October 2, 2013
Here she is, Miss America - and here's how she got that way, according to her celebrity trainer Tia Falcone, who helped the reigning beauty Nina Davuluri lose more than 50 pounds. Nina has talked about how Tia helped her, and PopSugar interviewed the trainer to find out her secrets to losing weight and keeping it off.
Here are Tia's winning weight loss tips:
- Use weights because that is "what’s going to get you the most amount of muscle the quickest." She says, "When you’re doing weight training it’s not so much about burning calories, it’s about gaining as much muscle as possible. All women need to gain as much muscle as humanly possible; that’s what’s going to make you smaller and it raises your base metabolism permanently."
- Set a goal of doing four sessions of weight-lifting each week.
- Eat six meals daily rather than think about snacks. "What happens is [when] people think of breakfast, lunch, dinner, that connotes a big meal, which we don’t ever need, and then snack means popcorn or pretzels," Tia says. "There is no room for that kind of a thing. Each meal should be roughly the same size and roughly the same amount of calories, so you are [only] fueling your body with what it needs, otherwise you’re just going to store it."
- Eat a variety of foods, including protein. A sample day for Nina: Egg whites with broccoli and a piece of whole-grain toast, low-fat cottage cheese with a salad topped with two tablespoons of light raspberry dressing, plain Greek yogurt with raspberries, a protein drink and piece of fruit, and salmon with a vegetable or a sweet potato.
- Eat every two and a half hours, Tia says.
- Until you reach your goal weight, do cardio six times a week. After that, cut back on cardio.
