Thursday, February 20, 2014

Your Nutritional Relationship


Nate Lewis CSCS
President,
US Sports Strength and Conditioning

First I want to give thanks to God and his planting of the Holy Spirit the source of all knowledge, for enlightening me in this subject. Believe me when I tell you, by myself I am not this brilliant! :)

Okay first a little back story as a Personal Trainer and now as a Strength and Conditioning Coach (I will explain the difference in another blog post on another day), I believe my biggest failing was to get my clients following and moving towards a solid, healthy meal plan.

I have all of the tools and especially the nutrition planner online at the US Sports Strength and Conditioning System, so why was it that only about 1% of my clients following their meal plans or even giving them a good look?

I could only point to myself and looking for what was wrong in how I was presenting the meal plan to them. So the first thing I did was pray asking God to give me the wisdom to help my clients better in this nutrition area which is at least 50% of your success in fitness regardless of your goal.

Well just a couple of days ago it hit me, or better yet God gave me the answer: "Why would anyone want to eat to lose weight?".  Does that not remove the fun out of eating, because lets face it good food is fun, taste good, feels good, to eat. Wouldn't the least bit of worry about whether this food or that food follows a regiment that is all of a sudden going to cause me to not lose the 30 lbs that has been plaguing me for lo' these many moons?

So I started to think: "What is food for? What is its main purpose?" Well simply put its fuel! Every function in you body needs energy and all foods, regardless of how nutritious they are provide some form of this energy.
Now I know for a fact with myself and many of the athletes that I train and consult with that the better quality foods you eat, the better you function on and off the field.  Now here is where it applies to all fitness warriors. The better fueled you are the easier it is to complete tasks associated with your workouts!

You see, food is fuel for your workouts and when you have the right balance of nutrients those high volume, high intensity workouts are a little easier to complete as you have that extra energy to complete them.

The better your workouts, the more energy you can put into them, the better your results. Weight/Fat Loss, Muscle Gain, and of course more energy.

In order to complete this it is foolish to eat less. In many cases you may have to take in more calories. And even if your eating habits are not the best add a variety of vegetables, fruits, lean meats to the so called: "crappy" foods that you may be eating now and watch your workouts get a little more doable as you have more energy and for lack of a better phrase "pop" in your muscles to complete workout related tasks.

Our clients work hard as I have most doing short burst, intense workouts where in 20-30 minutes, as any of them will tell you, we will do a workload that would otherwise take about 2 hours.  The best part about fueling for the workout as oppose to restricting what you are eating to lose weight is that you will essentially convince your body that is has the nutrients that it needs from foods so that it can use the excess body fat for fuel. Thus putting you in position to get leaner, more cut, ripped, etc., while taking the worry out about eating too much. Here is the almost 'magical' transformation that will take place. You are training your pallet to recognize where the best source of these energy nutrients come from so after some time you will actually crave the better foods without having to force yourself to restrict what you like to eat.

Finally, this revelation is no good unless you act on it. If you are like many that have fallen off your New Year's resolution, realizing that resolution thing is not the best way to change anything about your life, then I and the dedicated fitness professionals at US Sports Strength and Conditioning are here to help.

Whether you are an athlete getting ready for the upcoming season or a fitness warrior preparing to physically dominate the rest of your life, we have the plan, the tools, the knowledge and the desire to help you get on a lifetime of fitness success. All programs come with a free trial period so you have nothing to lose..well except a few excess pounds. I look forward to helping you!  

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