I am going to do my best and stay on topic for this blog with limited rants but I can’t make any promises as nutrition is the one passion I have that comes anywhere close to how much I love coaching or training. Over the years we have helped a ton of Vitality folks clean up their nutrition and I have seen 100’s of food logs throughout this time. So many of you are willing to make the sacrifices to eat healthier and in turn, help your children not become the next obesity statistic. I want to share with you some of the trends that I have seen as well as some easy ways to be successful in changing your nutrition habits. Many of you have the same fears, the same thought processes, and struggles that we have all gone through when trying to make this adjustment. We have all been there, trust me.
The first thing you need to realize is that FOOD IS A DRUG. I think many people have expectations that are unrealistic when changing their nutrition. They underestimate what their body is going to do when they take some of the sugar away. Your body is going to shut down, you will be tired, you will be cranky, you will have cravings you have never experienced before. I have never done drugs but I would imagine that these are similar feelings of a drug addict trying to get clean. A study of the brain showed that humans react in the same way to sugar as they do to cocaine which causes addiction.
The next thing you CAN’T do is go overboard with this change. You cannot go from 0-60 in a couple weeks. Most of us had years and years of nutrition blasphemy, and like I say with your fitness, it is going to take some time, don’t be in a hurry. Make small changes that are sustainable. Instead of cutting out every gram of sugar you ingest each day, how about you take out one food a month that you want cut out. Trust me, you will turn into someone you won’t recognize if you try and do too much, too fast.
Be reasonable. Don’t set your expectations too high. It is really easy to say, “I want to look like Dwayne Johnson or Brad Pitt or pick your movie star….The reality is, no you don’t. You don’t want anything to do with the amount of time, work, effort, sacrifice in order to obtain that. And that isn’t a BAD thing. It just means your not ready to trade in your life and family in order to get those results…because in reality, that’s probably the only shot we have. Your life would revolve around food and training, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. Few people can sustain this type of discipline without completely losing their mind and going crazy. Find the middle ground and hang out there. This means eat good during the week, do the best you can on the weekends and if you slip up, so be it. This is called sustainability. Trust me it is so much healthier to be 85% compliant with your nutrition than 100% for 5 days, 20% for 3 days, 0% for 2 days, 95% for 3 days….etc
Find someone that can keep you accountable. For me, I leave all the science of Nutrition to Jess. She is much more educated and can talk about the “why” behind everything. This makes it so simple for me, I have her as my go to, telling me a simple yes or no. I don’t need to have an explanation, I just need someone to keep me on track. Find that person for you and it will make a big difference. It also helps if that person practices the same nutrition habits as you do.
Don’t forget to practice what you preach. We all agree….or if you don’t by now, go haze yourself with burpees before you continue reading; is that one of the best ways to get on the right track with your nutrition is to have balanced, high quality meals, 4-6x/day. We all nod our heads in agreement that we are finally understanding that “Fat doesn’t make you Fat”. We realize that good fats are a necessity to our nutrition. However, so many of you subconsciously or otherwise, avoid fats, fully knowing the benefits of them! I cannot stress enough how detrimental low fat, high carbohydrate diets are. This is for a few obvious reasons. The first is that you are depriving your body of quality fats that are responsible for satiation, feeling satisfied and full, which leads to overeating and snacking. Another issue is that it is very difficult to get a high caloric output from quality carbohydrate sources. We end up falling short in our caloric output and reach our numbers with lower quality carbohydrates. Click HERE to look at 23 separate studies that looked at low fat diets and their effects on those who did it. For these two reason, here is a simple way to fix this:
Every meal you prepare, just ensure that you have a balanced plate. This means a protein (any lean meat you want), a fat (avocado, bacon, nuts, cook meals in coconut oil whenever possible), and a carbohydrate (for the most part, as much of any vegetable you want).
One of the biggest mistakes we see over and over again is the absence of fat and an overall low quantity of food within your diet. These two things will all but guarantee to limit whatever results you are hoping for. In my opinion, an unsuccessful diet usually has a pendulum effect. Once the diet fails, and trust me, it will fail if you are missing fats and not consuming 4-6 balanced meals a day, not only will you not lose weight, but you will most likely put more weight on due to the frustration and stress of the failing diet.
Jess is going to try and organize a movie night at Vitality to have a screening of “Fed Up”. This is an amazing film that exposes the lies we have been told about the dangers of sugar. Stay tuned for more details on this. You can click below to see the preview.
Click To Watch Fed Up Trailer
Staggering Statistics From “Fed Up”.
-In two decades, 95 percent of Americans will be overweight or obese.
-For the first time in history, the current generation has a shorter life expectancy than their parents did. The next generation will be even shorter and this trend will continue until we make a change.
-80% of the 600,000 food products contain added sugar.
-Of most concern with the rampid overconsumption of sugar is the increase in cases of obesity and Type-II diabetes among children, for whom early-onset diabetes was virtually unknown just a few years ago. And if current rates continue, by 2050, one in three Americans will have diabetes.
Here is some of the science behind why Sugar is so closely linked to obesity.
