Picture this…
You just got done breaking down with stress and you had a moment with some junk food…
And not a very good moment at that…it was ugly! 😉
After your food binge you tell yourself, “never again” and then you vow that you will go and “burn those calories off”. So off to the gym you go and you hop onto the treadmill for 1 hour.
After you hop off you feel so much better mentally but physically you notice that your joints hurt more than they should and you also notice that your energy quickly dips after the initial cardio high.
You go back to your normal lifestyle of moderately high stress with your work, and a comfortable 50/50 dietary ratio of whole food (real food) to processed food. After all you are busy and you don’t have the time to prepare and consume whole foods, so you turn to the convenience of highly processed foods to get you through your day.
You Are What You Eat…LITERALLY!
Have you ever had an experience close to what I just described?
Or have you ever been guilty of equating health with being “thin” or “skinny”?
Or maybe you have fallen for the conventional wisdom of “calories in vs. calories out”, and thinking that only thing you really need for health and fitness is to burn more calories than you consume and then everything will be fine and your health will sore.
But now I need to ask you a very honest question…
Have you ever stopped to consider that you are literally are what you eat?
Have you ever considered that your workout in the gym is only as effective as what you put in your body? After all when you go to the gym you actively break down muscle tissue.
And when you break down muscle tissue it has to be rebuilt.
So let’s now give your muscle two different nutritional scenarios’ to prove out our “you are what you eat” theory.
Processed Food Scenario…Your Workout Is Practically Wasted…
You just got done with a gut-busting workout complete with a “core workout” so that you can get your coveted “6-pack abs”.
You need to get back to work and you don’t have a lot of time so you opt for a protein bar that you picked up at the store earlier that day. It has 15 grams of protein which really grabs your eye. But what did not grab your eye is the fact that is also has 20 grams of sugar, processed oils that are highly inflammatory in your body, and it is packed with preservatives and additives that take a toll on your liver because they need to be detoxified.
You then go on with your day and continue to eat half of your nutrition from highly processed sources such as white bread, pasta, packaged foods, treats and bottled juices, coffee and tea.
Can Your Body Actually Convert This Food To a Fit Version of You?
Think about this just for a second…
After your workout your body needs to replenish itself with high quality proteins, carbs, and fats, but if you look at what your protein bar and processed foods actually give you it becomes increasingly clear that your proteain bar LACKS THE CAPABILITY OF GIVING YOU THE NUTRITION THAT YOU NEED TO BUILD MUSCLE AND STAY FIT!
Your muscles require high quality proteins to rebuild, but your protein bar only gave you a cheap soy protein that your body does not absorb easily. So if you get 15 grams from a bar and you can only absorb 25% of that….well….do the math on that.
You then go on with your day and eat 50% of your diet from processed food which is virtually devoid of sufficient protein, good carbs and healthy fats.
So the question then becomes HOW can your body possibly use that food to not only rebuild your muscles but your entire body?
Whole Food Scenario…Your Workout Makes You Stronger and You Get Healthier
Now let’s say that you get done with your workout and you start eating 90/10, meaning 90% of your diet comes from whole foods and only 10% comes from processed foods.
Now your body can LITERARALLY do the following:
-Repair muscle tissue
-Synthesize key hormones to keep you balanced
-Remove old cells and replace them with new ones
-Bump up your antioxidant capacity and therefore make you disease resistant
-Literally build EVERY LAST MORSEL OF DNA in your body
Needless to say, you are literally what you eat, so if you are trying to exercise without taking in clean, whole foods it will be almost impossible to get and stay in shape. In fact it can even be harmful to do intense exercise with poor quality nutrition.
Give Your Body The RIGHT Building Blocks…
This is quite simple. Give your body the building blocks that it really needs with clean whole foods that agree with your body and make sure that you are getting enough protein and healthy fats to rebuild the damage done by exercise. It’s really that simple.
What are your thoughts? I would love it if you would COMMENT here so that I can get your take!
Life is Good!
