There’s one part of long term fitness that is often forgotten by those eager to begin an exercise program. Any ideas as to what it might be? Well, if you’re here, you guessed it: nutritional planning! Proper eating is an absolutely essential part of your new campaign for a healthier body, and it’s one area that tends to not fall in place by itself.
Our nutritional planning program will help you come up with realistic meal plans that are tailored to you and your personal situation, your nutritional requirements and your dietary restrictions. No more trying to figure out what your meal plans should look like from a hundred different blog articles and a dozen pamphlets you picked up in the doctor’s office. Advice from someone who has a front-row view of your personal situation and a thorough education in the subject can be worth its weight in gold.
Why Nutritional Planning is a Key Part of Your New Fitness Regime
Before we start talking about what nutritional planning involves, let’s look at why it’s such an important part of your personal fitness. You can get by with a mediocre diet when you’re just going through life in your old mediocre way. You may not be eating ideal, but you aren’t starving, and the flexibility that’s engrained into your digestive system allows you to make do with almost anything.
When you start a new fitness program, though, everything changes. Demands on your body will go way up. Old tissue gets spent and used up. Messages go out to every corner of your body, telling it not only to repair the old muscle but also to make new; to gear up for new strength, new endurance, new stamina.
But you can’t make bricks without straw, and you can’t run a body regeneration program on empty. What’s more, you can’t even do it on the averagely good diet you were on before you began paying attention to this fitness thing. Bodybuilding and even general fitness has very specific nutritional requirements, and if you don’t pay attention to them all hard training ends up of little value.
It’s not that your body won’t slim the fat and make new muscle unless you offer it an optimal diet. It’ll do the best it can, co-opting a little something from there, improvising here, doing what it can to help you reach your new fitness goals. But each of those improvisations, each of those co-options, end up being stressors. What that means is that long term your body ends up weaker for the effort, and although you might have short-term success you can’t make any sustainable progress toward the body you want to have.
When you feed your body right, you’re:
- Providing important fuel for all the new activity your body is undertaking
- Providing building-block materials which your body needs to build new tissue and replace what is worn down
- Providing your immune system a boost so enemy warfare can be kept at bay, allowing your body to focus on new growth and power
- Eliminating toxins and other ‘negative edibles’ that could weaken your body
Providing your body with the nutrition it needs is no an extra, optional add-on to your fitness plan. It’s right, front and center: the foundation you’re going to be working on, the material you’re going to work with, and the tools that will make this thing happen right. So don’t skimp on it.
What to Expect From Your Nutritional Planning Session
So you get that; you understand why nutrition is so key. Still, if you want to eat better you could just start skipping the junk food aisle and begin spending more time in the produce aisle, couldn’t’ you? What good can one of our nutritional planning sessions actually do you?
A lot, actually. Pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is just hard. At your nutritional planning session you’ll share your nutritional habits with an advisor who will help you pinpoint both your strengths and your problem areas. You’ll discuss your special needs and limitations: your medical history, your dietary restrictions. Then you and your advisor can come up with a fully customized personal eating plan that will give your body every advantage. This plan can include supplements as well as the more traditional food recommendations; supplements are simply an alternate way to get vitamins and minerals in your system that might not get enough of through your normal diet.
Of course, attending your nutritional planning sessions isn’t going to do you any good if you don’t follow the plan you and your advisor come up with. Once your nutritional plan is written up the ball is in your court. You’ll have a realistic, attainable plan that can help you give your body all it needs for health, strength, and energy. All you have to do is follow it.
Your Nutritional Plan and Accountability
There’s one more thing that can help you make your nutritional plan a reality: share it with someone. If you live with people, talk with them about your new fitness goals, your nutritional plan, and why it matters. If you live alone—or if your housemates are unsympathetic—find someone else to talk with; anyone. It could be your pals from the small group fitness session. It could be the coworker you like hanging out with during break.
Ask this person—or people– to help keep you accountable by asking you for periodic updates and by reminding you of your resolutions when you’re likely to be tempted by circumstances. It’s much easier to say no to that second slice of cake if you know that a friend to whom you’ve boasted of your new resolutions is watching, and the opportunity to boast of a completely successful week can be a big motivation when you’re not feeling it from within.
How Long Should I Plan to Follow My Nutritional Plan?
You’ve done diets for a week, a month, two months. You can make a new year’s resolution to avoid chocolate for a month, and you might even be able to stick to it. This nutritional plan is different, though. It’s a plan for life, and it’s one you’ll want to keep following indefinitely; tweaking as your circumstances change, but never giving up.
That’s why it’s not about Spartan severity and Stoic resolve. You can stick to any diet for a limited amount of time by making your determination and willpower work for you, but if that’s all you’re hanging on with, it’ll eventually come to an end. We’ll help you craft a plan that you can live with indefinitely— a plan that leaves room for the occasional splurges but helps you keep focus no matter what may be happening in your life. Once you make healthy eating a habit, your energy levels and feeling of wholesomeness will be all the reinforcement you need to keep going full steam ahead—no teeth gritting here.