Some of you made have heard about the latest “scandal” about John Benton. It is super unfortunate, especially because his fitness method is pretty fantastic. I wrote a post explaining the fitness portion of his method; however, fitness is not everything. Nutrition plays a HUGE role in changing a person’s body.
John provides (or at least used to provide) consultations to people to personally tailor a nutritional plan to their workout routine. He charges $1000 for the consult in addition to each workout (dang), which means this teacher on maternity leave did NOT purchase that package.
I did, however, buy his workout package and have listened to every podcast he has been on to try and put together some pieces of this nutritional puzzle.
Personalized Nutrition
John makes it clear that nutrition should be personalized to each individual, which I TOTALLY agree with. However, he does provide some basic information that should work for every individual.
Caloric Intake
John talks a lot about discouraging eating disorders with his clients. He tells them that restriction and rigid diets are not sustainable; therefore, they should be consuming 1200 – 1600 calories. This is a great piece of advice because eating too few calories can make the body feel like it’s in STARVATION mode, which actually slows down a person’s Basil Metabolic Rate (BMR) or metabolism.
Timing Is Everything
The biggest nutritional advice I could gather was that the timing of protein and carbs is very important to John. He encourages his clients to not consume carbs 2-3 hours before a workout. The carbs he’s talking about aren’t vegetables; rather, he wants you to avoid starchy carbs such as bread, pasta, rice, etc.
The scientific reason behind this decision is because carbs turn into glucose (aka sugar) when they are in your body. The body loves to run on sugar; however, when you are wanting to shrink your waist and hips you need to burn FAT, not sugar.
John says he’s ok with you consuming a little bit of protein, fat, or vegetables before a workout.
Post Workout
Another nutrition area John talks explicitly about is the post-workout meal. He highly discourages protein consumption 1-2 hours after a workout. Interesting advice because most workout people ENCOURAGE eating protein after a workout.
It actually makes a lot of sense why he doesn’t want you to do this. His workout is about SHRINKING the hips and waist, while many workouts are about BUILDING muscle. If you want to increase muscle you need to feed it amino acids (the body’s building blocks) in the form of protein. His goal is to atrophy muscles, not increase them.
What do you eat then? Vegetables, fruit, or a few starchy carbs like yams.
Starchy Carbs
Overall, John appears to discourage his clients from consuming too many starchy carbs, like pasta, bread, and rice. He especially doesn’t want clients to consume these carbs after 3 pm because, again, he wants your body to burn fat, not carbs. When we sleep our body uses all of the glucose in our blood for energy but after it consumes all of that it goes into fat-burning mode. John hopes to lengthen your fat-burning window.
Example From Meredith
The beautiful Meredith is in the picture above. Dang, this girl KILLED it! Her results blew my mind and got me curious about this fitness method.
Meredith posted a bunch of food pictures in her Instagram story feed, which I’m going to share with you. I love seeing these pictures because they provide a general idea about what a person might eat following this waist and hip shrinking workout method.
Trends:
Greens, such as cucumbers, spincach, and broccolli
Fruit, in the form of watermelon, oranges, and strawberries
Lean meats like egg whites, white fish, and raw tuna
Starchy carbs, such as quinoa and yams
Very little fat, but some avocado, egg yolks, and cashews
So what do you think, could you eat this way to shrink your hips and waist?
Always remember, even if you haven’t achieved your goal you are beautiful and complete as you are.
Embrace the moment and challenge yourself to make the changes you desire.
