PrinceOfFreaks
New Member
Intro:
In a thread I had posted before, someone mentioned that they would enjoy being taught the basics of nutrition and fitness. I am here to give that a try. The problem with most nutrition information in the West, is that it comes from either biased, or misinformed sources. The "food pyramid" most of us learned in school was legitimately a marketing ploy by the agricultural industry in the USA to get people to consume more of their products. Wipe the "food pyramid" from your mind completely. The word "diet" has been overused, abused, confused, and is causing more harm than good. A diet isnt something temporary any more than a healthy sleep schedule is. You cant just sleep well for a few weeks or months and expect to feel rested for life. Diet is the same. You always are on a diet, it's just one built without discipline and correct information. Diets give you fish, but i am here to teach you to fish for yourself; design your own "diet". This is not to correct any medical disorders, but to help guide people to a healthy lifestyle and a healthy body. This is going to look dense, and feel overwhelming, but once you get past the confusion, the concepts here are simple enough for a 10 year old to understand, though the way it is written may not be.
The Basics:
Calories give you energy. Everyone has a set number of calories to maintain their current weight, that is decided by genetics and lifestyle. A short, skinny woman may need as few as 1600 calories a day to maintain, whereas a tall, muscular man may need as much as 3000. You can change this number with discipline and consistency. Don't convince yourself you are doomed to have high fat and/or low muscle just because you always have. Everyone should gain more muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even sitting on the couch. Yes, this applies to women, children, people with physical disabilities, etc. Yes, being muscular means you can eat 3 pieces of pizza, not 2. The impression that a healthy diet is boring, dry salads is just silly. Learning moderation can be harder than just cutting things out completely, but it is worth it. Cultivating discipline and a healthy physique does not lend itself to linear progress: expect setbacks, expect delays, but expect to get results beyond your wildest dreams if you stick through those low times. The beginning will be tough. You will be reading a lot of food labels at the grocery. You will be doing some math. After a year or so, you will intuitively calculate this, and the hardest part will be remembering exactly what you had for breakfast.
Macronutrients
All the calories we eat come from the 3 different macronutrients: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. Alcohol technically is a 4th source, but i don't count that, for obvious reasons. Carbohydrates are the easiest/fastest to digest, and anywhere from 55% to 30% of your daily calorie intake. Carbs are not bad, as long as they are in proportion with the others. Sugar is a carb. Try to avoid added sugar. It is more likely be converted to fat, essentially because it hits your body so fast, it cant all be used for energy, so it's stored as fat. If you'd like to know more about how fast different carbs hit you, research "glycemic index". Now on to fat. Fat is much more calorie dense per gram than protein or carbs, but this is not a bad thing. Fat is absolutely essential to almost every human biological process. The "low fat" marketing of the last 20 years has done irreparable damage on how people view fat. Low fat is bad. A product with low fat almost always adds extra sugar so it doesn't taste bad. A human with low fat intake will have major energy dips/hypoglycemia between meals, and probably some other minor health issues. Fat makes food more satisfying, so you actually eat less. Don't be afraid of fat, as long as it is coming from a variety of sources, and in proportion with carbs and protein. Protein is hard to teach simply. Technically, yes, it is used for calories, but is usually used to repair/replenish skeletal muscle. Turning protein into actual energy is very inefficient in humans, so your body will always try to burn fat or carbs first. Protein is also more complicated because some are superior to others. It pains me to say this as a vegetarian, but the highest quality proteins come from animal products. Meat, eggs, cheese, etc. There are good vegan combinations to get good ratios of different proteins, and for normal people, this will work just fine, but if you end up going hard on the exercise, you will be at a slight disadvantage for gaining muscle.
The ratios of the 3 macronutrients vary much by person. I go light on carbs, and its a pretty even 33%, 33%, 33% for carb, protein, fat, respectively (what portion of your daily calories come from which macro). This is just my unique chemistry, 50% carbs works just great for some. Most people are more along the lines of 40-50% carbs, 25-30% protein, and 20-30% fat. Finding what works for you will take much willpower to resist what you want, and instead getting what you need. Good luck!
You have spent years training your body to expect, enjoy, and process certain kinds of foods. Now it is time to retrain it, but with purpose. It is absolutely possible to train your body to crave fat specifically when it needs it, for example, not just because of an errant craving, caused by dopamine, the desire for pleasure, rather than actual biological need.
Micronutrients
Micronutrients are what you know as vitamins and minerals. I will admit I've forgotten most of the finer details of micronutrients. Their relationships within the body are very, very complex. The short version is if you take a decent multivitamin, eat a varied diet,, and have no health issues, you probably dont need to complicate things any further. Getting "extra" micronutrients is useless, and sometimes even harmful. The recommended amounts are highly disputed, so "extra" is hard to define. Deficiencies can be serious, but can be easily tested for by an MD.
Supplements
I would highly recommend against any supplements, especially in the beginning. If you change many things at once, you have no idea what variable is causing which results. Work on the food first. Most supplements are either complete scams, or highly overrated. The only ones worth using, in my humble opinion, are multivitamins, protein powder, caffeine, and creatine. None of them are miracle products, or even close, but can provide an edge after years of dedication give way to longer plateaus. This is a complicated section because it dives into more medical territory. Many prescription (or street) drugs have many weird interactions within the body and its hormones. Some make it much easier to gain fat. There is no drug on earth that makes it impossible to improve your physical health, merely ones that make the hill a little steeper. Testosterone supplementation can be a miracle for older men, but also has many negative side effects. I wouldnt advise anyone to take it, because i'm not an MD, but I would advise anyone to research it, and the other main sexual hormones, to better understand how they influence body composition, fitness, and diet.
Body Composition:
Your body does many thousands of small "transactions" a day. You burn and gain micro amounts of fat and muscle all day. You will only be able to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously at your beginning stages of exercise, if you are lucky. You generally need to concentrate on either gaining muscle, or losing fat.Unless you are extremely obese, it is best to do this slowly. The faster you burn fat, the faster you burn muscle, and the more your body will resist burning fat in the future. Slow and steady wins the race. I will go more in depth on this when I do the exercise section.
I'm Overwhelmed; Where do I start?
This was a lot of info. If you got this far, good for you. You did something good for yourself and your body, just by making yourself aware of the causes and effects at play in your body. You don't need to dive into the deep end immediately. A good place to start is just to observe what you eat, without changing anything. Honesty is key. Lying to yourself is a sure way to fail. Yes, you need to include half a can of coke. Yes, you need to count those 3 Chips Ahoy cookies. It may not seem like much, but trust me, it adds up, and can make or break a diet, especially in the beginning stages. Not to say you cant eat those things, but you absolutely must track them.
Start reading the nutrition labels on the things you eat currently. You dont even need to change it yet, if you're not ready. Just notice how very fatty things make you feel, or how high carbs and low protein makes you feel, for example. Keep track of how many calories you eat. Get a feel for how it all works. If you averaged 2200 calories per day this week, did you gain fat? If so, try 2100 per day next week.
Oh, and drink more water. Like, a lot more. Distilled or reverse osmosis (filtered) is ideal. Tap water in the USA is a lot less trustworthy than you would imagine, even in "nice" places. Being fully hydrated lowers your chance of pretty much every disorder or disease known to man.
I will do my best to check in and answer questions, but don't hold your breath on replies. I will also be writing up the basics on fitness/exercise/weight lifting in the next few weeks. Good luck guys. Treat your body like a miracle, and you will be rewarded with miracles. You may not be destined to be a bodybuilder or an underwear model, but you are absolutely destined to be your best self. Don't let yourself down.
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