Diet, Stress and Mood

Here's a little tip for everyone who is busy and/or stressed - keep eating well! Many times when everything is going well it is easy to eat well, but once time gets short and stress levels increase it's very tempting to turn to the junk food for convenience. The problem with this is what you eat can effect not only your body composition (amounts of muscle and fat), but also your mood, energy levels, sleep and basically your whole life!

The times when stress is high, time and sleep are short are exactly when your body most needs good food packed with nutrients in order to cope - if you turn to the junk food at this time you may end up in a downward spiral of sugar spikes, cravings, mood swings, weight gain and poor health! Therefore next time your life gets busy, prioritize good eating and you will find you can cope with what life throws at you much better!

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You Are What You Eat!

By Alex Gold

I do a lot of good stuff when training people. I get them stronger, get them in better shape, fix postural problems, cure little niggling aches and pains and much more. But when it comes to body composition/fat loss results, most of the results are out of my hands. The training certainly gives you the gun and even loads it for you, but you have to hit the target yourself!

Why You Must Eat Right

You have heard the phrase, “You are what you eat” before, I am sure. The fact that is undeniable is that if you eating more calories than you require, you will be putting on weight. The correlation tends to be that bad food is more calorie dense than good food, so ‘eat bad – look bad’. No matter how hard you train you cannot train around a bad diet. Yes, you will get stronger. Yes, you will get fitter. You may even gain some muscle (those extra calories don’t have to be stored as fat), but it will be highly unlikely that you will lose fat.

Sometimes it is hard to get good food in – you have a busy week at work and find yourself grabbing food on the go, trying to make ‘good’ choices from what is available, but generally not eating in a way that is going to change your body for the better. This is understandable, and occurs all too frequently in today’s on-the-go society. However, ‘understandable’ does not mean ‘excusable’. Sometimes, if you wish to achieve the results you deserve, you will have to put a little work in.

Fail To Prepare, Prepare To Fail

There are a few little things that can help your chances of staying on track so much easier. If you have to decide when you are hungry what you will eat next, you have very little chance of succeeding long-term, no matter how good your intentions are. Therefore, you can do some or all of these tips to save time during busy times:

 Chop large quantities of vegetables at once, store in containers
 Pre-cook meats (chicken breast etc.)
 Make batches of stir-fry and chili to reheat when needed
 Buy a cool bag and carry food with you where possible
 Find healthy meals you can eat in restaurants
 Find ‘emergency’ solutions
 Ensure you have good food in the fridge when possible

By simply doing these little things, some of which require a little one-off research (what food can I have in Subway?) and some that you may have to do on a bi-weekly basis (chopping vegetables, cooking meat), you can take a lot of the pressure off when it comes to eating time. Rather than spending ten minutes every time you plan to eat preparing, it can be done in one go, saving huge amounts of time later.

This little tip is one of the most important variables for me between success and failure. When I am carrying healthy food with me, I no longer have the choice of, “what shall I eat next?” every time I feel hungry. In fact, if I make a bad choice, it will be even more highlighted by the fact I will come home still carrying healthy food. In this way, it is more effort to not eat well, which is exactly the kind of situation that will lead to success in the long term.

My diet isn't working!

Have you ever heard someone say something like that?

- "Oh, I'm on Atkins, but it's not working"

Ever asked the question -

- "Really? What are you eating?"

The fact is - most diets work. Some work better than others, but if you eat calories than you expend, you will generally lose weight. However, it's dependent on eating less than you expend!

Now, if your diet says 'Eat chicken and brown rice 6 times a day, every 3 hours' (and some bodybuilders will do this!), and you eat chicken and brown rice 4 times, chicken and white rice once and a hamburger and fries once, you're not on the diet! In fact, you have a 60% compliance ratio. If someone said to you,
"I don't understand, I've been driving in the right direction for 60% of the time, I don't understand why I haven't got where I am meant
to be going!" what would you say? Would it be along the lines of, "Of course you haven't got there, you're not following the map!"? Now think about the diet example above. Is the map wrong if you don't get where you wanted? Or is the blame laid squarely at the feet of the driver who
chooses not to follow it?

So next time you think, "why is my diet not working?", first look at the nutrition plan to see if the principles are sound (note: I recommend Precision Nutrition, see http://www.precisionnutrition.com/system.html for more details). If the principles of the nutrition plan are sound, the next step is to ask, "Am I following the plan?". If the answer to this is "No", or "Sort of", you're not following the plan, so don't complain about it not working. 'Get with the program', as they say in America, THEN if it doesn't work, look for factors outside yourself that may be inadequate!