Since I’m a fitness trainer, you may have expected me to start my list of permanent healthful fat loss tips with some secret breakthrough exercise you should do every day. Or maybe you were dreading those fateful words “Drop and give me 20!” or “Start by taking a walk around the block.”

Listen, there’s no other way to become fit and healthy than with a well-designed, balanced and properly executed exercise program (more on that soon), but if you want to drop excess fat, the road starts at the refrigerator.

Why do I say that?

Because unlike the old proverb “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”, we know which one comes first here. You can’t do anything without energy, and that means calories (kcals). But the tricky part is that there are a heck of a lot of ways to get those kcals. The kcals give your “car” the “gas”, but you still need the car to be made with decent materials and workmanship. In order to fuel the workouts, and more importantly, get stronger, leaner and more flexible during the post-workout recovery phase (which is the main reason for exercising), you need the best quality building blocks. That’s where the concept of nutrient-density comes in.

How do I define nutrient-density? It’s the degree to which you maximize these elements in your food selection for a given kcal count:

1. Vitamins
2. Minerals
3. Protein
4. Fiber

Butter is 100% fat, and the highest kcal count you can consume, with almost none of the above nutrients. Cotton candy is 100% sugar, again, no real nutrients from the list. But a chicken stir-fry over brown rice is packed with all that stuff, and so is a breakfast with scrambled eggs (3 whites-to 1 yolk is my recommended ratio for eating eggs) with spinach and sun-dried tomatoes over whole wheat toast.

Make sense?

We’ll talk in more detail about food in the next few days, but for today, I want you to start thinking about food as the foundation of your entire physical experience. Because there’s nothing more important. And the best thing you can do initially to start to get leaner and make your physical quality of life soar is to start eating to maximize your nutrient-density.

In the coming days and weeks, I’ll give you a bunch of ideas on how to accomplish that and tell you exactly how I do it.

See you soon!

Learn more about how to get and stay in great shape? Contact Dan at Tri Valley Trainer