Nutrition – The True Key to Fitness Success

Nutrition questions are the ones that I am most often asked about, and in all honesty, nutrition is the biggest key to unlocking what looking and feeling good are all about.  I would have to estimate that nutrition makes up 80% of the equation when it comes to truly looking/being fit – with the other 20% being pretty evenly divided between INTENSE exercise and proper recovery.

Proper nutrition really isn’t a big mystery either.  Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats!  For some reason, everyone wants to over complicate what to eat.  I’m a pretty simple guy when it comes to nutrition.  Heck, if not for my trusty microwave oven, I would likely have starved years ago.  I’m not a chef by any stretch of the imagination, and I honestly obtained my best results by just keeping it simple:  Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats (are you sensing a theme here?) 

In the next few paragraphs, I’m going to share with you EXACTLY how to eat to get that super-fit body that you crave.  Ok, pay attention, because here comes the important stuff.  First and foremost, develop a GOAL.  Just like your workout routine, you need to develop a goal that you want to reach.  Come up with a 30 day, 6 month, and 1 year goal.  Spend a few minutes really thinking about them, and then WRITE THEM DOWN.  Somehow, the act of putting pen to paper takes it from a thought, and transfers it into a REAL thing.  Now that you’ve done that, lets look at the next important things to follow:

• Figure out what you need to do to reach that goal.  First and foremost, you need to know how many calories you should be consuming during the course of a day (regardless of your goal being weight loss, weight gain, or maintaining your weight).  For those of you that are Beachbody Club members, make use of the tools section for caloric needs calculator (if you aren’t a Beachbody Club Member, contact your coach and ask them to plug your info into their caloric needs calculator).  This is one of the most valuable tools on the website, because you can plug in your personal information regarding height, weight, and age, as well as the Beachbody workout program you are doing.  The calculator then tells you the projected  number (of calories) you need to consume to safely lose weight, as well as telling you the needed calories to maintain your weight.
• Now that you have that number to shoot for, its time to continue your map of success by using a food journal to really dial in.  For all of the people I coach, I strongly recommend using www.fitday.com .   Its a FREE food journaling tool that allows you to enter all of your food for the day, tracks the total calories consumed, AND breaks all of those foods down by categories of protein/carbs/fats.  I typically urge people to use this tool for a solid two week period, because that way you get a really good feel for what XXXX number of calories really is (because most people tend to drastically under-eat, which is just as bad as over-eating).

Now, so far we have figured out our caloric target zone, and we have the tools to really track the intake to make sure that we’re really on track for reaching our goal.  What do I do next?  Now comes the time to put that information to use.  First, eating frequency:

• Ideally, you want to eat 6 small meals per day – spaced out by eating every 2.5 – 3 hours.  If you were able to schedule the perfect eating day, you would take your targeted caloric number (for example sake, we’ll say 2400 calories), then divide that by 6 (giving you approximately 400 calories per each meal).  Make sense so far?

Just as a general guideline, I try to avoid eating within 3 hours prior to going to bed.  This way, the last of your consumed food is pretty well digested, and less likely to be stored as fat.  On those days where I’m looking at going to bed in about 30 minutes, but I’m REALLY hungry, I’ll mix up a couple scoops of whey protein powder (with water) and drink that.  Protein tends to give you a very filling effect, and it will be pretty easily processed by your body while you are sleeping (without being stored as fat).

Next, lets talk about water consumption.  Since our bodies have such a high composition of water, its important that we drink plenty throughout the day.  The general guideline that I follow is 1 liter per 50 lbs of body weight.  Water (aside from being necessary) also helps to keep the toxins flushed out of your system.

Now its time for some tips to help you stay the course and reach your goals:

• After you’ve made your plan and committed to reaching your goal, get rid of all the junk food in your house.  Clean out the fridge, cupboards, and secret stash locations for all the garbage (come on, I know you keep a stash!).  With the bad food gone, head to the grocery store and replace the junk with clean healthy food choices (the top 2 tiers of Michi’s Ladder are full of them!  In fact, if you ate the foods contained in the top 2 tiers of Michi’s Ladder, you would consume a near perfect diet).  You can access Michi’s Ladder in the nutrition section of the Beachbody Club (again, if you aren’t a member, ask your coach to email you a copy – or better yet, become a club member – its WELL worth the money).
• Tell your friends and family what you are GOING to accomplish, and ask them to help hold you accountable.  Its amazing how much easier it is to reach a goal when you have your friends and family helping you to get there.
• Start a message board thread for your workout program and POST your daily food intake!  Somehow, when you post what you are eating for the world to see, it makes you work just a little bit harder to stay on track.  And your great example will also help you to motivate others that are going through the same thing.  Before you know it, you have an entire group of people working toward completing a goal.  People helping people – that’s what Beachbody is all about!
• Use Post-It notes.  Put them up on your fridge, your cabinet, your computer at work, the microwave, ANYWHERE that you encounter temptation – it sounds silly, but it really works!
• Lean on your coach for support.  We, as coaches, are all here to help you – so if you are struggling, we will gladly lend a hand to get you back on track – whether its giving you a needed kick in the pants (so to speak), or sharing in your success – we care about you and we are determined to help you succeed.

After a few weeks of eating clean and getting rid of the bad habits, you’ll find that you’ve adapted to your new healthy lifestyle.  The junk food that ran your life before will no longer have a hold on you, and you’ll see your cravings for it diminish more and more in time.  You deserve to be healthy, happy and fit!  Do the right things today, and they will always make for a better tomorrow!

Your friend in fitness,

~Mark

A DAY AT THE GYM

So, I wanted to share some of the observations I made while I was at the gym today.  You see, most of the time, I workout at home to my Beachbody DVD’s, but for the better part of the last month, I’ve been out in Massachusetts spending time with my Father (who has been ill).

To add a little variety to my usual routine, and to get out for some fitness related socialization, I decided to join the local gym.  Its a pretty standard gym, much like you would find in any city – free weights, machine weights, cardio equipment, and some group fitness classes.  And, let us not forget, the GYM CLICK – you know, the ones you see in there day in and day out, that do a set of bench press, then go into their little huddle with their gym buddies and talk about how much they bench for the course of the next 10 minutes before loudly grunting out ANOTHER set – and of course repeating.

Well, me being the hardcore, super-intense Tony Hortonite that I am – I walk in the door with a PLAN.  Today is a cardio day, and my goal is incinerating calories in a big way.  So, after changing into my usual workout clothes I head out and eyeball the Precor AMT100i elliptical machine.  I had never used a machine quite like this one – ellipticals, oh yes, but not like this one!  THIS machine is the Cadillac of Ellipticals – great on the fly changes to your stride length, the ability to switch from striding to a stair climbing motion, oh yes, and let us not forget…….enough resistance to make you feel like your waist deep trying to run in cement!!  Yeah, that’s the one.

So, with heart rate monitor on and running, I jump on the machine, set up my intervals program (for 60 minutes), dial in the resistance, and get BUSY!!  Now, I’m 39 (turning 40 in October), but I KNOW how to burn calories, so within 2 minutes, my HR (Heart Rate) is already hitting the upper 160′s.

Being on a machine, I have plenty of time to either A) Watch Regis and Kelly on one TV.  B) Watch ESPN Sportcenter on the next closest set.  or, C) People watch.  I bet you can guess my pick – yup, C.  I always find it somewhat entertaining to people watch (regardless of where I am).  I find people’s habits and behaviors interesting, so why not be a fly on the wall and watch them (besides, I’m WORKING HARD, so talking is out of the question…..aside from short 4-5 word grunts)

Directly beside me to the right, a woman gets one of the other two AMT100i machines.  She’s wearing her spandex pants, tank top, and Jane Fonda sweat band, all ready to get into the action – and then, she plops her PEOPLE magazine down on top of the display and so begins the barely forward movement of her legs as she meanders mindlessly through the pages of the magazine.  I look over at her as she glances my way, sweat now pouring off of me like a lawn sprinkler, as she wrinkles her face, but politely smiles as I give her the friendly “nod” with half grin.  Then, back to her magazine and slow, boring, pace of her “workout”.

A few minutes later another woman arrives and steps up onto the elliptical beside woman #1.  She’s not on the AMT100i, she’s on another Precor machine – this one doesn’t have the arm attachments (which, by the way, increase your workload by up to 30%).  She’s dressed in a similar fashion to woman #1, but her magazine du jour is Women’s Day.  So, as she steps up on the machine, locks her arms straight down on the hand-rails (relieving the load from her legs) and starts to slowly stride, she starts conversing with woman #1, and the two of them fall into a slow flat pace as they gossip about everything from pregnancy and menstrual medications to how they manage to sneak cigarettes inside the house so their husband’s don’t discover their secret habits.  Awesome!!  Why oh why did I not bring an i-pod?!  A few minutes into their conversation, woman #2 glances around woman #1, looks at me (at this point I likely look like a ripped snow man melting in the desert heat) – shoots me the polite grin, and then resumes her slow pace chatter and page flipping.

Now bored with my immediate area people watching, I focus my attention to the weight room (just beyond the cardio room).  There I see the stereo-typical muscle heads.  There are 3 of them in this flock today.  These guys are wearing their super stretchy pants (you know – the ones that we all actually thought were cool in the early 80′s!  Yeah baby, those!), and tank tops with the thin section through the back – so EVERYONE in the gym can see how huge there lats are.  Since they are, after all, at the gym to workout, I figured I would make use of the timer on my elliptical, and see just how much time they spent between doing sets.  Musclehead #1 does his set of curls, YELLING as he grinds out his 8 reps, with incredible body sway, and musclehead #2 helping him through the range of motion for the last 4 of his 8 reps!  Musclehead #3, he must have been the cheerleader, because he stood there yelling at #1, telling him how good his arms looked, reinforcing his already inflated ego about his strength.  I actually chuckled out loud by the end of the set.

Oh, and apparently, musclehead #1 was the only one designated to workout today – because he was the only one I saw lift a weight – and it was 12 full minutes from his first set to the second.  Musclehead #2 never lifted his own weights (as far as I could tell he just spotted #1).  And #3 – did an AWESOME job cheering.

What is my point to this big long rant?  I’m glad you asked.  Because this is the kind of thing that you see around gyms all over America.  People flock to the gyms, under the premis of working out, but are they really doing anything?  NO!  “I worked out for 2 hours today!” – No, no you didn’t.  You worked out for 10 minutes and talked for 1 hr and 50 minutes!

You need to put intensity into whatever it is that your doing.  Whether its on an elliptical, a Nautilus Machine, or free weights.  Push yourself with clean form, work as hard as you can, as fast as you can.  My personal measure of a good workout is this:  If I don’t feel nausea within the last 10 minutes of a workout, I didn’t work hard enough.  Conversely, if I puke, I went too far!

Your body is not going to change if you don’t push your limits.  Don’t go through the motions and kid yourself that you are doing anything productive.  Always, always, always push yourself harder (with clean form).  Make a plan, follow that plan, reach your goals, make new goals, and drive on!!  Socializing at the gym should be done with intensity.  Sharing in the love of intense exercise, and truly pushing each other to work harder than you thought you could – THAT is what gym socialization should be!    If you want to sit around and banter, go do it at Starbuck’s and leave the equipment open to those that WANT to make a positive change.

With hard work comes real rewards.  Dig deep every day, and BRING IT to the best of your ability!

Rant over 

~Mark