Nutrition

The power of nutrition is truly underestimated. The impact it can have on our body, on our physical as well as on our mental health, is immense and backed by an infinite amount of scientific research. Yet, are you doing anything to change it for the better?

To be fair, the modern lifestyle doesn't play in our favor. In a world where everything has to be quick and easy, we have an abundance of fast food around every corner.

The sad reality is, food loaded with sugar and unhealthy fats have become so normal in today's society, that we almost feel guilty when we eat actual organic food.

Self-Reflection Checklist

  • ?Are fruits and vegetables part of your daily eating?
  • ?Can you actually spend one week without soft drinks or energy drinks?
  • ?Does your meal taste more like salt than the actual food on your plate?
  • ?When was the last time you ate pasta without putting cheese on it?

Often times we don't realise how bad we eat. Processed food is dominating our kitchen and we don't even see it. The crazy thing is even if we do have food which is only a little or not processed, we still manage to denaturalize it with the aggressive style of cooking that we have nowadays.

Unfortunately, a lot of times these eating habits happen to be the source of many diseases and daily issues. From bad skin and lack of motivation to cardiovascular problems and cancer.

Assorted fruits and vegetables
Healthy cooking preparationYou Are What You Eat

Now what do we have to do to change those habits for the better? Well, we definitely have to understand what is meant by "healthy" and "unhealthy" food because although it can be obvious in some cases, most of the time it's not black or white. We also have to learn how to read the nutrition facts label to be able to know what's actually in it. And we for sure have to have the willpower to make a change in the first place.

The Nutritional Triad

When choosing what you eat, you balance three key variables:

Quality
Time
Price

In most situations, you sacrifice one of these variables. In the end, it is simply a matter of priorities.

The goal is certainly not to be perfect. This would be impossible. Nevertheless, what if you could feel better just by changing what you eat? "The fuel of the human body". Nutrition is what makes your body work and is the perfect complement to physical activity. When you give your body what it needs you give yourself endless benefits whether it be recovering better, being more motivated, gaining muscle, losing fat, feeling fitter, strengthening your immune system or boosting your concentration to name just a fraction of them. Forget about any diet you have heard of. Nutrition is a long term way of eating. The goal is to make it enjoyable and sustainable.

Nutritional Supplements

You probably have heard of this in relation to the fitness industry. Especially in bodybuilding the marketing for supplements is omnipresent. Whey protein, Casein protein, BCAA, Mass gainers, Fat burners, ..., we all have seen them in the gym, in the supermarket, sometimes even in scary XXL packs. I agree that this is a controversial topic. Although popular in the bodybuilding industry and sometimes effective for muscle building purposes only, a lot of these products are probably rather useless for most of us and potentially may even cause more harm than good in the long run. I feel like "supplements" often get a bad name because of this. It can actually be very important to supplement our nutrition, especially nowadays where it becomes more and more difficult to find nutrient dense food. However, I'm talking here about a different type of supplements.

The modernisation of the world has certainly many good points and made our lives a lot easier with endless opportunities. Almost everything is possible nowadays. However, if anything is suffering because of it, it's nature, and with it is our nutrition. Industrialization and pollution have made it more difficult for us to get sufficient amounts of essential nutrients through food alone. Today's lifestyle has dramatically decreased the nutrient density so that in order to get the same benefits of eating a "healthy" food, we need to eat so much more of it than before. In other words, eating an apple now doesn't provide near as many beneficial nutrients than if you had eaten the same apple 50 or 100 years ago. Our bodies on the other hand still need the same amount of nutrients to function correctly if not more due to the modern way of life. That's where supplements can become useful and help us get adequate amounts of important nutrients.

That being said, a supplement will never replace good nutrition! As its name says, it's supposed to supplement an already good nutrition to make it even better if you want the extra benefits.

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Important Notice

Never start taking any nutritional supplement without doing your own research or discussing it with your medical doctor first.