Continuing on with the 3 Pillars of Fitness series, I will be discussing the importance of your diet and what happens if you skip this pillar of fitness.
First, I would like to start by saying I hate all fad diets you’ve found throughout the internet. (probably) OK maybe I haven’t studied all 1,359 fad diets that exist out there, but until I come across one that makes sense I will hate them all equally.
I know we are all hoping to discover a magical eating strategy that will let us eat whatever we want and deliver extraordinary fitness results, but it’s never gonna happen. The sooner we become OK with that, the sooner we can just start eating right.
To get the details on how to eat right go to my previous post “You can’t outwork a bad diet, SO DO THIS! ” at http://www.sarcastictrainer.com/?p=422#more-422
Why Should You Eat Right?
Lose Weight Lose Fat
The #1 reason to eat right is because you’re vain and want to look good. While I strongly encourage my clients to use fitness to maximize their quality of life, I know that most people just want to look good. Hey, if your vanity gets you to eat right we both get what we want.
When you’re eating right you should be able to lose 1-2lbs of fat per week.
“But Mike, Billy Bob was on the Heeby Jeeby diet and lost 10lbs per week. I want those kind of results!”
No you don’t. If you’re losing more than 2lbs per week you are losing lean mass (muscle). Nobody ever says “Hey Mike, I wanna lose 20lbs of muscle, get weaker, and feel terrible.” but that’s what happens with these “drop tons of weight fast” plans. Reason #34 why I hate fad diets.
Gain / Maintain Muscle Mass
The proper diet will allow you to maintain your muscle mass while losing fat. For most, this includes upping your protein intake.
“But Mike, I don’t want to eat a bunch of protein, get big muscles ,and look like a dude!?!?!”
My promise to you ladies “You will not magically wake up one morning with giant man muscles”. The men and women that achieve giant muscles work very hard to grow those muscles. It’s not something you will get on accident.
If your goal is to build big muscles, you can’t achieve that goal without the proper nutrition to feed those muscles. I haven’t written a post covering the diet plan for this particular goal yet, but I will in the future.
“I refuse to change my diet, but I want to be fit. What options are available for me”
If vanity is not your driving force for implementing a fitness program, you could have good fitness success without a proper diet.
“Whaaaaaaaat ?!?!?! Did a personal trainer really just say I don’t need to eat right to be fit?”
Kinda.
A couple fitness goals you can achieve without proper diet are:
Getting Stronger – Sure your strength improvements would be better if you included a solid diet plan, but you can greatly improve your strength (and quality of life) without eating right.
Cardiovascular Improvement – Again eating right would help here too, but you can make solid improvements in your cardiovascular performance (and quality of life) with a bad diet.
I always recommend using fitness to maximize your quality of life. Therefore it’s true you can improve your quality of life through fitness without eating right.
The fitness goal you can’t achieve without a proper diet:
IMPROVING BODY COMPOSITION – If you are like most people and just want to look good, it’s gonna be unlikely to happen for you if you’re not eating right. If you continue to eat how you want, you will probably fall into one of these scenarios:
- You’re eating too much – You might be able to build some muscle, but you will continue to gain body fat
- You’re eating too little – You might be able to lose some weight, but it will be mostly lean mass (muscle) and you’ll keep most of your body fat.
The easiest way to get frustrated and quit your fitness program is to make tons of sacrifices to get fit and end up with no results. So my goal for today is to let you know what to expect by including or not including a proper diet into your fitness program.