N.C. Episode 3: Avoid The Pitfalls by Sticking To Proven Principles
It seems as if everyone has the magic pill for a healthy life. Stick to the principles so you don't get scammed into a temporary lifestyle, robbing you of precious time, effort, money.
The Common and Potential Pitfalls
The First Principles of Nutrition should fireproof you from the BS that the internet spews. A common mistake is prioritizing the small rocks (meal timing, supplements) and taking the big rocks (calorie balance, macronutrient intake). I call this stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
Someone could take all the micronized creatine, the newest “fat burners”, the most up-to-date protein fad with beautiful meal timing (think of the old myth of drinking a protein shake directly after a workout or you’ll lose your gains)… And even then, if their calorie balance and macros are off… Well I doubt they would make any meaningful progress if any at all (minimal results).
Millions of people start new diets everyday with a sky high motivation, and many of them choose diets that aren’t based around the First Principles and don’t reach their goals. Some do reach their goals, temporarily—This is a form of the diet not working. I once had a client that said, “but x diet worked”… Yet was hitting me up because they put all the weight back on. It didn’t work. It didn’t last.
The most important principal is calorie balance, yet it is also the most neglected. Many people will prioritize restricting a certain type of macronutrient whether it is a fat or carb not realizing that the composition of food is less important, lower on the hierarchy chart.
Many of these problems in the realm of nutrition lead people to think that they “don’t lose/gain weight easily'“. This is a thought fallacy lead by their detrimental habits, lack of accountability, and even a lack of knowledge… Which is the point of me creating these posts on nutrition. While some, I will present this to them and they will still focus on their pre-workouts supplements and fat-burners… It is painful to see.
To recap, these are the most important principles, in order and you should focus on them as such.
A “Big Rock” is something that gives you the highest return on investment of energy. Would you rather spend 1 hour to make $100 or spend 1 hour to makes $7.25?
Adherence is King
Obviously above all, adherence to a healthy lifestyle in such a way it becomes who you are is pivotal. Many of these things work on a psychological level such as food composition affecting hormones to make one hungry, testing their will power. To combat this the person would eat higher foods in protein, fiber. Nothing is truly clearcut, but the focuses are laser cut.
Body Composition and Health are DIFFERENT
Now this chart is regarding body composition. When it comes to pure health, micronutrients is a somewhat bigger rock, but by sticking to mostly whole foods cooked at home, one can easily kill two birds with one stone.
This begs the question, should you get healthy first without worrying about body composition? Well, I’d have a strong argument that you could do both, but lets talk in theory for a second, one or the other.
Lets talk joints of an overweight individual. One is focused on health, not weight… Bunch of cardio, lower impact, stuff like that… What is happening to their joints? Getting damaged which leads to injury which leads to falling off the wagon once again. Even in people who are vastly underweight, if they are already under eating and they start training, their bones start wasting slowly because there is not enough calories for repair, also leading to injury.
If one must choose one or the other it is my honest opinion that they should tackle weight first. Just by getting to a healthy weight, one gets healthier not only from an internal standpoint, but an external… As stated previously, they don’t need to choose one or the other, doing both is the best approach.
Wrapping It Up
To summarize this post on the potential pitfalls of not sticking to the first principles are:
Diets to improve body composition should be focused on calories>macros>food composition>timing>supplements. To do otherwise would be stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
There are different types of diets that fall under the same principles, but stray too far from them and you are destined to failure.
Focus on becoming rather than doing for a short period of time. If you can adhere to it for it, this is a sign you’ll be healthy for life. Don’t get caught up in the scams.
Question everything.
Lost because you missed last episode? Here it is.
Also, here is another one of my favorite pre-workout recipes to eat 30-45 minutes before a workout!
