Food & Drinks Plan
You will be eating five or six times a day to keep topping up your energy levels. You will be consuming foods high in fibre and nutrients and you will not feel hungry. Your total fat and refined sugar intake will be low. Your carbohydrate and protein intake will be based on your activity levels. You will still be able to enjoy a glass of wine with your meals, with a bit more at weekends. You will be losing between one to one and half inches of fat a week.
Food and Drink Plan Example for One Day
Use the arrows to move through the day
Start the day right with a healthy low-fat breakfast
A mid-morning fresh fruit snack
A healthy low-fat lunch with salad or vegetables
A mid-afternoon fresh fruit snack
A healthy low-fat evening meal with vegetables or salad
An optional low-fat evening snack if you’re still hungry in the evening
Up to two units of alcohol a day for women and three units for men
IntaShape Meals
The IntaShape Plan is based on consuming three sensible meals a day. A meal does not have to be cooked and can be something very simple. Each meal should contain starchy carbs like cereals, potatoes, pitta bread, rice or pasta. Starchy carbs are great for keeping your energy levels up for the next few hours.
Starchy carbs are low in refined sugar and fat and contain water and fibre. Gram for gram, starchy carbs have less carbohydrate and refined sugars than biscuits, chocolates and cakes. The water and fibre contained in starchy carbs make them very bulky. Although they are high in water and fibre, they are actually low in calories. A potato for example is 80% water!
IntaShape Snacks
Snacking on fresh fruit is the best way to top up your energy levels mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Consuming fresh fruit also helps to raise your metabolic rate between meals. Fresh fruit is also high in water.
You can also have an evening snack if you feel hungry at night. Eating every 3-4 hours helps you boost your energy levels between meals and leaves you feeling full. We started life off as babies eating every three to four hours. As adults we should be doing the same.
A Word About Fat
Fat is the largest store of energy in our body. We have 50 times
more fat stored as energy in weight than we have any other energy
source. We have billions of fat cells containing literally thousands
and thousands of fat calories. As soon as your body uses fat up as energy it
can quickly be replaced from the fat stored in your fat cells.
If you consume more fat than your body can use as energy it will be stored in your fat cells. Healthy fats are good for your health as they travel through your body, but healthy fats can still make you fat. You have to control all fats, including the healthy fats.
A Word About Alcohol
Alcohol is high in calories but unlike the calories from the other food sources cannot be used as energy by your muscles. If you do drink alcohol, then by following the IntaShape Plan for alcoholic drinks you can have up to two units of alcohol per day if you are a woman and up to three units per day if you are a man.
