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As a personal trainer at Bally's Total Fitness in Philadelphia, I have come across a number of people that claim to either be unable to lose weight or unable to stick to their diets. I personally think there is no one that is unable to lose weight and that most people that can not seem to lose weight often need just a slight adjustment in how they apply their diet.

There have been a large number of people that have, with my help, seen excellent results by making very slight changes in their diets. Sometimes it is nothing more than cutting back on a bag of potato chips; sometimes it is adding a real breakfast to their diet.

After a while I developed what I call "The 7 Rules to Eating Correctly." Tthese 7 rules were created to keep my clients on track with their diets. Whenever they would ask me why they had not been seeing the results that expected, I would ask which of the 7 rules had they failed to follow. From observation, I realized that anyone following these rules would give the results that he or she desired.

With age I realized that I needed to add much more water into my diet and rule number 8 was born. I really believe that if you combine these 8 rules to your diet, no matter what diet you are advocating you will see results.

#1 - Supplement, supplement, supplement; Even though you may be eating very healthy there is no way to ensure that your body is getting the nutrients that it needs better than supplementation. At the very least have a multivitamin/ multi-mineral, antioxidant complex, and calcium. It would be even better if you could use the supplement that I selected and as bodybuilders best vitamins, minerals and amino acids.

# 2 - Eat Breakfast; breakfast should be a complex carbohydrate like oatmeal, a protein and fat. By now you fully understand why breakfast is so important, if you never lifted a weight in your life this would still the most important rule to good health. Treat breakfast like American Express "Do not leave home without it!"

# 3 -prepare your meals ahead; two days, or even a week ahead if possible. By preparing your meals ahead you help to fight of the desire to snack or select the wrong foods when meal time comes. I find that most of my cheating comes when I get hungry and had to skip a meal for some reason.

# 4 - Eat every three and one half hours to 4 hours, assuming you are taking in enough proteins this will keep your body in positive nitrogen balance. Make sure you get enough protein since protein is what bodybuilding is all about. It is very important for type II diabetics that by eating many small meals (I eat from a saucer) a days you can better regulate your body's insulin levels.

#5 - Never Snack: I define snacking as anything that you consume that is not a part of your scheduled diet and:

' Has Pleasure as the sole purpose of consummation
' It does nothing to build muscle, put you into a positive nitrogen state, regulate you insulin levels, or stop the development of free radicals.
' Has a protein to carb ratio of less than 1 to 1
' Fat content is greater than 25% of total calories of the product. Please understand that this is the total of a meal. Not all items, as an apple has a protein to carb ratio of less than 1'to-1 it can be scheduled as part of your diet for a given time of day and therefore is not a snack. However, an apple that you grab from off your buddies' desk at work is a snack. Snacks are those meals that are not planned. Success in bodybuilding is about being in control of every aspect of the sport.

# 6- Eat complete meals; if you are hungry eat! If you are not hungry do not eat. Meals should be planned. Since the body can only ingest so many calories before it becomes fat it makes sense to save those calories for proteins and vegetables, rather than snack. In my opinion there is no such thing as a good snack because it takes away from you planned meals.

# 7 - Eat when hungry, and only when hungry; if it is been at least 3.5 hours since your last meal and you have a physical desire to eat then you are hungry. I do not subscribe to the thought of not eating after 6pm. I believe that if you select the correct foods and your body does have a desire for the foods than you should eat no matter what time it is. I believe in eating fairly clean all the time so I do not diet for contest like many bodybuilders I just increase my aerobic activity.

# 8 - Drink plenty of water try to get at least 1 oz of water for every lb of body weight. The first complaint that I hear even from bodybuilders is that that was too much muscle drinking water is new to you I found that drinking it before a meal rewarding yourself make with the meal is easier. Always drink water throughout your workout. I drink no less than a liter of water during my workout more on legs and back day.

So there you have it the armor you will need to fight the battle of the bulge.

Troy Pearsall