What is the one thing that I hear most when I ask people about their goals? Come on, I’m sure you can get this. No, it’s not to finish third in the Charles Laughton look-a-like contest. Guess again. There you go! It’s losing weight.
Now, can you guess the one aspect of a good weight loss plan that people mess up the most? The thing that flat out kills most people’s progress? This one is a little bit harder. It’s their diet.
Whenever you have a goal involving body composition, the exercise plan, while certainly very important, is always secondary to diet. In fact, in many ways it is nearly impossible to tell the difference between a fat-loss exercise plan and a muscle building exercise plan. For example, in both you are using compound movements to either preserve or build muscle.
Why do so many people ruin their progress with their diet, you ask? Well, there’s lots of reasons. For one, it’s easy to go to the gym and do what your trainer tells you to do for a few hours a week while he’s there watching you. It’s much harder to break old habits when you are on your own and hungry. For another, we are bombarded with so much information about different diets and ways to lose weight that our eyes glaze over and we end up not doing anything different at all because we just don’t know where to start. What many people fail to realize is this: good nutrition is very easy. Yes, there are some concepts that are certainly very involved and difficult to understand and implement, but for the most part those concepts only apply to very specific kinds of people with very specific kinds of goals, such as high-level athletes. For the rest of us, it doesn’t have to be about counting calories as much as just using good common sense.
For example: what’s a healthier snack, an apple or a candy bar? What’s a healthier meal, grilled chicken or fried chicken? You see? It’s not so hard. (If you had trouble answering those questions, please call me immediately. You need some help.) What it really comes down to is just eating good, non-processed food as much as possible.
In my next few articles I will give you some basic guidelines to follow to set up a good diet. Remember, nutrition doesn’t have to be difficult, just smart and logical. If you have some questions about your diet, please call me or send me an email. Now, everyone eat their oranges and I’ll see you in two weeks.
-from the Castro Valley Forum February 10, 2010
Mitchell Rothbardt, CPT
MitchRothbardtTraining@yahoo.com
510-754-7113
Discover Your Strength!
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