— ARCHIVES —
Nutritional Choice of the Month -
September 2009:
“Nutrition & Fat Loss Fundamentals”
I make it a point to read something relative to my field every day. It’s typically something about nutrition, strength & conditioning, self-help, or business/finance. Recently, I reviewed an article titled “The Fundamentals of Nutrition and Fat Loss” by Strength & Conditioning Coach Nick Tumminello. This month, I wanted to basically highlight the points of Coach Tumminello’s article as a means of providing many of my readers with nutrition advice that truly works. I’ll quote selected pieces with italics and follow each quote with my thoughts that may provide some additional insight.
“What you eat and how you eat it can really make or break the effectiveness of your program, regardless of how good it is.”- Sadly, I’ve had clients over the years eat like sh--, yet train their butts off and saw little, if any results. Pairing excellent nutrition with excellent training yields excellent results.
“If you drop your calories too low, you will drastically slow down your metabolism and your body will start to feed off of muscle tissue. Not good!”- I’ve had clients both past and present drop their calories to a point they weren’t losing weight or getting stronger and this was the reason why. Adequate caloric ingestion can become a trial and error process, but be patient.
“A complimentary meal consists of lean protein, fibrous carbohydrates, and starchy carbohydrates.”- ‘Nuff said.
“…if upon finishing you feel full for hours, you probably ate too much.”- I consistently tell my clients to eat to a comfortable point of satiety. You should not feel stuffed or starving after a meal. You should be hungry every few hours, particularly if you’re training hard.
“A negative calorie food is a food that requires more energy to digest than it provides…a few examples of negative calorie foods are celery, spinach and lettuce.”- Consider adding the aforementioned vegetables to your nutrition plan if you haven’t yet.
“…the glycemic index only applies when the food is consumed by itself.”- Eating fruit (or any other item with a high score on the Glycemic Index) alone causes an insulin spike when eaten alone. Be sure to eat something with protein to complement the carbohydrate to minimize the insulin spike.