Sunday Story…What

The why is simply this: to fulfill the mission of being as fit as humanly possible at whatever age I may be. But what does that really mean and what does it take to achieve that goal?

It means you must be aware of all aspects of your physical life. For our purposes today, that is what we are focused on. Should you be balanced and emotionally sound, intellectually stimulated, and relatively stress free? Of course you should. There are 3 parts of this physical puzzle that must fit together to fulfill the mission. Diet, Rest, Exercise…diet is first.

DIET aka Nutrition

“80% of your results in the gym are dictated by what you do in the kitchen.”

The food you eat is critical to being healthy. The food you eat is directly related to your ability to perform in the gym and perform throughout the day in your life. Your mental processes get inhibited when your brain isn’t fed right. Your physical abilities are diminished when your body isn’t fueled properly. We should all know this by now. You can figure it out for yourself if you don’t believe me…how well do you perform when you are hung-over? All that alcohol and the resultant sugars affect your brain and your body and not in a good way. So let’s extrapolate that data out a bit…other sugars may have a similar affect. Putting chemicals in your body (like alcohol) may have deleterious effects on your body. We just are not aware of all the other crap we are pouring into our bodies.

My stance on diet is simple: Eat Real Food. Food you can identify. Food that doesn’t require a label. Food that grew from the ground, food that was raised the way nature intended it to be raised. We have been fed (pun intended) a bunch of lies when it comes to food. Some of those lies were honest mistakes, made by people working off erroneous information. But many of those lies came from economic interests, and people who had a vested interest in making us consume a product.

One of the biggest lies is this: Eating Fat will make you fat. Eating a low fat diet will create a healthy body. Really? So in the last 40 years we have seen the American (and now the world) health picture improve? NOT! Diabetes and obesity are rampant and this is the first generation of children not expected to outlive their parents. You need fat, you need protein, and you need carbohydrates in your diet every day. How much of each should be determined by your activity level and other factors. Right now I eat a lot of natural carbohydrates…rice, potatoes (sweet and other), dates and other fruits. But right now my activity level is off the chart high.

Here is your Diet program (also known as the Stop Eating Crap Diet)…Eat meat and vegetables, healthy fats (olives, avocado, coconut), a little fruit, a little starch, some seeds and nuts in quantities to support activity but not to store fat. NO SUGAR. Avoid grains, dairy, and legumes. Grab your plate, put a portion of meat on it (about 4oz. or 30 grams of protein) and fill the rest of the plate with green stuff. Simple and easy. Repeat every time you eat. Some protein, some veggies do it for 30 days and call me. We will tweak it after that. Oh, and lay off the wine (or keep it to a glass a day and no, you don’t get to save them up for Saturday night!).

Next week…Rest!

Namaste

John Mariotti
www.crossfit-odyssey.com
www.martialartsnevada.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com