Cleansing Your Diet: The 1st Step to Successful Training
Without a doubt, fuel is one of the most important characteristics in performance. I like to use the analogy of two cars to show this point. Let's say you have two cars of equal performance, make, model, and settings. Everything is identical except for the fuel in the cars. Car A has 86 octane, and Car B has 110 octane. Both run in speed and performance tests. It's no secret that Car B always comes out on top in each test. But why? Because Car B is using better fuel. And like cars, human performance is largely dependent on the fuel they put in their bodies.
Without going too far into detail, there are always some basics to diet cleansing. The first one is quite simple: avoid all bad fast food, and avoid as much fast food as possible. So no McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, Harvey's, Dairy Queen, et al. Quite simple. The next step is to avoid soft drinks, juice from concentrate-the juice made in cans-coffee, alcohol, sports drinks, and energy drinks. Your main beverage should be water, followed by milk. 100% orange juice is good to have in moderation too. The only juices you should be drinking are 100% ones.
When it comes to food, organic is always the better option, but usually not the most affordable. I have found though that at No Frills, President's Choice organic oats and vegetables tend to be cheaper than other vegetables. So look into PC Organic and try them out. Speaking of oats; you want to replace your morning cereals with plain oats. I like PC's Organic oats; they're cheap, quick, and far tastier than Quaker Oats.
Another thing you want to eliminate are sauces. So BBQ sauce, ketchup, Tabasco, and any other flavouring sauce should be removed. The reasonw hy is that they are high in fructose and corn syrup. Ideally, you only want to take in fructose from fruits-which is natural-not the un-natural fructos found in sauces. The high fructose concentration throws off insulin levels, causing spikes, which is not good. Avoid as much as possible. This also includes jams, and margarine.
The reason why you want to avoid margarine is because it contains hydrogenated fats. Always check the labels for hydrogenated fats. If it has a high concentration avoid it. Avoid them as much as possible. In some cases-such as milk, you will get 0.5g of hydrogenated fat per serving. In this case, it is ok in moderation, because it is small, and the other nutrients in milk far outweigh the bit of bad intake you get.
When preparing foods, you want to avoid frying. However, when you do fry foods, only fry them with olive oil. Olive oil is a good source of polysaturated fats, and is healthy for you in moderationl.
Probably the most important thing though is to avoid processed foods. So stuff like hotdogs, chicken nuggets, canned food, etc, should be avoided at all times. You want to eat whole foods as much as possible. Some people argue that it takes too long to prepare meals with whole food. Well, if it takes you that long, prepare the food beforehand and heat it up for lunch. Your body will love you for it.
As always, adhere to the rule: if it's white, it ain't right. That means anything made out of white flour, white sugar,etc, should be avoided. Eat whole grain bread, brown rice, and whole weat spaghetti instead of their white counterparts. It's far more nutrious, and it will result in less insulin spikes.
Also make sure to avoid artificial sweetners, salt,etc. Try and use natural herbs and spices to add to your food. It's cheap, and your food will taste better.Remember the 90/10 rule. 90% of all meals should follow this rule. The other 10% can be cheat meals, meals where these rules are broken in moderation. The less cheat meals the better. But sometimes you just need to break the rules because of circumstance. Do so sparingly.
Follow these guidelines and rules, and you will be ready to perform better and feel better. Moderation is key.
-Feint