For anyone that's looking to succeed in their goals - whether they be muscle growth, fat loss, or generally just to stay healthy; you must really know what you're putting in your body. Healthy nutrition is an uncompromisable foundation for achieving real results. Yes a good fitness plan will help you, however it can only go so far towards your goals alone. Plus if you've got a decent fitness plan, but no idea about nutrition, then you're only slowing yourself down and making yourself lose motivation because you can't see any results. The people that infuriate me (infuriate me even more because I used to be one of them) are the ones that go to the gym, work up one hell of a sweat and really push themselves, to then come home and gorge on chocolate and shitty foods. It's a terrible thing to do but many people are culprits with this sort of thing. It's easy enough to do, my best advice would be to not keep junk food at your house. Now this isn't me saying swear off all of the foods that are bad for you, because that's just madness, everyone needs a treat every once in a while. Something that I, and many others that I know do; is allow themselves a treat day. For example, Ez (Fitness Made EZ) actually attempts to slip into a sugary coma every time he has this treat day - but that's fine, because he does it once a week, and trains fucking hard the rest of the week whilst being very careful with his nutrition. Also, people that think that not eating is the solution to losing weight, you're very very mistaken. Starving your body of essential nutrients is dangerous. If humans weren't meant to eat then they wouldn't be born with a digestive system. In the long run, the longer that you starve yourself for, the longer your systems are going to be eating into whatever muscle that they can find to and the less muscle you'll end up with. So if you're looking to lose weight and maintain muscle, or even just lose weight in general, please do not starve your body, just get smart about what you should be taking in.
It took me a long time to find out the real essential facts about nutrition, but that's because I had no help or guidance whatsoever, and I don't want others to be in the same situation. When you really manage to get your head around it, its really not as difficult as it looks either. Personally, I try to make sure I don't take in too many calories daily, I like to keep it below 2000, there's a lot of ways to get a decent amount of calories and still feel full at the end of the day, you just have to be careful and make sure that you know the nutritional values of the things that you're taking in. Think about investing on something like a calorie counter book, I did, for 4.99 its one of the most useful and worthwhile things that I have ever purchased. Its got nutritional details about every possible base food that you can think of. Once you've got yourself armed with something like that, then you can deal with your nutrition head on. For example, a lot of people will opt for a low carbohydrate, high protein diet when looking to do what bodybuilders call 'Cutting' - that's basically the process of really stripping off every inch of fat from your body to uncover serious definition in your muscles. While this approach is good and also definitely works, its not good for you in the long term. The main focus of weight loss with a low carb, high protein diet is water weight. It will also force your body into starvation mode; this is because your body likes to run on glucose/blood sugar, which is supplied by carbs. When your body doesn't get this, it feeds on the glucose and blood sugar found in muscle, causing a major breakdown in your muscle which simulates weight loss. Also, due to the increased amount of saturated fats in a high protein diet, it can cause heart problems, so basically, use that diet if you're looking to lose water weight, maybe if you're a fighter. However please don't try it for longer than a week or two, you'll see adverse effects.
The best advice that I could give to people, is to keep your diet well balanced and well informed. Watch your calorie intake each day, I'd say keep it 200-500 under your GDA, watch your carbohydrates, you don't have to pack them into your diet unless you're on an intense training program. Your protein should be kept at its GDA if not higher. Other stuff such as fats and fibre - be smart about. Try and make sure that the fats that you take in are essential fats such as the ones found in tuna, cod, broccoli, spinach, hazelnuts, walnuts etc. There are so many ways to get your essential fats. Also as some of you may have realised things like broccoli and spinach also help you to get your fibre intake, two in one! Any fruit or vegetable is a good source of fibre, plus fruits like bananas are packed with natural sugars and pure energy. Each morning I just have a cup of green tea or black coffee, with two bananas, and that alone makes me sail through my workouts with no difficulty whatsoever.
So now I've talked about food, lets talk about drinks. Honestly, the best thing to drink would just be pure, clean water - there's no extra additives, no calories, nothing to drag your diet down. However things like green tea, black coffee, and very weak cordial aren't bad for you. Drinks such as Coke, lemonade, and even fruit juice, are a big no no for me. Simply because they contain way too much sugar that your body doesn't need at all. Though I know that many people love their alcohol, particularly on a weekend, and being a student myself I know how hard it is to resist a good night out. So if you are to go out drinking, and this is still by no means telling you to go out and drink - try to stick to spirits and mixers; they contain a lot less calories than beers and ales etc. However if you're itching for a pint, go for Guinness over lager - this is for the simple reason of because it may seem heavy, it actually contains less calories than any other beer or stout.
Okay that's all on food and drink, obviously any questions that anyone has I'll be happy to answer. Just going to devote a bit of time to the subject of supplements. Obviously people with different goals will go for different supplements. I've said this many times before, but anyone who's looking to lose some fat - I'd recommend giving Warrior Blaze a go; it has definitely worked for me where some supplements have failed me. However you can't just sit back and be lazy whilst taking them, they rely on you as much as you rely on them, get a good diet and an active lifestyle and they'll help to boost your goals. I've also said before for protein shakes to try Promax because it really helps to put on lean definition. I'll also be trying a course of Syntha6 in the near future so look out for reviews on that. If you're going to pick a protein shake, just pick something low in calories and low in carbs and fat, preferably with a fair amount of amino acids and glutamine. Also try and get your hands on some BCAAs. I know for a fact that myprotein.com sell them for a very reasonable price. For those who don't know, the function of a BCAA is increase production of insulin, which mainly focuses on helping circulating blood sugar to be taken up by the muscle cells and used as a source of energy. So not only should they give you a boost whilst training, they should also stimulate increased muscle growth; helping you on your way to gaining some serious muscle. As for normal daily supplements (that is, the ones that aren't produced for the sole reason of helping fitness goals) I'd definitely recommend purchasing some Vitamin B tablets, they mainly help to keep your energy levels higher; Also things like Milk thistle (Helps to clean out your liver and kidneys and keep your systems healthy), Cod Liver Oil capsules (Helps to keep your joints healthy) and even just a Multivitamin supplement are helpful aswell when looking to keep a healthy lifestyle. For example, cod liver oil gives you extra support for your joints as you may put stress on your joints while training. Milk thistle helps to keep toxins out of your body and helps to keep your body working at optimum levels. Vitamin B helps to give you that extra energy kick when you need it and so on and so forth.
Well I hope that everything that I've run through in this post has been of use to people, its just mostly the information that I wish I'd had access to when I started training all in one place. The bottom line is, getting healthy and fit isn't just about dragging yourself to the gym every so often, its about a lifestyle change, to give your body what it needs to be healthy in all areas. As always, I'm open to any questions, suggestions or general feedback that people may have. If you've missed this information before you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Wrightyx and my Twitter username has now changed to @Wrighty__ - so you can either add me/message me on facebook, or follow and tweet me on Twitter. Failing all of that you can just drop a comment under this post and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Hope you all enjoyed the read.
Keep testing the limits!
Alex.
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