Motivating weight loss trainer and star coach Mila Gritsenko told us what nutritional principles to follow when losing weight quickly, and explained why it is better to give up strength training at this time.
Mila's Instagram profile is followed by 352 thousand people. The motivating trainer helped Katya Lel, Irina Slutskaya, Anastasia Zadorozhnaya lose weight, and developed eight weight loss programs, which can be found on her personal website. Mila herself weighed 84 kg, having lost 36 kg since then (she talked about how it happened in this material).
Especially for BeautyHack, Mila spoke about the features of express weight loss in 30 days, explained what and how to eat, what it is better to avoid and how to keep your skin toned.
Get rid of excess liquid
The basis of any express weight loss is lymphatic drainage. If someone has lost 5 kg in two weeks, keep in mind that a significant percentage of this weight is water. Fat is lost at a rate of 0.5-1 kg per week, depending on the initial weight. But sometimes a girl just needs to remove the puffiness after the holidays or vacation, and she gets a different picture. Puffiness makes the face appear puffy. Volumes go away along with it.
Lymphatic drainage plays a big role in losing weight. The faster you remove excess water, the faster fat will begin to disappear. In a week or two you can get rid of 5 kg of liquid, then the process will slow down and fat will begin to be consumed, 1-1.5 kg per week (30% of which will be water and 70% fat).
At the same time, you need to give up smoked meats, marinades, and pickles for the entire month, because they retain water. If speed is not so important, you can allow lightly salted salmon or include lightly salted cucumber in the menu. And of course, exclude soda and fast food.
Recipes for weight loss
Considering that the menu for Mila Gritsenko’s diet is made up of a variety of products, you need to understand how to arrange and combine them. Dishes should not be absolutely bland - the body already experiences “dissatisfaction” with the restrictions, and depriving it of taste variety, you can get a serious breakdown - both gastronomic and psycho-emotional. To avoid this, you need to learn how to cook tasty, but healthy.
“Lazy” porridge for breakfast
Mila consumes it every day in the morning and considers it the ideal start to the day - the porridge contains the necessary amount of carbohydrates, vitamins for energy production, and at the same time it has a pleasant taste .
How to cook “lazy” porridge:
- chop the apple - cut into small cubes;
- cut a ripe banana into half circles;
- combine fruits in a deep bowl;
- add to the mixture 3 tablespoons of oatmeal (not cereal!), 100 g of cottage cheese and a little cinnamon.
All these components are mixed and poured with milk. The dish goes into the refrigerator overnight, and in the morning it is ready to eat.
Breakfasts can be different - for example, cottage cheese with dried fruits or honey, an omelet with vegetables, rice porridge with a salad of fresh vegetables.
Meat in marinade
Lunch time means eating meat or fish, which is either boiled or steamed . This is no frills, but you can use Mila’s recipe for cooking meat:
- chicken, turkey or lean beef, cut pork into thin strips;
- pour kefir over the meat, after diluting it with water in a 1:1 ratio;
- leave for several hours in a cool place (the preparation can be made in the evening or in the morning).
Then the meat along with the marinade is stewed in a frying pan; onions can be added to the sauce. This dish literally takes 5-10 minutes to prepare and is eaten with any fresh, boiled or baked vegetables. But you need to remember that it is better to exclude potatoes or include them in the lunch menu if the meal is taken no later than 14-00.
Diet soup - evening
Dinners should also be tasty and varied. You can cook absolutely all permitted foods, but do not fry them and use a minimum of vegetable and animal fats as an additive to them. Mila recommends having vegetable puree soup for dinner:
- take carrots, bell peppers, fresh zucchini and cauliflower - peel everything;
- Place the vegetables in a saucepan and cook until tender;
- at the end, add a little salt, mild spices to the soup and 5 minutes before the end of cooking, a little cream or “country” sour cream.
The finished soup is pureed with a blender, served with herbs, fresh cucumbers and no more than 30 g of bran bread crackers.
Vegetable puree soup
Strawberry tiramisu
Desserts should not be excluded from the menu, but you need to prepare them yourself , and not buy ready-made ones with a lot of preservatives, sugar, flavorings and other harmful ingredients. How to prepare dessert:
- Cut 200 g of ripe strawberries into thin slices;
- 2 bananas – thin slices;
- beat 500 g of cottage cheese with a blender or whisk;
- Brew a cup of natural coffee and add 50 g of chopped dark chocolate to it.
Next, the dessert is laid out in the form as follows:
- bananas-strawberries-coffee-cottage cheese - such layers are repeated twice;
- bananas-strawberries-coffee-grated dark chocolate - this is the last layer.
It turns out that the initially received amount of prepared products will need to be divided into three equal parts, the cottage cheese is divided into 2 parts. The dessert should sit for 4 hours; the portion is large and should be divided into 2-3 doses or shared with loved ones.
Sassy
This is a drink that can be used as part of the drinking regimen instead of pure water. In general, you can and should drink it as much as possible during the process of losing weight - this will satisfy a sudden attack of hunger, reduce cravings for sweets and invigorate the body after excessive physical or mental stress. Mila suggests preparing it according to the following recipe:
- chop ginger root, fresh cucumber and mint - you should get 1 dessert spoon of each component;
- fill all products with 2 liters of clean water;
- Squeeze the juice of ½ lemon into the drink and add the citrus peel there.
The drink is infused overnight and drunk the next day.
Five meals
The scheme is as follows: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. During express weight loss, choose dishes that are steamed, grilled or baked in the oven. At the same time, their fat content should be minimal. I don't advocate counting calories because it complicates your lifestyle. You won’t sit in a restaurant and calculate the amount of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates in your food. But counting what you eat in grams is important.
Breakfast – 250 grams, snack – 150 grams, lunch – 220 grams, snack – 100 grams, dinner – 200 grams.
Mila Gritsenko's menu
Gritsenko avoids diets that create a lot of stress for the body and can do more harm than good. Her method is to replace high-calorie and unhealthy foods with light and healthy, but still tasty. When Mila cooks, she is guided by the principles of healthy eating and excludes fried, fatty, “heavy” foods. Even periodic consumption of harmful foods is strictly prohibited.
Be sure to read: The benefits and harms of water fasting
Under no circumstances should you eat fast food, baked goods, any flour products, fried foods, smoked and prepared sausages, cakes, pasta made from soft cereals. It is advisable to replace white sugar with cane sugar (just try to find real brown sugar, not just colored white). The amount of salt should be gradually reduced, but salt cannot be eliminated.
Mila replaces fast food with dishes based on her own recipes. You can eat grain bread and crispbread, porridge. Sweets include sometimes dark chocolate, marmalade and marshmallows. In general, everything is the same as in most other diets. True, with some peculiarities.
Gritsenko’s nutritional system is not a diet, but rather a way of life. The balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates is under special control. Fats are necessary for the body and cannot be excluded. In Gritsenko's diet, harmful fats are replaced with healthy ones. Their sources are fish, nuts, cheeses, olive oil.
In general, Mila Gritsenko is quite tolerant of fats and does not write the word “low-fat” in every recipe. So, according to her method, you can easily eat cottage cheese with a fat content of 5-9%.
To speed up metabolism, Mila Gritsenko recommends eating small portions. Breaks between such snacks should be 3-4 hours. With longer breaks, the metabolic rate begins to decrease, which will again lead to weight gain.
Eat at intervals of 2-4 hours
I don't like to tie breakfasts, lunches and dinners to a specific time. This is inconvenient because you may be at work, on the road, or traveling. The intervals between meals should be from 2 to 4 hours maximum. You need to manage to meet this time.
If you want to have a snack, for example, 1 hour after breakfast, fermentation will occur. This negatively affects metabolic processes and lymphatic drainage. If you eat later than 4 hours later, metabolic processes will slow down and the effect will also not be achieved. I even conducted an experiment. One of my clients decided that she would only have lunch and dinner. I agreed, and as a result, after two weeks she lost only 1.5 kg. At the same time, another client with similar parameters lost 5 kg on five meals a day during the same time. You can skip snacks, but you should definitely eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Plus a day - minus weight
A reasonable approach to organizing your diet and daily routine allows you not only to get rid of extra pounds. Such a system affects the entire body, bringing it undoubted benefits:
- the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract is normalized;
- excess fluid is removed;
- blood pressure decreases;
- the load on the heart decreases;
- waste and toxins are actively removed;
- metabolic processes are accelerated;
- immunity is strengthened.
The only disadvantage of Mila's diet is the inability to quickly part with unwanted kilograms. To achieve the desired result, you will have to systematically work on yourself and your body. But with each new day, the arrow of the scale will smoothly move down, and the body will acquire harmony and beautiful shapes.
Eat most carbohydrates before 12.00-14.00
Consume some foods before 14.00 (and for best results before 12.00 noon). These are breads, grapes, pears, bananas, beets, potatoes, beans, corn, all cereals.
After 14.00, make a menu of fiber in the form of watery vegetables, light fruits (oranges, tangerines, kiwi, pineapple, watermelon) and foods containing protein. By the way, watermelon is great for lymphatic drainage.
If you are not in the mood to lose weight quickly, you can afford a homemade burger on a bun made from whole grain flour (there are a lot of recipes on the Internet), but in the express program the products should be as light as possible.
There is no need to completely give up carbohydrates. A carbohydrate-free diet means a lack of energy, loss of space and a threat to the functioning of the kidneys and pancreas.
General rules
Mila Gritsenko’s life path cannot be called simple and easy; before recognition there were many ups and downs. From a simple desire to please a guy, a stunning career has developed, her story is inspiring, because overcoming the main enemy - yourself, self-improvement and development - these are the main goals that modern people set for themselves.
Mila's weight loss story began in adolescence, when at the age of 14 (height 154 cm) her weight reached 70 kg, and the guy she liked made it clear that she needed to lose weight. The first attempts yielded nothing, orange diets and fasting only led to negative results - fainting, dizziness, weakness, allergic rashes. But soon the universe smiled at the girl and gave her a loving man who accepted and appreciated her at any weight. 4 years after the wedding, a son was born and the situation reached its critical moment - 90 kg at 157 cm. Mila realized that something needs to be done to start lose weight. Her main condition was not to harm herself and her son, so gentle programs were used, the experience of using which became the basis for Mila’s effective diet.
Mila Gritsenko’s author’s diet is not an emergency technique, but a long-term, comprehensive weight loss system aimed at changing eating habits and lifestyle, while the following is important:
Mila's training with Anastasia Denisova
This nutritional system and rules helped Mila lose 36 kg in 5 months, then she began to help girls with similar problems, and soon realized that she could build a good career on this. The first stage was graduating from the Fitness Academy and opening a weight loss studio in Kiev, writing the book “Eat and Lose Weight with Mila Gritsenko,” holding seminars and developing nutrition programs. In the future - moving to Moscow and successful work with such stars as Katya Lel, Irina Slutskaya, Anastasia Denisova, etc.
The simplest possible snacks
Have a snack with a glass of kefir or 150 grams of berries (apples). The product should be one and light. You can indulge in nuts as your first snack. They are high in calories, so you shouldn’t get carried away. You can eat nuts no more than 1-2 times a week. An important principle works here: if you want to lose weight quickly, the diet should be stricter (no healthy sweets). If you are ready to lose weight slowly, you can sometimes allow yourself a piece of chocolate, Turkish delight, marshmallow, marmalade, fruit salad, cottage cheese and dairy products of any fat content.
"Roller Coaster Mode"
Allow yourself fasting and detox days once a week. And separate them into regular days with a five-day meal plan. Fasting days can be protein and carbohydrate. The latter are more difficult to tolerate.
Take a drinking detox once a month. During the day, eat cream soups, smoothies, vegetable and fruit juices.
I am against cheat meals during an express diet. This is confusing, and it will be more difficult to limit yourself further. But you can arrange a cheat meal as a reward for the 30th day. Because the habit of a certain diet will already be formed.
Contraindications to the diet
The weight loss technique is based on an integrated approach:
- Using only healthy natural products in the menu. The basis of the diet in this case is vegetables, fruits, lean meat and seafood. With this diet, the body receives all the fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and microelements it needs. In addition, there are no harmful effects of preservatives and other chemicals.
- Fractionality of nutrition. Including healthy foods in your diet may not always be a sufficient measure for effective weight loss. To normalize the functioning of all body systems, it is important to follow a nutritional plan.
There are few contraindications to the use of such a diet, but they still exist. You need to give up this diet plan:
- people suffering from diabetes;
- pregnant and lactating women;
- people with hypertension;
- those who suffer from various chronic diseases.
Last meal two hours before bedtime
Under no circumstances should you eat too heavy a meal after 6 p.m. A salad with cheese and chicken and a sauce of low-fat yogurt and mustard is already a heavy option. But you can eat chicken or fish separately. For variety, add a cucumber or tomato to your dinner. At this time, protein is best absorbed and does not block fat burning at night. The volume of dinner should be no more than 200 grams. Other options: cottage cheese, seafood, steamed protein omelette without salt. Casein always saved me in the evening. Mix it with kefir or milk in a blender, add cottage cheese for thickness and eat like yogurt. This dinner fills you up for four hours. This is a great idea for those with a sweet tooth (casein has different flavors) and those who cannot sleep due to hunger.
Start with cardio training
The best option for express weight loss is cardio training and aerobic exercise. For 30 days, take at least 10-12 thousand steps per day (download the Steps app).
Before morning cardio, eat protein; it will not block fat burning (for this reason, you should not eat carbohydrates before cardio). After 15 minutes of training, fats will begin to be burned (glycogen is consumed first). Walk at a fast pace uphill for 30-40 minutes. If you want fat to continue burning after your workout, don’t eat carbohydrates for two hours. Immediately after class, you can drink a protein shake.
No strength training in the gym
Many girls believe that if they go to the gym and start pumping up their biceps, triceps, and buttocks, they will immediately turn into a fitness guru. In fact, this is hard work (and not just one round of bulking and cutting). It is clear that you will not achieve such an effect in a month. Therefore, I do not recommend strength training during express weight loss. But you can go to the gym after: in a “dry” body, muscles are pumped much better and relief is acquired faster.
If you work hard while losing weight, the muscles will begin to swell out of habit, the weight will either remain stable or increase, and in a month you will lose a maximum of 2 kg.
Reviews about the method
Even experienced nutritionists consider Mila Gritsenko’s system effective and safe. After all, this does not mean fasting or a sharp restriction on products, but a gradual reduction in portions and a variety of menus, which allows you to saturate the body with essential minerals and vitamins.
The girl herself emphasizes that her system will “work” only if all recommendations are followed and sports are present in a person’s life - albeit in minimal quantities, but regularly.
In 5 months on such a nutrition system, Mila herself got rid of 36 extra kilograms and this is the optimal rate of weight loss - the body has time to rebuild and adapt to the new diet, the skin tightens, and exercise makes the figure contour.
Mila Gritsenko before and after losing weight
Mila Gritsenko’s diet is one of the most successful methods of losing weight. But if a person has a history of chronic pathologies of internal organs, then before starting it is worth consulting with doctors and finding out how safe such weight loss will be for health.
Monitor your skin condition
Regularly moisturize your skin with oils or lotions if your skin itself is oily. Olive and coconut oil make her more well-groomed and fit. Use a scrub twice a week (maybe before a bath) to remove the stratum corneum and speed up the renewal process. Mesococktails help remove sagging while losing weight; they improve skin turgor. Anti-cellulite massages are best done after losing weight or when you have two or three kilograms left to lose.
In addition to external work, there is also internal help. Drink collagen with vitamin C, fish oil - they nourish the skin from the inside. Olive oil, flaxseed oil and avocado oil also help. Don't forget about wrapping. I use Guam products or make a mixture of coffee, honey, and olive oil at home. Apply it to the skin, rub and wrap in film for 40-50 minutes - the skin will be velvety.
Important: when talking about these ways to improve the condition of the skin, I do not mean losing 60-70 kg, because there are situations when only plastic surgery can truly tighten it.
Text: Yulia Kozoliy
A complex approach
Working on herself, Mila became convinced that only an integrated approach works. Only a system of several components, which are:
- psychological work on oneself;
- healthy low-calorie diet;
- active physical activity;
- compliance with the drinking regime.
In the absence of one of these factors, all attempts to lose weight may be unsuccessful or will give short-term results. The same combination allows you to achieve sustainable weight loss without slowing down your metabolism.
