THE FITNESS FACTOR
This meal plan is geared for the needs of a moderately active person—
meaning someone who gets in 2^1 /2 hours of moderate aerobic exercise
every week. There are plenty of ways to hit that mark. A two-hour hike on
a Saturday and a midweek workout class will get you there. So will taking
three brisk, ten-minute walks every day but weekends. Alternatively, you
could take an hour-long water aerobics class, play a few sets of doubles
tennis, and take a thirty-minute powerwalk. Or you could really cobble it
together with four 15-minute brisk walks, a half hour jog after work one
day, thirty minutes of yardwork on a weekend, and two 15-minute stints of
body weight exercises, like pushups, wall sits, and lunges. The possibilities
are endless.
What this means for the diet: If you’re less active than the above, you
might only need one snack instead of two. If weight loss is an important
goal for you, try skipping one snack a few days a week. On the other hand,
if you’re more than moderately active—meaning that you either work in
three-plus hours of moderate exercise every week or that you opt for more
intense exercise (like running, swimming laps, or interval training), you
may want to add another snack before workouts.A healthier approach to fats. New research increasingly shows that the best
kinds of fats—the monounsaturated kind—raise your “good” HDL cholesterol to
keep your blood levels in check. And you’ve heard how they benefit the brain,
blood flow, digestion, inflammation, and more. Accordingly, you’ll be having up
to 2 tablespoons olive or rapeseed oil per day on this plan. You’ll also eat healthy
fats in their whole-food form in fish, avocados, nuts, seeds, and more.
One thing missing from the plan? Added sugars. You won’t find any extra sweet
stuff in these recipes. For just these three weeks, I’m going to ask you to limit
your added sugars to no more than 3 teaspoons a day. (Extra credit for swearing
off completely—but if you think you’ll feel deprived and depressed without a
spoonful of sugar in your coffee or a drizzle of honey on your yoghurt, it’s not
worth making yourself crazy.) When I say sugar, I’m talking about sugar in all
forms: the usual white kind, honey, maple syrup, agave syrup, demerara sugar,