Ok I’ve jumped the gun on this. It was meant to be posted up on Monday but what the hell! Today is the first instalment in your weekly nutritional updates.
In 2011 I discovered that especially with our Group Personal Training customers, you were all working incredibly hard both within your sessions and with your homework, but falling over when it came to probably the most vital thing that was standing between yourself and your goals. Your nutrition.
Our One on One Personal Training clients seemed to fare much better than our Group Personal Training clients in the nutritional stakes as they have the opportunity week in, week out, to pick our brains with the most important questions they have on nutrition, and trial what works and what doesn’t work for them. Wether it be for weight loss, increased performance, muscle gain or just over all well being they can ask the questions and get the answers they need. This has seemed to be a little harder to do effectively in a group environment.
So this is the first step in trying to fix this.
We want this to be interactive! We want you to ask questions here on our blog in the comments section so as others can see the issues you are having and we can respond to them. I’m sure many others have the same questions and problems you are having. Don’t worry you can do it anonymously if you wish! Just make sure you come up with a witty screen name, not something like “Ben Dover”.
So to kick things off, one of the most important things we believe you need to focus on for long term health and wellbeing is to eat unprocessed whole foods.
This means eating as little out of a packet as you can. Stay away from anything that has had human intervention wherever possible as a basic rule. Or as I’ve heard a few times, stick to the outside isles of your supermarket. Never stray down the inner isles as they are evil! The outside isles are where you will find all of the best things for your body, fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and fish.
Why should you aim for unprocessed whole foods? Well, through the processing process of most foods some of the nutrtients are lost and part of your bodies job in digestion has been done for you. So essentially all your digestive system needs to do is act like a bit of a vacuum and suck up whats left over. Foods that are very highly processed have an extremely fast update into your blood stream.
This might sound like a good thing, and in some small cases it is. As a general rule however it is a bad thing. To put this in context think of a bag of glucose lollies, one of the fast things your body can absorb. The reason a small child is bouncing off the walls almost immediately when they eat a whole packet of glucose lollies is because it has had an immediate effect of their blood glucose levels and they are running on rocket fuel! Their small bodies have less of a potential to lower that blood glucose level as quickly as an adult and therefore some crazy behaviour will be the result and possibly a headache for their parents. What we want to do, particularly for those of you who are after weight loss is provide you with a slow and constant drip feed of energy, not a shot of “Nos” like the glucose lollies.
By eating foods that your body needs to work for to get energy out of the digestion process itself will slow the release of the nutrients into your blood stream. This way you can hopefully use these nutrients more effectively as they are released.
So for long term health as well as for weight loss and body fat regulation we need to make our bodies work for their nutrients. We need our digestive systems to stop being sluggish. We need to eat whole foods.
A good way to think of it is this. Can you imagine what you are eating as a living thing? A beautifully cooked salmon fillet isn’t too hard to imagine as something that was swimming out in the ocean a day or so earlier, a birds eye fish finger how ever, well thats a bit of a stretch…
So for week one of your training for 2012, week two of this new year, your focus is to be on eating as unprocessed as possible, wherever possible.
Eat real food and your body will see really benefits.
Remember we would love to hear your comments and we will respond as best and quickly as we can to help you with your eating. Don’t forget next week we will have another topic for you to focus on so any suggestions would be welcomed!
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