Saturday, March 8, 2014

Fitness nutrition for beginners



This is a massive topic. A topic that will take more than just one post. What you really need to grasp when you think about nutrition is that, nobody is the same. We all have different body types and our metabolisms all work differently. That being said, everyone can tweak their diet to get the results they need.

Conventional ways to dieting would be 5-6 meals a day, a couple protein shakes and maybe some vitamins here and there. That works for some people... It won't work for everyone though. I've tried many different diets in the past, from the conventional 6 meals a day, to carb cycling, paleo, and Intermittent fasting. To me what worked the best was carb cycling however that may not be the case for everyone. My body is very sensitive to carbs which I noticed from early on. In our Indian Community we have grown up on carbs, from rice to roti.

So this leaves us at the question, well what should I do? It's simple, but you have to figure it out. I'm going to focus on posting many different types of diets so people can choose something that works for them instead of fitting into a cookie cutter diet.

I'm going to start off with the basics of diet and nutrition.

Another very basic but important thing to remember is that it all comes down to math. If you eat more calories than your body can expend that you are going to gain weight, if you expend more calories than you eat, then you are going to lose weight. If you stay at maintenance, which means you burned just as many calories as you ate you will stay at maintenance then. Very simple but a concept many fail to remember.

So when it comes to foods and drinks what should you eat and what should you neglect? Well the simple ones are Soda and fast food. You should completely cut out all soda. It is not needed in order to make a strong healthy body.

Fast food is always packed with saturated and trans fats (which are not the good fats) and very calorie-dense. Fast food should be avoided, the occasional burger is not going to kill you, but this should not be something you are having a weekly basis nor should it be apart of your diet.

Soda is very harmful for your body in the large scheme of things, it is very calorie-dense, no nutritional value to you and it is dumping massive amounts of simple sugar into you. Soda cravings will be substantially reduced once you start sticking to water throughout your day. Make sure you get ample water and you are always hydrated.

Average cup of coffee has 95mg. of Caffeine.

Another area where people make mistakes is coffee. Coffee may look simple, but once you dig in, all the sugar and cream which is added to it can become a calorie-dense beverage as well. I stick to drinking black coffee at all times. I'm a coffee nut so I won't tell you not to drink coffee, but just be easy with it. You don't want to be tweaked out on caffeine all day and become dependent on it. Drinking your coffee black is a good first step on cutting those inefficient calories down.

Make sure you focus on your meals and the preparation. They should be traditionally cooked foods. Try consuming the least amount of junk food you can and try to eat healthy natural foods. These will be processed by your body much easier. A good rule of thumb is to eat foods that can be made by hand and not processed.

In the next section we will talk more about Macronutrients and how they work in regards to your body. Make sure you check out our recipe section to go over some delicious foods.

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