Fitness Food
Arguably the most important aspect of fitness aside from the actual physical workouts is the food you eat to maintain sufficient energy levels and stamina.
It's all well and good to have a fantastic workout regime all worked out and a daily exercise plan in place, but without the right fuel to keep you going in the right way, problems may be on the horizon.
The thing most seasoned bodybuilders, athletes and sports people know only too well is that the must feed their bodies the correct balance of nutrients and bulk food to not just keep it going, but to keep it building strength and vitality!
What Must You Eat?
The main constituents of food that is optimized for the exercising body are protein, good carbohydrates and healthy fats. These must be balanced with the right levels of dietary fiber and liquids to allow the body to metabolize it as efficiently as it can.
This allows the body to make maximum use of the nutrients it is getting and to help it to build muscle mass as well as strength. This is of course necessary to enable continued and increasing activity over time.
What Must You Not Eat?
The most serious athletic people will be very strict about what passes their lips and what is avoided at all costs. It can be a good idea to take notice of what they avoid so you can mimic their diets as best you can.
The obvious things to shun are processed foods, bad carbohydrates (mostly foods made from refined white flour), sweet things like candy, chocolate, ice cream and similar and all foods and drinks containing any artificial sweeteners or sugar substitutes such as HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup).
That completely rules out just about any sweet treats that most people love to snack on and all flavored drinks like soda, cordials and sports drinks.
Ready Made Diets
A lot of people that start on an exercise program are doing it to lose weight and get in shape. Because of that, the mindset is to eat less to create a negative calore balance and force the body to burn fat.
In some ways that is understandable, at least as a starting point. However, the kind of low calorie, ready-meal types of diet like Nutrisystem for men and women, Medifast, Jenny Craig etc are really only good for the short term.
For the longer term, it is necessary to eat the right amount of food in order to enable the body to increase muscle mass through exercise. If that doesn't happen, then as soon as the exercising stops, the weight will return, often rapidly!
So by all means start things off by doing a meal replacement diet if that fits with your lifestyle and then progress as your exercise level increases to eating more protein-rich foods in order to build muscle. That will keep the body burning fat even when you're not exercising.
That's because greater muscle mass needs more energy just to justify its existence! That's good news because it means that while the body is at rest, the muscles are still using energy that must be taken from the body's stores of fat.
Eating for Health
The bottom line of all this is that no matter what kind of exercises you are doing and what your food plans are, you must keep in mind that eating as healthily as possible should be the most important thing. The body needs certain food groups for maximum performance and maintaining a healthy constitution.
The healthier the fuel, the healthier the body!
With this in mind, the best plan is to plan your meals around a professionally constructed diet sheet that takes into consideration your exercise routine and planned increase in workload over time.