Veronica: Fitness guru Annick Robinson is sharing her secrets to a healthy lifestyle.

Hi, I’m Veronica at watchmojo.com, and today we are taking to look at the first step nutrition.

Annick Robinson: You cannot neglect your nutrition because even if you are doing all the rest correctly and you are exercising vigorously on a regular basis if you are not eating well your body may not even react to your exercise program.

Veronica: So then what should your plate look like?

Annick Robinson: You want to make sure that you’re not having like I see a lot of people, a lot of coffee so liquid meals and then maybe one gigantic meal at the end of the day and you’d be surprised how many people that’s their typical day. Then you want to make sure that you are actually having multiple meals during the day and that you are having optimally not more than about, say, this much in your meals but you may want to have 6-8 of those meals during the day. And you have to remember your stomach is about the size of your fist. So if you’re having enormous portions, your body can’t even begin to process that meal. So you want to feed your body what it can use for the next little while and your metabolism starts to understand it and you don’t need to store because there is another meal coming.

Veronica: Now you’ve discussed portion sizes with me before, what should each portion look like?

Annick Robinson: The ideal portion should be about the size of your own palm so about the size of your palm and about the thickness of your palm and if you’re having really dense proteins like nut butter of some kind you want to make sure that it’s about what would fit into the scoop of your palm.

Veronica: Will this make eating become a chore?

Annick Robinson: The truth is you actually quickly become used to eating good healthy foods and sometimes when you’re eating all these chemicals you actually numb your palette and when you stop eating bad foods it’s like your palette recharges itself and you start appreciating good foods in a different way.

Veronica: Does that mean you won’t be able to go out with your friends to a restaurant?

Annick Robinson: What you want to avoid are very rich sauces, you want to avoid the foods that are heavily transformed like pastas and things with potatoes and things that are fried and I have a trick for my clients, is, I make sure that once they walk into a restaurant no matter what restaurant it is that they already know in their minds what they’re going to order. So most of the times I don’t really look at the menu. I will ask the waiter, I’ll say what’s the cleanest food you have on your menu? Do you have something that has a lot of greens and maybe a nice portion of lean protein. And most of them will say “Oh, we have the most wonderful fish that just came in,” and then I don’t need to look at the menu and get tempted because most people have great intentions and then they get side tracked by impulses.