Many people think regular exercise is the crux of all fitness, but it isn’t the only dictator of physical prowess. There’s an increasing focus on nutrition throughout the health and fitness world, as nutritionists are only beginning to unravel the important benefits that different eating habits and ingredients can bring to the table. What people eat actually has more of an impact on overall health and fitness potential than exercise. It’s important for weight loss, most specific sustained fitness programs and attentiveness to many diseases and health conditions.
Nutrition Fuels Exercise
Food is the fuel that drives exercise and without the right foods, it’s impossible to exercise effectively. Not only does food give your body the energy that it needs to be able to exercise effectively (in terms of amino acids, ATP formation, key vitamins and minerals that facilitate energy transfer), it also helps to promote recovery.
Carbs and proteins help recovery, but different proteins and carbohydrates have different effects. For example, if the proteins you eat don’t have a high concentration of the first limiting amino acid, you will not be able to get much help from the other amino acids. The right carbohydrates and proteins help to repair exercise-induced damage to muscle fibers, as well as promote training-induced adaptations to muscle fibers and fill up those depleted energy sources.
The amount of protein and carbohydrates that you need to fuel your exercise will depend on the individual body and the type of sport that you’re doing (most notably whether it is endurance or strength focused). Regardless of how much food is needed, it is the fuel that enables effective exercise to occur and effective recovery to make muscles stronger.
Digestive Problems Prohibit Fitness Goals
No matter how determined you are, if you can’t maintain exercise because of stomach pain, or you feel too tired to complete all your reps, you won’t be as successful as you might have hoped. Intolerance Lab illustrates the extent to which many issues can link back to food intolerance – from IBS and bloating to insomnia and fatigue, as well as many more. About 20% of the world has a food intolerance and if you’re not eating food that is good for your body, you can experience joint pains and asthma, which can severely impact your fitness goals.
Weight Loss is Diet Driven
Not only is diet important to fuel fitness, it also contributes greatly to weight loss. Experts state that weight loss typically is 75% due to diet and 25% due to exercise. Diet is the key to your weight loss goals.
To reach your weight-loss related fitness goals, diet needs to be your focus, or else your progress can be completely stunted. This has been underlined by a specific meta-analysis of over 700 individual studies looking at weight loss. The analysis found that the majority of people saw the main weight loss come from diet – not just eating less, but eating healthy foods that your body can metabolize easily.
Ensuring that you know what your body can eat is crucial when you’re eating a balanced diet and trying to get or stay healthy.
