Make your workout work harder with No.1 bestselling cookbook author, Rosanna Davison.

Following on from the success of her debut release, Eat Yourself Beautiful, Rosanna Davison is back to help you get fighting fit, fast! With over 100 powerful recipes that complement and enhance your fitness routine, a sample diet, exercise plans and tricks to keep you motivated, Eat Yourself Fit has everything you need to look and feel your very best.

Check out these exclusive extracts from best selling author Rosanna Davison’s new book Eat Yourself Fit!

The importance of sleep for boosting your metabolism

Metabolism is the means by which your body converts what you eat and drink into energy. During this complex biochemical process, calories in food and beverages are combined with oxygen to release the energy your body needs to function. Even when you’re sitting still or fast asleep, your body needs energy for functions such as breathing, heartbeat and blood circulation, hormone production, and growing and healing cells.

It’s not always easy to get your full requirement of sleep each night, especially with work, family or study demands. But if your aim is to maintain your weight or lose a few pounds, then getting enough sleep each night is really important for a healthy and properly functioning metabolism.

It’s actually pretty normal for sleep-deprived people to find that they gain an extra few pounds without changing their diet, as a lack of sleep can lead to various metabolic issues. It can cause you to burn fewer overall calories, run into problems with appetite control and experience an increase in cortisol levels, which encourages the body to store fat around the middle.

One of the best and easiest things you can do to boost your metabolism is get enough sleep. Sufficient sleep for most people tends to be between seven and nine hours for most people.

Tips for eliminating sugar

1 Give it 21 days

Twenty-one days is generally considered the appropriate length of time to break a habit. I find that total abstinence for this time is the best way to break the addiction, because even tasting a little bit of sugar can kick start the cycle all over again. After just a few weeks off it, refined sugar will taste synthetic and far too sweet.

2 Read nutrition labels

Always check the ingredients listed on packaged foods carefully and never believe the hype and marketing claims made on packaging. Aim to stock up on foods as close to their natural state as possible, such as fruit, vegetables, nuts, nut butters, seeds, quinoa, beans and legumes.

3 Keep a food diary

This can really help you to track and eliminate mindless snacking and where and when you’re adding extra sugar to your diet, such as in cups of tea and coffee or late-night cravings for sweet foods.

4 Stay hydrated

It can be easy to go through a busy day and forget to drink water. Get into the habit of sipping from a large bottle of water throughout the day. You need at least eight glasses of water per day and more in warm weather or if you’re exercising. Veggie juices and herbal teas count too, but caffeinated drinks act as diuretics and can dehydrate you.

5 Be prepared

Stock up on healthy snacks. When a sugar craving hits, try eating a piece of ripe fruit with a little nut butter or a handful of raw almonds. Green apples, citrus fruits and berries are lower in sugar than other types of fruit and make a great snack.

6 Choose homemade over eating out

This can be tricky for anyone out all day at work, but being in control of what goes onto your plate can make all the difference. Aim to pack your own lunches rather than grabbing a shop-bought sandwich. Get into the habit of requesting potentially sugar laden sauces, dips and dressings on the side and try not to tempt yourself with the bread basket or dessert menu.

7 Stock up on cinnamon

I sprinkle this sweet warming spice on a range of dishes and add it to smoothies because I find it brilliant for helping to curb sugar cravings. Plus it helps to fight fungal infections, boosts blood circulation and it’s a rich source of minerals and antioxidants. It’s also a good source of the mineral chromium, which helps to regulate blood sugar levels and the laying down of fat in your body.

8 Cheat with a treat

No matter what type of eating plan you follow, if any, I think it’s important to reward healthy living with an occasional tasty dessert or sweet treat. All my desserts and sweet treat recipes are simple to make and free from refined sugar, trans-fats, artificial ingredients, gluten and dairy.

5 Body confidence tips

If you’re a bride-to-be or aiming to get in shape to feel great for a holiday, party or big event, then you will want to feel like the best version of yourself when the big day arrives. For my own wedding in the summer of 2014, I didn’t want to lose weight, but I did want to feel lean, toned, confident and healthy. I focused on the following body confidence tips in the lead-up to my big day, and they really helped me to look and feel my best.

1 Avoid refined sugars

Found in biscuits, cakes, crackers and baked treats to sweets, ice cream, sorbet, cereal, jam, yogurts, chocolate, soups, pasta sauces, breads, sweetened plant milks and fizzy drinks, refined sugar is one of the most damaging foods for your skin and body.

If you regularly eat sugary foods or add sugar to hot drinks, then my advice is to try to wean yourself off it in plenty of time before your wedding day, holiday, party or important event, as it takes around 21 days to break the habit and really feel the benefits. Get used to reading labels carefully in order to avoid added refined sugar and other processed ingredients. All my recipes are free from refined sugar, are fibre rich and are designed to stabilise blood sugar levels.

2 Banish bloating foods

Feeling bloated? There may be a large number of reasons why. Constipation can be an issue for many people, and is undoubtedly one of the main causes of bloating. However, eating a diet high in fibre-rich plant foods and drinking more water can make a big difference for a lot of people.

For many women, it’s simply hormonal and an annoying symptom of that time of the month. For others, it can be a result of eating too quickly and gulping in excess air, not chewing food correctly, eating foods that your body may find difficult to digest and is sensitive to, or the carbon dioxide in fizzy drinks.

My recipes maximise your intake of fibre. We’re all different, so certain foods that can cause bloating for some may have no effect on others. If you do suffer from bloating, then I encourage you to keep a food diary to try to find a link between the foods you’re eating regularly and when you feel excessively bloated.

3 Drink alcohol in moderation

Alcohol is not a friend to your waistline. It can trigger stomach fat to build up around your mid-section because it’s quickly absorbed into your bloodstream and deposited in the stomach area. It may cause you to gain many unwanted pounds due in part to the hundreds of extra calories in sugary cocktails and mixers, while wine and beer are also high in sugar and calories. But alcohol itself is a simple sugar, which hits your bloodstream fast and causes insulin levels to increase, encouraging fat storage. Drinking alcohol may also slow down your metabolism because the liver prioritises the metabolism of alcohol before it can process energy from the food you have eaten. So for a certain period of time, it may actually prevent your body from burning fat efficiently.

4 Daily greens

I speak at length about the importance of consuming abundant leafy greens, as calorie for calorie, they’re the most nutritionally dense type of food that you can eat, packed with fibre, minerals and protective phytonutrients. Many people find it easier to ingest them in smoothie or juice form than in a salad, which is why you’ll find a number of green smoothie recipes in my book. Enjoying blended greens really helps to boost your complexion, hair growth and encourage a flat stomach.

5 Weight train

I’ve spoken about how effective weight training is for both men and women, especially if you’re trying to tone up and shift some body fat before your wedding day or a holiday. I increased my workouts and upped their intensity even more in the lead-up to my wedding to help me feel my most strong and confident. It’s obviously important to train all your major muscle groups each week, but as my dress had a full skirt and a fitted waist with my shoulders and arms on show, I placed plenty of focus on training my upper body. I made sure to train my chest, shoulder, triceps, biceps and back each week and did plenty of Pilates to strengthen and lengthen muscles and improve posture.

Here are three quick tips for losing body fat

Watch calories and portion sizes

The healthy eating movement of the past few years has benefitted people in so many ways, though I think many people still struggle with weight loss, even when they’re eating ‘clean’. Healthy food can still contain plenty of calories, so you must be careful when replacing processed snacks with nuts and nut butters or adding avocado and dressing to salads, as their calories can quickly add up.

Do you find calorie counting tedious? Another useful way to lose weight is to use your hands for portion control. In a main meal, your serving of protein, such as beans, should be roughly the size of your palm; your serving of grains or carbs, such as sweet potato, should be the size of your fist; your portion of low-carb veggies and salad should be at least the size of your cupped hands together; and your serving of healthy fat or dressing should be about the size of your thumb.

Get active

It’s very difficult to achieve sustainable, healthy body fat loss without exercise. Keeping active helps to burn excess calories and build up lean muscle mass to boost your resting metabolic rate. I find that a combination of weight training and cardio really works to build muscle while burning body fat, but it’s important to do what you enjoy and can fit into your lifestyle.

Eat small meals regularly

To encourage your metabolism to function optimally, try eating five or six smaller meals each day and aim to eat every three or four hours. This ensures that your blood sugar levels remain stable throughout the day and your body is fed a consistent stream of amino acids and other nutrients to support energy levels, muscle repair and a good mood.

Eat Yourself Fit is available on our website, Eason, Amazon and in all good bookstores.

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