Albet Einstein, the daddy of the physics world, didn’t really get too much wrong (it looks like he came up with Crossfit before Greg Glassman too). He definatly nailed it on the head with the following quote:
”The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results’‘
This can be applied to any and all aspects of life, but today we will nail it to nutrition. How many times have we heard stories from friends or family member who chat on about the latest diet fad they are doing and loosing lots of weight?
Commonly these diets fall under the ‘eat less, exercise more’ dogma. Sure this will help most people shift some weight, starving yourself of food and exercising to excess will result in weight loss, though not the healthy kind though. These approaches are never sustainable and dont help people form a healthy relationship with food, as a result they cannot be followed long term as people burn-out, get sick, injured or just simply cant maintain the high-stress load these diets place on the body. They then return to their previous ‘normal‘ diet and the weight returns. Yet they will repeat this process again, and again, and again but just yield the same results….INSANITY!
“A recent article by top doctors at the Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins, and UCLA, and approved as curriculum for registered dieticians (RDs) by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the single largest meta-analysis of health and fitness ever conducted shows that conventional “eat less, exercise more” approaches are far less effective than going Primal, harm our health, and lead to long-term fat gain 95.4 percent of the time.“
So in 3 easy steps you can overhall your diet in a healthy, sustainable way:
1 – Eat real, whole, natural foods (meat/fish, nuts/seeds, plenty of fruit and vegetables), anything not in this list is gone!
2 – Plan. Its fair easier to avoid convenience foods and snacks if you just have a little preparation. Make a weekly recipe list and go do the food shop. Cook/freeze meals for the week ahead, pack healthy snack options like nuts, fruit and some dried meat. Its simple and doesn’t take much effort.
3 – Make it easy on yourself. Dont keep the unhealthy foods within easy reach! Clear your cupboards of all the junk and stack them with the good choices, the same goes for your desk at work!
Now for those of you who are pretty good in your diet the above is probably second nature, so here are a couple of tips for you:
1. Educate yourself. Dont believe everything you read or hear. Listen to podcasts, follow some blogs and read the odd research paper every now and then.
2. Experiment. There is now one size fits all diet, we should use the paleo/primal approach as a template and explore the possibilities around it. For example some of us can handle dairy better than others, some of us need a higher carbohydrate intake etc.
Workout of the day
A: Back squat
5 sets of 5 reps
B: 12 alternating intervals of 15 seconds on/30 seconds off:
Max rep squats
Max rep box jumps 24/20″
Max rep burpees
