How Isabel De Los Rios Transformed Her Body

Let’s be honest – when aren’t mom’s busy? In part one of my interview with fitness and nutrition expert, Isabel De Los Rios, the proud new mama shared some of her personal nutrition habits that she’s incorporated into her busy lifestyle to maintain her lean and sexy physique.

As we continue into part 2, Isabel De Los Rios reveals exactly what helped to recoup her pre-pregnancy body so quickly, and also, how she succeeded with her own body transformation years ago.  Great tips in here, so I hope you enjoy!

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Isabel De Los Rios:

You know what? There are no secrets. All of the foods I ate before I got pregnant are what I eat now, the same foods that I recommend in The Diet Solution.

The only difference now is that I eat a lot more and that is just because I am nursing the baby, so nursing Mom’s can probably relate to that. It’s just that your body requires a lot more calories. I’m eating more of the good food that I already ate. So, the foods that I am choosing from now are pretty much exactly the same foods I was choosing before.

People saw me just a few weeks after I had the baby, and I really LOOKED THE SAME as before I had even become pregnant.

I think that was my nutrition before, during, and after the pregnancy, which was all the same things that are in The Diet Solution. It was keeping on a significant amount of muscle mass during my pregnancy.

I was able to exercise pretty much most of the time, but even before becoming pregnant, because I focus on strength training, it’s not just cardio; I had a lot of muscle mass….

…So, I think what happened was I had the baby and my body had enough muscle mass to continue to burn off a good amount of calories. I kept on eating good food and that was it. There is really no magic, or science behind it. It was just good FOOD and good EXERCISE.

Craig Ballantyne: Very good. Here is an important question I want to ask you. For people that aren’t familiar with Isabel, she has made a transformation in her own life. How many years ago would you say that was?

Isabel De Los Rios: Almost 11 years now.

Craig Ballantyne: Okay. So, what were the major changes that you made originally with your transformation? Let’s just maybe start with a couple of the big ones, maybe not the whole laundry list, but a couple of the ones  you made immediately that had a nice little benefit and then maybe a couple other ones that helped you go to the next level.

Isabel De Los Rios: Well, I would say the biggest one was I was a SERIAL DIETER;

I was trying every single diet. I had thirty pounds to lose and nothing seemed like it worked. So, when I finally started focusing on good quality food, the stuff that I STARTED reading about certain foods that would burn fat in my body and STOPPED thinking about how many calories those foods have…

…then that’s when I started seeing my body change.

So, here I was reading about things like COCONUT OIL, and BUTTER and how GREAT they were for my body, but I was at first a little hung up on the calorie content and also on the fat content.

I had to let go of that, because obviously it wasn’t getting me anywhere. Things like avocados, high in calories, high in fat, and just stop thinking about how many calories I was eating in a day. I started focusing on the food, and it was amazing, my body just started transforming.

Literally, fat was falling off and I’m not exaggerating when I say that.

The other thing was also psychological. Making a firm decision and sticking to it for several weeks.

I think a lot of times people are very WISHY-WASHY about what they are going to do. They don’t make that firm decision. That for me really made all the difference.

Then it was also transitioning my exercise. Again, I was such a cardio queen, and that was obviously not getting me anywhere. I started doing full body circuit training and finally I started seeing my legs, arms, and mid-section shaping muscle.

I had to change my thinking. I thought cardio equaled fat loss and obviously it didn’t. So, in the beginning it was a lot of changing my thinking. I was just as brainwashed as everyone else.

Then towards the end I started getting into the nitty-gritty. Thinking about supplements, like fish oil supplements, taking a multi vitamin, things like that.

Unfortunately people focus on things like that in the beginning. But, you’ve really got to lay out the FOUNDATION in the beginning…

• You have to get your food in order
• You’ve got to get your exercise program in order
• You’ve got to drink water
• And then worry about the little nitty-gritty details.

Honestly, if you’re eating enough salmon and walnuts you might not need that fish oil supplement. I think Omega 3’s are great, but worry about that stuff later on.

Really set up your foundation, and do that first then worry about the minor details.

Craig Ballantyne: What about the role of education in there? Now, obviously you have gone to the extreme of education and educated yourself so much. But, how much should someone be spending on their personal education with nutrition?

You were just talking about focusing on the foundation, is there like one foundation, obviously The Diet Solution is a very foundational program, is there any other nutrition education foundations that you thought were helpful?

Like you mentioned not worrying about the calories too much, is it maybe just learning about healthy fats, or is it learning about, again, you mentioned foods that help contribute to the fat loss environment, is there something that the people can learn and read there?

Isabel De Los Rios: Yes. I think that is also a great question. I tell everyone you can’t depend on you, nor can you depend on me, or on your doctor. Not that I don’t think that all of us have great information, but it is really up to US to educate ourselves and take care of our bodies.

Once you find something that makes sense to you, you’ve got to make sure it resonates with you.

It can’t be something that you’re like, “This doesn’t even make any sense.” Or something you know deep down inside is not healthy. You know it is just not something healthy to do to your body. Continue to look at the references that, let’s say, that book gives you.

So, in The Diet Solution Program, for example, I give people other books that they can read, other web sites that they can read. There are other great people out there that have phenomenal information. You don’t have to do it morning, noon, and night. I mean we do, because it’s our job, but if you find a community that you really like the people there, you like whose running it, I mean I know that’s what happens with your membership site, Craig. People share links with each other, they have great information.

Get yourself involved in a community. Make it a point to at least one to two times a week read something about health. Keep yourself educated, don’t just stick to one thing and just decide that’s it, because there is always new information and things are always changing.

Let Isabel explain the four foods NEVER to eat in this eye-opening presentation:

 

Isabel De Los Rios Part 3

As you jump to part 3 you will learn how Isabel De Los Rios solves the mystery behind complex carbs. Specifically, Isabel reveals when to eat these carbs and how much of them you should eat.