body’s metabolism. It’s about finding the balance of fasting and feeding; the yin and the yang. So, if you allow your body to burn through some of its storage before your feed it more fuel, you will start shedding those pounds fast, the healthy way! “Couple that with some exercise - it only needs to be a little - and your body will become a fat-burning machine”.

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