This nutrition plan is here to help you learn more about good old fashion natural food and how the food we eat actually affects our bodies. The plan will help you create your own plan with the knowledge you will learn and can be used for a long term and permanent change to your diet.
With the internet nowadays full of dieting and supplement information, it can get very confusing with exaggerated nutrition data and much misinformation. The multi-billion dollar diet and supplement industry make a lot of money off many unsuspecting people, who either want to lose weight, gain muscle or become more healthier.
I’m not saying everything is a lie, but there’s just so much rubbish mixed in with it and it’s not even the money that makes my blood boil, but the fact that it’s people’s health and lives at stack here. Don’t get me wrong, even genuine research into foods can be misleading. For instance, if a study is set up to show the benefits of a particular food (often labelled nowadays as a ‘super food’), it can quite easily be achieved, but sometimes not all variables are considered and this can lead to misinterpretation of the results or an incomplete picture that doesn’t show both the benefits and detrimental effects of that foods consumption.
With that out of the way I decided to take a closer look at my knowledge and spend more time looking at, compiling and then implementing a nutrition plan based on the latest information and sound (not paid for) advice. I’m not saying that I’m an expert, nor do I hold an official education in nutrition, but I have been interested in the subject for 30+years and have done enough research and gained more knowledge than I can remember and in truth that’s great, because much of what we have been told in that 30 years has been total garbage, but at least it has given me enough knowledge to understand the new understanding that is much more closer to the truth about how our bodies work in relation to our diets.
From this point on I am going to use the words nutrition plan instead of the word diet. This is not a diet in the sense that people see the word to mean cutting calories and drinking some kind of meal replacement goo, no this is a plan that should allow you to consume nutritious real food hunger free.
Now I’m not saying it is going to be easy, nothing in life worth fighting for ever is and we all know the saying the ‘path of least resistance’, is the easy way out, but the reality is you will need discipline and dedication.
Humans and food
Humans have come a long way in a very short time, our innovative ways have given us technology with many advances in the processing, manufacture and farming which has given rise to a plethora and variety of foods, that were not present in our diets not so long ago. What you have got to remember is that us humans weren’t designed to put down their remote controls, get off their sofas, walk over to the fridge and grab whatever food we desire. No we are essentially hunter gatherers, don’t worry I’m not going to be asking you to follow some antiquated paleo evolutionary diet. No I’m merely pointing out that while our technological world has advanced, our bodies have not had long enough to catch up with our dietary changes and that is a problem.
So what can we do about it? Well firstly I assume you are reading this as you want to change your body composition, whether that be fat loss, muscle gain or both (yes you can actually lose fat and gain muscle, albeit at a slower pace than if you where to do one or the other). The basis for the nutrition plan is simply to provide your body with nutrients that it needs and not empty calories that the modern diet is so good at doing. You are going to be feeding your body what is needs, as opposed to what your brain wants.
Does your nutrition plan have to be complicated?
No it doesn’t. The trick is to have a nutrition plan that isn’t so extreme that it eventually back fires on you. For long term health and fat loss it needs to be a slow and balanced approach that doesn’t leave you hungry. Most calorie deficient diets will slow your metabolism down, following a nutrition plan, as opposed to a traditional diet will help you from crashing out.
Why traditional dieting doesn’t work
Diets designed to lose weight too quickly can cause you to lose muscle and not just fat. Most of these diets aren’t even healthy for you. While this can work extremely well to reduce weight at first, which incidentally may also be mostly water, it will eventually back fire and slow your metabolism, wreak havoc on your hormones, stop the fat burning process, make you hungry and you will suffer a loss of energy and muscle.
The human body is clever and in order to protect itself from starving, it will try to reduce the rate at which you lose weight. It will try to maintain its current status and fight back the calorie reduction. It does this by slowing the metabolism down and therefore you have to now work harder with your diet to lose more weight or even maintain your body weight. This can cause big issues once you come off the diet, which you will need to at some point due to the potential dangers and stress to your body that it goes through, not to mention the mental strain to keep going with such a diet.
Many people who therefore then stop such a diet, will actually gain back the weight they lost due to the slowing down of their metabolism and the body’s response to being in starvation mode. They will also have a high chance of gaining more weight than they lost. Another thing to note about low calorie diets for those looking to maintain muscle, is its effect on testosterone – it lowers it, not good for maintaining let alone building your muscles.
Why I feel this nutrition plan works
As mentioned before, I’m personally in favour of long term health and fitness that is sustainable. That means following a less dramatic shift in body composition and to use a gradual change system, that won’t slow your metabolism down. Studies have shown that traditional weight loss diets fail nearly 95% of the time due to the extreme dieting methods employed that just can’t be maintained long term. This is a much more sustainable long term nutrition plan and exercise proposition, a lifestyle change for the long haul, not a quick fix that may end up as a temporary fix or even a failure to be able to continue. Of course if you are obese, then priority must be placed on fat loss for your physical health first.
The truth is you need to teach your body to become more efficient, to get a regular metabolic rate with foods that will help not hinder your goals. You can do this with regular exercise and a properly setup nutrition plan, no gimmicks, no science (although much of the nutrition plan is actually based on science, in so far as the foods I have chosen have been shown to contain certain nutrients that I want for certain goals).
There’s no extreme dieting here, no low fat, no high fat, no very high protein, no low carbohydrate, carbohydrate cycling or yo-yo dieting going on, it’s just basic nutrition understanding and balance. You will need to educate yourself and become self aware nutritionally. Plain and simple. A plan that almost anyone can do and stick to.
At this point, I wanted to tie in a little about nutrition, exercise and the goal you are looking to achieve before moving onto the in-depth details of the nutrition plan.
What’s your goal?
Fat loss
I thought I’d start off with probably the biggest headache in terms of changing your body composition, and that is fat loss.
There are essentially three ways to lose body fat, you can either have a nutrition plan with a calorie deficit by reducing your calories to under what your body requires to maintain itself, but has the negative effects with slowing your metabolism as mentioned above or you can exercise to burn off the excess calories that you consume or better do both. As this website is mainly about keeping healthy and fit and transforming your body long term, I’d suggest following this nutrition plan guide and adding exercise as the preferential way to go and in fact will make the fat loss process much more productive for the long run.
The use of exercise to burn body fat approach isn’t new, the trick is to adjust your food intake and type of food as required to burn fat and either maintain or build muscle. Also note that having more muscle will help burn more calories, even at rest. Timing your meals, learning what foods affects what and creating a nutrition and workout plan for a long term lifestyle change is the key.
Muscle gain (weight gain)
Not everyone is looking to lose weight. I’ve also headed this as muscle gain, as I’m not keen on the word weight gain or bulking. Weight gain and bulking sounds like you want to pile it on with some fat mass. If you are underweight then this nutrition section is still for you, as it will allow you to learn about gaining sensible weight and not just piling on the pounds. Building a little muscle on a light frame can make a huge difference to your appearance and also benefit you physically.
Finally
There isn’t a separate nutrition plan no matter what your goal is. You need to just educate yourself on the best foods to eat and which to avoid, what certain foods can do to and for your body and create an easy to follow nutrition plan and make adjustments where necessary based on your goals. This plan is based on balanced nutrition with natural foods and takes no more time up than most people’s normal eating habits. Start your journey today! – return to the nutrition plan main page.
