Nutrition Tips for 2004

Sample Diet For A WeekMost people who talk with Juliet ask how to lose weight and how to have such defined muscles. However, that kind of performance and discipline requires someone who is passionate about exercise and winning. We don’t know a lot of people who perceive exercise…intense exercise, as entertainment. But that’s how Juliet feels about fitness. Unless you are a high performance athlete you may be setting yourself up for failure by trying to follow Juliet’s course. Juliet’s physique and performance is a combination of intense physical training, for the past 22 years and a very discipline pre-competition diet. (click here for a sample of a pre-competition diet plan)

During maintenance season, Juliet has a tendency to eat low carbohydrate and high protein. She also eats smaller meals five times a day. Two weeks before competition she eats no sugar or processed food.

Juliet says,” The emphasis on nutrition cannot be over looked. High performance athletics requires high performance eating. You must first determine what your needs are, then what your goals are. My needs revolve around having enough energy to facilitate tough workouts and a physically demanding job, but not so much as to impair fat loss. My goals on the other hand are geared towards being able to complete the combat challenge in less than 2 minutes. This goal requires speed, strength, endurance, and task skill. All of these characteristics require high-energy training, meticulous nutrition along with adequate rest and recovery.”

If we really had to say what diet plans we follow we would have to say it is a combination of Atkins and Weight Watchers and maybe that amounts to the South Beach Diet. Neither one of us do well with restrictions or giving up certain things forever, so we make sure we make a place for pizza, hamburgers and French fries, chocolate chip ice cream and other treats.

We treat these items as special occasion items to be rarely indulged. Weight management is a very simple process: calories in versus calories out. If you don’t burn them, then you are going to store them and so you have some choices. Eat less or burn more.

Where weight management is concerned, we think it is important to do something you can maintain. Find something that works for you. Make gradual lifestyle changes rather than going from fad diet to fad diet.

We believe in eating everything, not necessarily everyday, but complete nutrition requires eating a wide variety of foods. We just try to make it clean, meaning low in fat, salt and sugar, but tasty.

Improve Your Sleeping Off Duty

Some Serious Shut-eye

Improved sleep behavior and attitudes do more good than sleeping pills for the treatment of insomnia, experts at a recent National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference agreed, says Daniel Kripke of the University of California, San Diego. The changes he recommends:

  • Do not take sleeping pills. This includes over-the-counter pills and melatonin.
  • Don't go to bed until you're sleepy. If you have trouble sleeping, try going to bed later or getting up earlier.
  • Get up at the same time every morning, even after a bad night's sleep. The next night, you'll be sleepy at bedtime.
  • If you wake up in the middle of the night and can't fall back to sleep, get out of bed and return only when you are sleepy.
  • Avoid worrying, watching TV, reading scary books, and doing other things in bed besides sleeping and sex. If you worry, read thrillers or watch TV, do that in a chair that's not in the bedroom.
  • Do not drink or eat anything caffeinated within six hours of bedtime.
  • Avoid alcohol. It's relaxing at first but can lead to insomnia when it clears your system.
  • Spend time outdoors. People exposed to daylight or bright light therapy sleep better.