Eating Healthy is Your Key To Success

Eating Healthy

Thankfully, eating healthy has become a serious concern all over the world – we all want to live as long and as happily as we can. More often than not, the motive is usually to lose weight, build muscle, or both!

Since this site is about these two conceps, I’ll focus more on these aside from the known health risks of obesity including heart disease, type 2 diabetes or hypertension (high blood pressure). The benefits of strength training will also be left for another page!

Here're some of the topics this page gets into. Just click on the link to take you to that part of the page. Click on the "Back To Table of Contents" link at the end of each section to return to these links. Here they are...

• An Intro

• Strategic Eating

• Eat, and Eat A Lot

• How Much To Eat?

• From Your Body's Point Of View

• What Should You Eat?

• High Protein Diet?

• Some More Tips On Eating

• A Final Note

An Intro to Eating Healthy

Does this sound familiar…?

An average man wakes up in the morning, gets in the shower and starts getting ready for work. He skips breakfast and makes it to work in the nick of time. At lunchtime, he feels he’s having a great “diet” day since he skipped breakfast. So, he skimps on lunch to keep the "momentum" rolling. He eats a small salad with a few crackers and a diet soda. After all, it’s Thursday and he wants to look good at the pool party on Saturday.

He makes it home in the evening and is starting to feel really hungry, along with being exhausted from work (maybe because he didn’t eat anything!). He desperately wants to keep his weight loss goals on par, so he drinks a few diet sodas with a small TV dinner to make him feel full. He’s eaten a total of 600 calories for the day…wow! Now he’s really on the right track to losing weight…right? This is often how low carb/high protein diets work to help you "lose weight".

Wrong! Believe it or not, the key to losing weight and building muscle is food. Smart food. Eating right is the key to any fitness goal – whether you want to burn fat off your abs to look good with your shirt off, whether you want to make it through a hard day at work with ease, or even build muscle. The calories and nutrients present in food is what fuels your day, your workouts…heck, your entire life!

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Strategically Eating Healthy for a Strength Training Program

Before starting any sort of regimen, it’s important to consider your own fitness goals. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to build muscle? Well, in all honesty, most people think these are completely different goals. In actuality, they’re not! More muscle (or more toned muscle) means you’ll burn more calories throughout the day. Burning more calories than you take in means you’ll be losing fat and not muscle (assuming you’re eating healthy and getting enough protein!).

But the question is, how do you go about eating healthy? This has become a mystery across society, especially with the invention of expensive programs that claim to have the "secrets" behind eating healthy, losing weight and building muscle. The secret is that there are no secrets! I’ve mentioned many times throughout this website that there’s no magic pill, exercise program, protein powder or mysterious method to healthy living. Just good ole hard work!

Eating healthy is the best place to start with your strength training program. Lifting weights alone won’t get your very far. Yes, it’s a start and it’s better than nothing, but without eating healthy, you’ll simply negate the effects of your training efforts.

In order to build muscle, you need to feed them; and feed them the smart way by eating healthy. Everything you eat will effect how you look and how you feel along with how often and how intense your training sessions can be. There’s no way to get that lean, cut look without eating healthy – your muscles will be hiding underneath a layer of subcutaneous fat. The fact is that you can work out has hard and as often as you want (without overtraining!) and never look or feel ripped. Yes, you'll probably be strong and healthier than you would be otherwise, but these benefits will go by the wayside if you don't feel more confident. This is where your diet plays a part! And no, stopping in at McDonald’s on the way home from the gym to order a burger without the bun is not what I mean by eating healthy.

If you watch any TV, you’ll see commercials or programs based on success stories of individuals who are just completely ripped – inhuman even. They give their stories on how they achieved 2 or 3% body fat. They eat lettuce for breakfast, lunch and dinner, drink tons of water to keep them full (this isn’t really a bad thing, but too much of anything can be harmful) and chug down low-calorie protein shakes. But 2-3% body fat? Is this necessary?

Absolutely not! In fact, this is completely unhealthy. This is hardly enough body fat to support your nervous system, joint health or the production of vital hormones. Do not do this!

If you want to see the muscle definition you strive for, it’s more realistic to aim for about 15-17% body fat. This will ensure that your body can operate at a high level for a longer period of time – do not deprive your body! Supplement your diet with lower fat foods and you’ll see some results just with that (note I said lower - eliminating fats from your diet will actually cause you to store more fat).

I’m not saying you need to eliminate items from your diet that you enjoy – because this isn’t an idea that makes for healthy, happy living. Eating healthy just involves being conscious of what your putting into your body instead of frivolously stuffing yourself like the popular "see-food" diet.

But, on the other hand, eating healthy will also ensure that you’re never hungry – in fact you’ll feel satisfied all day long! No more hunger cravings because you’re currently starving yourself in a 1,000 calorie daily diet. You simply can't live on 1,000 calories/day – why do you think we can’t continue these diets? Our bodies have tons of physiological signals that "force" us to eat.

This is where cravings come from. Your brain tells your salivary glands and parietal cells of your stomach that you need energy and nutrients. So, your stomach growls, your mouth waters (or salivates) and now you’re ready to eat. Denying your body from these signals is what gets people into trouble – the cravings get worse and much more difficult to manage. You'll eventually start overeating to make up for the deficit. It’s simply not healthy or recommended. Eating healthy and following a balanced diet eliminates any such problem.

This is especially true for a workout program – you need to feed the machine you’re creating! Your car can’t run without fuel, your remote-control helicopter doesn’t work without batteries, and you can’t survive without food! Your muscles will waste away and you’ll be tired and malnourished. Who wants that?

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Eat a lot!

Part of eating healthy is eating a lot! To support an active lifestyle, a workout program, tough work schedule, or any kind of schedule, you should try to eat 6-8 small meals per day. Yes, I said 6-8. That blows away the old breakfast, lunch and dinner idea…well not really! Gorging yourself 3 times a day doesn't work - skipping meals is even worse.

This more frequent type of meal plan will spread your caloric intake throughout the day, providing you with energy when you need it. You won’t have energy peaks or valleys as with the normal 3-meal per day plan. For example, you may start feeling tired about an hour before lunch. You’ll start thinking, “Geez, another hour until lunch and I’m already starving and tired.” It’s difficult to make it through the day this way. It can really make you hate your job.

When you eat frequent meals, you encourage your muscles and body to use the food you’re taking in for energy. Why? Because your mind expects food to be coming in frequently! Without this, you’re forced to "conserve" your energy in the form of fat so you can use it later. It may seem counter-intuitive, but eating a lot forces your body to use the energy instead of storing it. And, as further incentive, it takes a lot more energy and time to burn off fat than it does to use readily-available energy from food.

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How Much Should You Eat?

Remember, 6-8 small meals per day. This doesn’t mean you can engage in a glutinous feast every few hours. This definitely isn't what eating healthy is about. Instead, they should seem like snacks throughout the day that’ll keep you satisfied. Don’t sit there at your desk counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until you can down your tuna sandwich.

The point is to listen to your body! If you feel hungry, eat. If you feel thirsty, drink some water. This is your brain telling you and your stomach that you need more energy. You can’t sit there with your stomach growling for long until it really starts feeling uncomfortable. Our bodies have evolved to take care of us by letting us know when we need to be fed! It’ll also tell you when you’re full, so be careful and listen to that also.

As I mentioned, spreading out your calories throughout the day ensures that you’ve got the energy when you need it. For example, what if something comes up about 30 minutes before dinner time when all of the energy has run out from lunch? Your buddy needs help carrying something into his house; your kid wants to throw the ball around before dinner. More often than not you’ll say, “Oh, crap. I’m getting too old for this.” Say goodbye to these days – by spreading out your meals you’ll have plenty of energy for these tasks, even during these seemingly off-eating times.

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From Your Body’s Point of View

As I mentioned earlier, eating healthy promotes calorie-burning. Again, when you eat more often, your body is more apt to burn calories rather than conserve them. This is because your body understands that you’ll be getting food soon, so it’s encouraged to burn the energy you’ve taken in instead of storing it for later use. Your brain says, "Here’s some food, I better store it since there won’t be another meal for at least 6 hours."

When you eat frequently, it’ll say, "Here’s some food again, there’s no use in storing it since I’ll be getting another meal soon anyway.” Don’t underestimate the power of your body – it’s an extraordinary being. The result? You’ll be burning calories at nearly the same rate you’re taking them in. You’ll lose fat and build muscle (assuming you’re participating in a strength training program).

Your body also produces hormonal signals determining how much energy your body stores or uses. These are inversely-related hormones called insulin and glucagon. Basically, when there’s a lot of insulin, there’s less glucagon. When there’s more glucagon, there’s less insulin. Just to be clear, insulin is a anabolic hormone that’s involved in removing sugar from the blood (in essence, a storage hormone as in the storage of fat or building larger molecules rather than breaking them down, a.k.a. anabolic). Glucagon has the opposite effect: it directly results in the breakdown of glycogen and fats for the purpose of providing energy and releasing sugars into the blood. Insulin decreases blood sugar while glucagon increases blood sugar.

Insulin is seen to be more important (or more popular) because it’s directly involved with the development of diabetes. When you eat frequent meals throughout the day, your insulin (and glucagon) levels also remain stable. This means you’ll defeat that "sugar crash" that can arrive shortly after a pop-tart breakfast. This crash is due to the rapid uptake of sugar from the blood due to a peak level of insulin, stripping your muscles and brain from energy supplies. Also, because your body won't have surges of insulin after a meal, you're less likely to develop insulin resistance, a cause of Type 2 Diabetes or Metabolic Syndrome X.

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What Should You Eat?

Eat Your Carbs!

Eating healthy will always involved eating carbs. Carbohydrates are your most important source of energy. I’ve already gone on a rant about low-carb/high protein diets (people are also into no carb diets! Wow…that's ridiculous) and how useless they are for any purpose, whether it’s to lose weight or to gain muscle. Carbohydrates are human fuel, just like 87 octane gasoline is car fuel. Mix it with the right kind and amounts of "oil" (fats and proteins!) and your machine, whether it’s you or your car, will purr like a kitten (and no, I don’t want to hear your meow). You’re going to be a well-oiled machine!

So, what should you eat? I like to use the 50/30/20 rule – 50% of your calories should come from carbs, 30% from proteins and 20% from fats. These are the percentages of total calories. I’m not saying that 20% of what you eat should be fats, but rather the total number of calories from fat should be around 20%. The only numbers that have the option of going down are the fats and proteins, although they shouldn’t drop too much. Carbohydrates should consist of the majority of your daily calories!

Furthermore, carbs are converted to energy much more quickly and easily than fats or proteins. Getting enough carbs will ensure that you’ll make it through each and every day, workout and softball game with ease and confidence. This also means that when you’re burning carbs for energy, you’re not burning up your muscles for fuel (the amino acids they’re made of can be metabolized for energy, just like simple sugars!).

Fat. There, I Said It.

What about fat? I hate that this word has become an adjective for describing an overweight individual. Fat is good for you! Just try to minimize the amount of saturated and trans fats you ingest. I wish people would understand this…

I’ve mentioned in other places that fat contains more bang for the buck – 9 calories per gram rather than 4 calories per gram for carbs. The main point here is that fatty acids are more easily converted to triglycerides for fat storage than they are for energy. In order for them to be used for energy, there needs to be a large deficiency in your glycogen storage along with an inability to break down muscle. A number of factors are involved with this.

Like I said, don’t eliminate fats from your diet either! Fat can be a good thing! It’s just too much of it that gets us into trouble. You need them for joint health, the formation of hormones, nervous system function and, well, energy! Taking in about 20% of your calories from fat (mono- and poly-unsaturated fats) is a great way to lop off a good chunk of fat in a relatively short period of time.

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So You Thought You Needed More Protein?

I’ve also gone on a rant about using more protein to build muscle. Guys at the gym will tell you that their protein shakes were key to benching 600 lbs and developing incredible abs. The truth is that this is false!

Believe it or not, most of us already get too much protein. In fact, many of us should actually cut back on our protein intake. Taking in more protein is just overkill, and may well be detrimental to your strength training program. All the excess protein you take in will be stored as fat, used for energy or excreted in the urine. It’s a waste of money, time and nutrients. Constantly getting full on protein shakes only inhibits your ability to take in the actual nutrients you need in a normal meal. I’ll try to contain myself here and leave all this talk for another page.

With that said, there’s no diet or supplement that’ll build muscle for you. Flush the Fat! Tantalizing Triceps! Forget it. Eating healthy, eating smart, working hard: all of this will suddenly make you the talk of the gym.

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Some Other Little Pointers

• Eating healthy is easier than you might think – there just needs to be a good balance! It’s important to get all the nutrients you need! Fiber, vegetables, fruits, vitamins and minerals: you need them all! Instead of going to the store to find items that contain all the essential nutrients (there’re over 50 of them!), simply enjoy a balanced diet! This’ll ensure you’re getting everything you need every single day. It may also be helpful to consider taking daily vitamin supplements - but be smart about it!

Eating healthy involves having a daily balance – you don’t need to balance every individual meal. The sum of your daily diet should be balanced! For example, you don’t need to stuff down some broccoli at lunch for your fiber if you’re already full. You don’t need to have another piece of chicken if you didn’t get much protein for lunch. Save it for later! The grand total at the end of the day matters most.

• With the same idea as the previous tip, your sources of proteins, fats and carbs don’t really matter. The "sort-of" exception here is fats since you shouldn't eat trans or saturated fats. But, in general, it doesn’t matter if you get your protein from a chicken sandwich or scrambled eggs – just as long as you’re getting it. The story changes slightly when you start thinking about protein shakes, since this is mostly incomplete or low-quality protein. The best-quality protein only comes from foods. What I mean here is that foods contain all the essential amino acids that your body needs to synthesize new tissue.

One other thing that people fail to realize is that there may be nutrients in food that we may not have discovered yet. For example, there’s some research indicating that chemical interactions between the actual food product and the individual nutrients in the food makes the nutrients more digestible and usable for the individual. You can’t get this out of a pill, protein supplement or energy drink. Not only does eating healthy already provide you with these nutrients, but you also get nutrients that you may not even know exists!

• Fueling your workout is important. This is, in fact, why I chose a maximum of 8 meals instead of the normally-promoted 6 meals per day. Eat a small meal, or snack if you wish, before and after your workouts. Why?

Well, you need energy to workout! Lifting weights, or exercising in general burns a lot of calories. Where’re you going to get these calories? From pre-and post-workout snacks. Your pre-workout snack, about an hour before you hit the gym, should be low in protein and high in carbs. This makes sense, right? You need carbs for energy! You don’t need much protein since you’ll end up just storing it as fat (it's not used as easily for energy and, since you haven't made micro-tears in your muscles yet, they won't be used for muscle repair).

About 30 minutes after your workout, choose a snack also high in carbs so as to refill you glycogen storages. In general, this snack should have a high-glycemic index (or causes your blood sugar to rise more quickly). No, this doesn’t mean eat ice cream, chocolate or anything else with lots of simple sugars; this just forces a spike in insulin levels, resulting in short-lived hyperactivity followed by a long-lasting "sugar crash" along with storage of excess sugars as fat.

The point is to refill your glycogen storage quickly so that you're able to continue your day and fuel your muscle-rebuilding efforts. Eating simple sugars simple forces your insulin levels to spike, resulting in the coveted "sugar crash". Again, eating healthy cures this!

Instead, try to stick with whole wheat bagels, cereals, rice, or similar items. These contain complex carbs that are broken down and absorbed quickly, but less quickly than simple sugars. Some researchers say that having this snack with a bit of protein may also be helpful to start the muscle-rebuilding process. I’d suggest maybe a bagel with low-fat cream cheese or a granola bar with peanuts. You get the idea. Whole wheat + protein!

Furthermore, after this snack, you should plan on eating a meal within a few hours to keep the repairing and rebuilding in action! If you start to skimp now, your body will simply feed off your own muscles for the essential amino acids to repair the micro-torn muscles you’ve damaged during your workout.

• But is eating healthy possible when also eating out? It’s easy to quit your diet now – everything just looks so good and you don’t want your buddies to think you’re "dieting". At least that’s how some of my friends are. Anyway, just try to avoid things that sound "crunchy" or "creamy" like extra breading, being fried, with gravy, buttered and crispy. These contains lots of those trans and saturated fats – stay away!

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A Final Note

Eating healthy isn’t rocket science – I’m sorry to say that most people don’t understand how to eat smart. Just understanding a few basic concepts behind how your body uses the food you eat will go a long way in deciding what to eat, when to eat it, and how much of it you should have. A smart diet is just as important as your lifting form, so don’t take it for granted!

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