CHAPTER ELEVEN
Food and Your Future
SO YOU’VE COMMITTED TO A MEAL PLAN—NOW WHAT?
More muscle, less fat. A stronger, more reliable heart. Increased energy. Improved overall health. More years to spend amongthe living, and a better mind and body to enjoy those years. Those sound like some pretty good reasons to eat more healthfully. And after paging through The Powerfood Nutrition Plan, you have the tools to get the job done. The question now is this: Do you know where to go from here?
Starting today, your greatest challenge will be developing and maintaining consistency. That means following a nutrition plan, like the one outlined in these pages, that you can stick with. Adherence means not carrying huge, unrealistic expectations. If you expect to prepare and eat six meals a day, every day, you’ll soon realize that the simple processes of cooking and eating take up a lot of your time—time that you might not have. You’ll have to make some concessions to convenience if you’re going to stick with the program.
In this chapter, I’m going to review some things, throw a couple of new curves your way, and tie it all together for you. Let’s start with an idea I’ve discussed before and hammer it home once more: A diet based primarily on whole foods such as fish, poultry, nuts, fresh fruits, and vegetables is essential for long-term health. As you’ll recall, whole foods either haven’t been modified from their natural state, or, if they have, the alteration has been ever so slight. In contrast, processed foods have been modified significantly. A lot happens to a potato between the time it is harvested in a field and when you reach for it in French-fried form at McDonald’s. When fresh vegetables are canned, they pick up a lot of sodium. And who knows whether that cellophane-wrapped pink-frosted coconut pastry you got at 7-11 has any actual coconut inside?
Processing is designed to keep mass-produced foods looking and tasting fresh. After all, some of those Little Debbie snack pies will be sitting on the shelf for a long while before they’re eaten. That durability comes at a price: The more processed a food is, the less nutritious it’s likely to be, even when it has been “enriched” with nutrients. Processed foods tend to be dense in calories and lacking in things like fiber, so the benefit of enriching them is overshadowed.
Bear in mind that dietary supplements and so-called engineered foods, like energy bars, are also processed. “Engineered” implies a little more forethought and sophistication than processed, and that’s a useful distinction—a well-balanced meal-replacement shake is a lot different than a bag of Cheetos or Wonder Bread. The advantage here, and it’s significant, is convenience and portability. If your flight is delayed and you can reach into your briefcase for a protein/energy bar rather than hitting a nearby Cinnabon stand, you’ve saved yourself from a heaping portion of saturated fats and high-glycemic index carbs and replaced it with a healthy dose of protein. Many of these engineered products are also terrific for feeding your muscles before or after your workouts, when the nourishment you need is hard to find.
Still, you shouldn’t substitute supplements for whole foods. Despite all the research that goes into developing these engineered foods, they’re not superior to, nor do they replace, fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy, and other whole foods. Whole foods are the holy grail of sound nutrition for a host of reasons. Here are just a few.
Whole foods don’t contain artificial sugars, hydrogenated oils, manufactured fats, colorings, and other undesirables commonly found in processed foods—and in factories, apparently. Does it surprise you to learn that diethyl-glucol, a cheap chemical often used as a thickener and as a substitute for eggs, is a constituent part of antifreeze? Or that ethyl-acetate, found in pineapple ice cream and factory-produced candy and snacks, has been used as an industrial-strength cleaning agent for textiles?
Whole foods do contain whole grain complexcarbohydrates, whereas their processed counterparts are loaded with simple sugars. Released slowly and steadily into the bloodstream over the course of hours, whole grain complex carbs are the best source of long-lasting energy.
Whole foods don’t contain sodium-based preservatives. In ½ cup of fresh green beans, you’ll get only 3 milligrams of sodium. There are 400 milligrams in the same amount of green beans once they’ve been canned.
Whole foods do contain loads of vitamins, minerals, and other antioxidants needed to defend against the potentially harmful effects of the rogue molecules known as free radicals. Modern food-processing methods and an extended shelf life can strip many natural nutrients from foods.
Whole foods do contain water. Many guys don’t get enough of that substance as it is. If you’re eating more than five servings of fruits and vegetables daily, you’re getting a couple of extra cups of fluid for good measure.
Whole foods do contain plenty of phytochemicals, which scientists are starting to realize play a profoundly important role in fighting and preventing diseases, particularly cancer. These, like vitamins and minerals, often end up on the cutting room floor when food meets processing machine. For example, anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of the healthy phytonutrients found in extra-virgin olive oil get removed in the bleaching and refining that produces refined safflower oil.
Whole foods do contain plenty of fiber, both soluble and insoluble. The former comes mostly from beans and oats; the latter, from fruits, vegetables, and grains. By the time produce has been peeled, cored, cut, shredded, or chopped, a lot of that fiber is gone. Similarly, when wheat is refined, the germ and hull are removed. That eliminates not only most of the fiber but also the protein, B vitamins, vitamin E, lipids, and sterols. For example, enriched wheat bread has 79 percent less fiber per serving than whole-wheat bread.
Many natural foods contain literally thousands of these healthy substances, many of which science is only now beginning to understand. When a lab creates a bar, powder, or other engineered food product that contains protein, carbohydrates, creatine, or whatever, you’re missing out on all those unheralded nutrients and components. Also, because engineered foods don’t contain a lot of bulk from things like fiber, they don’t fill you up very fast. That’s great if you’re a 16-year-old defensive lineman trying to pack on size for football. Otherwise, it makes it really easy for you to overeat.
The Whole Truth
If whole foods are going to fill your new eating patterns, you need to figure out ways to fit them into your life. After all, when you’re in the middle of a workday, nine times out of ten it will be easier to purchase Pop-Tarts from the office vending machine than to retrieve a piece of fresh fruit, or yogurt with granola, or edamame and green tea. That’s the whole problem—unless, that is, you plan ahead. With that in mind, try these strategies for fitting whole foods into your fit lifestyle.
“Forage” as little as possible. Each month, set aside an allotment of time to buy the bulk of your food (excluding items that perish weekly or biweekly, like milk and eggs). Compile your list throughout the month, based on the food you reasonably expect to consume. When you go on this monthly shopping spree, you should have two goals: 1) to buy food in a large enough quantity that you won’t need more of that food until the next month, and 2) to spend less money by buying in those larger quantities.
Here are some useful tips when shopping.
Find a place where you can buy quality meat inexpensively, and buy boned chicken breast, fish fillets, and lean beef in bulk. Your local supermarket may or may not be the best bet. Compare prices there with those at butcher counters and discount clubs. Have these wrapped in portions for the freezer so that you can easily pop them out of the freezer and cook just enough for a meal.
Buy fresh vegetables such as spinach, lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli.
Buy frozen and canned vegetables as well, for those times when you run out of fresh vegetables. Frozen vegetables in particular are nearly as nutritious as their fresh counterparts; plus they will easily keep for an entire month, even considerably longer. Canned vegetables are okay but aren’t nearly as healthy as fresh and frozen veggies. As I mentioned, they’re also packed in salt. Read labels. Know what you’re getting.
Buy grains and complex carbs in bulk. Make certain you’re well stocked with brown rice, wholewheat pasta, yams, winter squash, potatoes, and oatmeal. Most grains will keep well over a month without spoilage.
Buy fruit. Keep in mind that oranges and apples will keep longer than grapes, peaches, and bananas. Also, buy canned and frozen fruit with no sugar added to keep a month-long supply of fruit on hand while avoiding spoilage. Frozen fruits are great choices for smoothies.
As mentioned, eggs and milk won’t keep an entire month. Pick those up at supermarkets, convenience stores, or mini-markets as needed.
Storage after forage. Once you’ve purchased your food, store it the way you’ll use it. Store chicken and beef in the freezer in the quantities in which you’ll cook them. Store some meat in individual servings for when you’re at home and want a fresh-cooked meal, and store the rest in quantities that can be cooked assembly-line style (see opposite). Freeze servings that you don’t plan to cook in the next day or two. Food that will be cooked the next day can be placed in the refrigerator to avoid freezing and thawing, without risking spoilage.
Fresh produce such as apples, bananas, onions, tomatoes, and potatoes can be kept on the counter or in a cupboard until cooked or eaten. Peaches, bananas, and avocados continue to ripen after purchase, so watch them for their point of optimal usage. Overripe bananas can be added to protein shakes.
Fresh broccoli, cabbage, carrots, and cauliflower can be refrigerated until needed. Within a week or so of your shopping trip, prepare and consume the fresh vegetables that are most likely to spoil.
Use assembly-line cooking techniques. Twice a week, set aside a few hours to do the bulk of your cooking. This will reduce overall cooking time, and you won’t have to eat food that’s been sitting in your refrigerator for six days, as you would if you cooked only one day a week. See “Tool Chest” below for some of the things you need to make this happen.
Break up your food preparation into three categories: proteins, starchy carbs, and fibrous carbs. That way all you need to do is mix and match these three components to create awesome meals on the go.
Prepare your protein. Protein foods require the most planning. Cook all the chicken breasts, fish, and red meat that you will need for all the “quick-prep” and “on-the-go” meals you’ll need until you cook again. These meats should be grilled or baked in the oven. For example: Use any Pyrex cooking dish with a cover. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Season four or five breasts in the pan, cover, and cook for 45 minutes to an hour. Check each breast to make sure it’s completely cooked. Make sure to cover and refrigerate any food you don’t plan on eating immediately.
Eggs can be hard-cooked and then refrigerated, making them an excellent on-the-go whole-food protein source.
Prepare your complex carbs. Prepare a large quantity of rice, baked potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Starchy carbs like winter squash and potatoes are good sources of complex carbohydrates, as are yams, brown rice, and oatmeal. They provide slow-burning energy so that fewer calories will take you farther during the day. Refrigerate your leftovers.
Cook a variety of vegetables. Vegetables such as spinach, cauliflower, and broccoli can be precooked, too. Steaming is one of the most healthful ways of cooking, but boil sulfur-containing cruciferous veggies like cauliflower and broccoli with the lid off. Boiling costs you a few more nutrients, but it will make the sulfur-containing vegetables taste much better. Cook vegetables individually, or mix them together, depending on your preference. Refrigerate your leftovers.
If you can’t cook, now is as good a time as any time to start learning. You don’t have to be Wolfgang Puck to cook good food, and the benefits to learning go beyond all the money you’ll save eating out less. In a study done at Tufts University, subjects who dined out were significantly fatter than those who cooked and ate at home. Restaurants are much less concerned about your health than you are; hence the insanely large portions in restaurants, the use of fattening sauces, and so on.
Don’t be intimidated by the kitchen. If you start slowly and master a few quick and healthy dishes, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you’ll progress from there. For starters, try this: Slice up chicken breasts or defrost some uncooked shrimp; dice onions, peppers, mushrooms, and zucchini; chop some garlic. Sauté the garlic in olive oil until lightly browned in a frying pan or wok and throw everything else in with teriyaki sauce; throw it over some Uncle Ben’s minute brown rice.
Congrats. You just cooked your first Powerfood Nutrition Plan dish.
This Is Your Lifestyle
Success is more than just procuring, preparing, and storing food in an efficient manner, although that will help you succeed. As you take the lessons learned in this book out into the real world, you need to make other aspects of your life mesh with your diet:
Reduce your stress. As advice goes, “Reduce your stress” sounds pretty useless. Who doesn’t want anxiety excised from their life? No one I know. You must realize that, if you’re stressed, taking the time to eat right may be a lot harder. First of all, you won’t be thinking about your diet when you’re worried about work, your relationship, or anything else. And second, stress naturally leads us to those “comfort” foods.
Luckily, if you start eating right, food itself can help that stress disappear, making it easier to eat better, and so on.
You’ll be keeping your brain cells well nourished; promoting the secretion of serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for maintaining an elevated mood state; and decreasing your chances of suffering from depression. Healthy fats from fish, flaxseed, olives and olive oil, avocados, nuts, and mixtures of carbohydrate and protein-containing meals all work together to help you cope with stress.
Focus on rest and recovery. Rest and recovery are vastly underappreciated and a crucial part of a healthy lifestyle. Again, when you’re rested and feeling good, you’ll be more likely to stick with your health plan. Sleep at least 8 hours a night.
Get regular dental checkups, and see your physician when you are ill. No matter what your food goal, this is a good idea. If you’re young and healthy, you may not see a doctor or dentist regularly. If you don’t and you’re within shouting distance of 30—on either side—it’s time to start. Even though the historical recommendation to have annual physical exams is still commonly a popular notion, the American College of Physicians, the AmericanMedical Association, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), and the U.S. Public Health Service have all agreed that routine annual checkups for healthy adults should be abandoned in favor of a more selective approach to preventing and detecting health problems.
In other words, just showing up at the doctor’s office with no specific goal in mind is not very effective health care. On the other hand, making sure that you get to the doctor when you don’t feel up to snuff may make a huge difference in your health; scheduling screenings for cholesterol, colon, and prostate cancer may save your life. These interventions can help your physician identify unknown conditions before they become serious.
If you are overhauling your diet, it is also a great time to measure your blood pressure, resting heart rate, and other bodily indicators. Track these numbers over time, just as you might track how much you weigh or can bench. Compare the results from one checkup to the next. Take note of large shifts between checkups. Look for trends, like a number moving in one direction for three consecutive tests or more. This is one of the best preventative health measures a guy can undertake.
An initial blood workup is particularly good for tracking cholesterol, which I’ve discussed in several chapters. Your doctor should test you for what’s called a lipid profile, which measures LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, HDL (“good”) cholesterol, and triglycerides, the fats circulating in your blood. You want HDL to be high, and your LDL, total cholesterol, and triglycerides to be low.
According to the Academy of General Dentistry, regardless of your age, you should see your dentist twice a year at 6-month intervals. Dental health is important for body health. A chronic low-grade infection like gum disease can have a shockingly big impact on the rest of your body, as discussed in chapter 6. Bacteria can enter the bloodstream through microscopic lacerations and promote blood clots. Cavities, abscesses, and other dental infections can also increase the risk of suffering a cardiovascular-related death. Mouth tissues may also reflect symptoms of other problems. Many diseases can be diagnosed in their early stages through an oral examination.
Don’t Go to Extremes or Expect Immediate Results
Whatever your goal, adjust your calorie consumption gradually and moderately. Depending on your goal, you shouldn’t be increasing or decreasing your calorie consumption by more than 20 percent at a time.
Another thing: No one expects you to eat every single item in every single meal plan in this book in the exact order and amounts. For some of you, that’s a recipe for failure. As long as you’re working out and eating better, you’ll meet your goals eventually. The closer you follow the meal plans, the more progress you’ll make. But if you eat only half of the things you’re supposed to eat, you haven’t failed. On the contrary—you’ll be much better off than when you started. Will you progress as fast as the guy who follows the program lock, stock, and barrel? Of course not. But you’ll be headed in the right direction.
In the same way, your diet won’t transform you completely overnight (although you’ll be surprised by how rapidly good stuff starts happening). You’re not going to be a grouch on Tuesday and then have a disposition like Mr. Rogers on Wednesday, all because of what you ate the night before. Nor would you want to. As your blood sugar becomes less volatile, though, you’ll be much less likely to fly off the handle in response to the stresses of everyday life.
The same thing goes with the aesthetics of your body. That spare tire around your waist won’t become a washboard overnight. It’s an imperfect process. After, say, 6 weeks of trying to put on size, take a gut check, literally. Most calories you add in search of size are absorbed as fuel for workouts and muscle growth. If your build is slight, if you have a slower-than-normal metabolism, or if you’ve been slacking off a bit in the gym, you may be witnessing gains where you don’t want them: around the waist, where men are genetically predisposed to store fat. It’s not a big deal; your body has entered an anabolic (growth) phase, and you’re almost guaranteed to gain a bit of fat along with that new muscle. If you’re uncomfortable with your belt-tightening, however, try pulling back the reins on your eating a bit. For whatever reason, maybe you’re one of those guys who need to add only 250 or 300 calories a day to gain size, rather than 500.
Learn How to Cheat Healthfully
Not being a perfectionist means cheating once in a while, too. Physically and psychologically, you need an occasional day to rest from the rigors of dieting. Loosening the reins on a strict diet now and then can actually help you stay on track in the long run.
Then there are the holidays, which for many guys amounts to a month-and-a-half-long cheating session. It’s easy to do what’s convenient and then repent with resolution come New Year’s Day. Part of what turns Thanksgiving and Christmas into a waistline wipeout is the tendency to replace the good stuff you normally eat and drink with less healthy alternatives. One day you’re reaching for a V8 to wash down celery sticks covered with all-natural peanut butter, and the next moment your hand is diving furtively into a canister of caramel popcorn in the office kitchen.
Part of avoiding those pitfalls, or getting back on track once they’ve occurred, is reversing the bad substitutions. Try some or all of these more healthful choices.
Drop the doughnuts and eat a whole-wheat English muffin smeared with peanut butter and jelly.
Walk past the holiday cookies and grab a handful of peanuts.
Say no to the mixed drinks and have fruit juice or a diet cola.
Replace French fries with baked sweet-potato fries.
Have oranges instead of candy.
If you know you’re going to eat too much over the holidays, another option is to use that time to gain muscle. Let’s face it: For many guys, good intentions notwithstanding, there’s little chance of you reining in your hunger during that time. Come Christmas, you may fit better in a Santa Claus suit than you do in your work suits. Because you’re going to eat like a horse over the holidays anyway, consider exploiting it. Prodigious eating can be more than a road to ruin; it can also be a way to gain size if you’re so lacking. Just make sure that along with the extra food, you get in a few extra workout sessions.
Speaking of roads to ruin, travel is another sinkhole that can swallow even the most carefully planned diets. Hitting the road—or, especially, going airborne—can seriously hinder your progress. No longer should your diet be at the mercy of the travel industry. Taking snacks along is a great starting place. Airline security can be strict, but most airports still allow packaged food through customs. So consider packing protein bars, granola, or even bags of nuts and dried fruit for emergency snacking.
In the air, you might want something a little healthier than the mystery food they’re serving for lunch. Carriers that do serve meals will have special food for vegans and passengers with high cholesterol or other dietary needs. Most people are aware of this service, yet fewer than 2 percent of airline meals are special-ordered. Airlines typically require only 24 hours advance notice for this service. Make a special-meal request when you book your flight. You can also take lunch into your own hands and pick up a turkey sandwich on whole wheat to take on board. (This is especially smart when you’re flying a cheapie airline that doesn’t serve meals. You’ll be the envy of your seatmates.)
At your destination, hit a market and stock your hotel fridge. When abroad, be forewarned: The quality of the food and water isn’t always up to par with the United States. Canned foods and bottled water are usually your safest bets. Avoid uncooked food, such as raw fruits and vegetables, and instead stick to cooked veggies and meats. Always ask for things well done and served either very hot or very cold.
Remember, too, that drinking plenty of water is one of the best ways to keep your body from losing its way on a trip. Airplane air is as dry as a desert, so drink even more water than you normally would. Unless you positively need a stiff Jack-and-Coke to endure flying, avoid the ultra-dehydrating in-flight alcohol consumption.
The Checkout Checklist
Before I let you go, let’s run through a final checklist, shall we? No matter what else you implement from what you read in The Powerfood Nutrition Plan, the following eight steps will allow you to build muscle, gain energy, and lose fat. These are all keepers.
1. Eat enough calories. The total number of calories you eat, as opposed to the type of calories you eat, is by far the most important consideration in weight management and general health. The composition of your diet matters, too, but eating fewer calories than you expend during the day is the absolute key to losing fat weight. For that reason, the most effective weight-loss programs combine a moderate reduction in calories with regular physical activity. In a nutshell, the key to fat loss is moving a whole lot more and eating a little bit less.
If you’ve ever eaten a whole lot less—say, fewer than 1,200 calories a day—you probably remember feeling lousy. That kind of dieting slows down your metabolism—something you want to avoid at all costs. As you should know by now, your body can still function on relatively few calories, but you won’t perform at peak levels. To stay healthy, your body requires a minimum of 1,500 to 1,600 calories a day. If you try to exercise on fewer than that, you won’t be able to work out at a high enough intensity for long enough to gain the weight-control or muscle-building benefits of exercise. Over time, your body will trade muscle for fat. As a result, your metabolic rate will slow even more, and no matter how much you diet, you won’t lose fat.
Remember, it takes muscle to burn fat. You need to eat enough calories to fuel your strength and cardio workouts, as well as the process of muscle maintenance, repair, and growth. When you don’t, your body recruits protein as an energy fuel, preventing it from doing its primary job.
2. Eat enough protein. Not only is protein required for the maintenance, replacement, and growth of your body’s tissues, it’s also used to make the hormones that regulate your metabolism, maintain water balance, protect against disease, transport nutrients in and out of cells, carry oxygen, and regulate blood clotting. There’s no getting around it: If you don’t eat enough protein, you simply won’t achieve your goals (unless your goals are to become fat and weak).
Your protein consumption should be roughly 0.8 gram per pound of body weight per day. If you don’t eat animal-based foods (i.e., if you’re a vegan), add 10 percent to this amount, since plant-based proteins tend to lack the full array of amino acids.
3. Eat enough carbohydrates. Don’t be misled by the fad diets that are all the rage now. Carbohydrate is the energy that fuels strength training, and if you want to train hard and long, you’re going to need plenty of that fuel. Don’t get so focused on carbs that you shortchange protein and healthy fats, but make sure to eat the recommended amounts. When you combine intense cardio work with a good strength-training program, your body needs 2.0 to 2.3 grams of carbohydrate per pound of body weight per day.
4. Don’t have a fat phobia. One of the points I’ve drilled home is that the so-called essential fats—linoleic and linolenic acid—aren’t made by the body in sufficient amounts. You must acquire them from food. Essential fats are required for the maintenance of cell membranes, healthy arteries, and nerves; the lubrication and protection of joints; healthy skin; the absorption of fat-soluble nutrients; and the breakdown and metabolism of cholesterol.
The fat in your body not only protects yourorgans but also provides exercise fuel. In fact, it’s your body’s preferred fuel during aerobic exercise lasting longer than 20 minutes. During strength training, however, your body prefers to burn carbohydrate for energy, since that process doesn’t require oxygen. When you’re lifting a weight for a set, oxygen isn’t available tothe muscle rapidly enough to use fat as a fuel source.
That’s not to say that resistance training won’t help you burn fat. On the contrary: One of the advantages of combining strength training and aerobic exercise is that the better trained you become, the more efficient your body becomes at burning fat as fuel. And the more fat you can break down and burn, the more defined you’ll look.
You now know that the type of fat in your diet influences both your blood cholesterol levels and your risk of developing heart disease and cancer, so choose the heart-healthy monounsaturated fats and omega-3 fats such as high-fat fish and shellfish; olive, peanut, and canola oils; avocados; nuts; and seeds as your main sources. Next in importance come polyunsaturated fats from all other vegetable sources. Finally, permit very limited amounts of saturated and hydrogenated (trans) fats, whether from animal sources (meats, butter, and milk) or plant-based sources (baked goods, crackers, chips, and other “convenience” foods).
Saturated and trans fats should be avoided for the most part, regardless of your body weight. Even if you’re skinny and just happen to be interested in your health, it’s not reasonable to eat large amounts of saturated fat. From a weight-loss perspective, it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s olive oil or animal lard—it still contains 9 calories per gram, and a fat is a fat is a fat where calories are concerned. From a health perspective, though, it makes a huge difference. There’s no reason to single out saturated fat for attack if you’re interested exclusively in losing weight, but if you’re interested in losing weight and doing it in a healthy way, you certainly want to limit saturated fat.
Once you’ve taken in all the protein and carbohydrates you need, the remainder of your calories should come from fat. You haven’t heard us talk much about percentages for these macronutrients, and with good reason. They’re way overrated. Your percentages can look wonderful on paper, but if you’re not eating enough calories, you’re not giving your body what it needs. What’s important is getting enough protein to build muscle and enough carbohydrate to fuel your workouts, as well as enough fat to provide your essential fatty acids and absorb your fat-soluble vitamins.
5. Drink plenty of fluids. You encountered water as a theme in every chapter of The Powerfood Nutrition Plan. That’s because water does so many good things for your body. It flushes out toxins, reduces the risk of kidney stones, allows your brain to think clearly, helps keep heart attacks and strokes away, helps build muscle, and even assists with fat loss—fluids help you feel full, allowing to control your appetite better.
If those benefits aren’t sexy enough for you, consider that water also helps you get better erections by increasing blood flow everywhere, including your penis.
As I’ve discussed, if the human body were a consumer product, its natural thirst mechanism would have prompted a factory recall long ago. By the time your body tells your brain to tell you to drink, it’s already parched. That’s why you need to drink before you become thirsty. Even mild dehydration will limit your mental and physical performance. If it becomes chronic, dehydration can have health consequences ranging from troublesome to dire.
Drink 1 quart (4 cups) of fluid for every 1,000 calories of food you eat, and a minimum of 9 cups of water daily. That doesn’t include the extra fluid you need for exercise. Being well hydrated keeps your body’s circulatory system functioning properly, transporting oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood to the working muscles while at the same time helping remove lactic acid accumulation more efficiently, which means faster recovery and better growth. So 2 hours before you exercise, drink at least 2 cups of water or sports drink, and then drink 4 to 8 ounces of cool liquid every 15 to 20 minutes during the session. Afterward, drink at least 2 to 3 cups of fluid for every pound of body weight you just lost.
Because alcoholic beverages can have a dehydrating effect, don’t count these as part of your day’s drinking. In fact, occasionally replace that glass of wine with a cup of water instead. If you drink more than three caffeinated beverages daily, follow the same guidelines. Otherwise, feel free to count your cup of java toward your total fluid intake. You also need more fluid when it’s hot, when humidity is unusually high or low, and when you’re at high altitudes, including air travel.
6. Get your timing right. Nutritionists have known for some time now that eating small meals frequently promotes fat burning, whereas infrequent feeding frenzies favor fat storage. The same strategy also helps you build and preserve muscle, since your body spends more of its day in an anabolic state. That may explain the results of a study of boxers performed at Nagoya University in Japan. When following a low-calorie diet, the boxers sacrificed less muscle when their meals were spread among six meals rather than two.
Ideally, you should eat five or six times a day—more if your daily caloric needs exceed 3,000. Also, gradually taper the size of your meals during the day so that the smaller ones come later.
Research has increasingly shown us the importance of timing not only your meals but also your nutrients. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the protein you consume before bed can be tweaked to increase protein synthesis and muscle building. Casein, found abundantly in cottage cheese and yogurt, is a “slow-release” protein, making it great for distribution over the course of what amounts to an 8-hour fast. Most of the aminos in whey are discharged quickly, which makes them less effective overnight, but great immediately after lifting weights, when your body can make good use a sudden influx.
The “windows” before and after you exercise are particularly critical. Roughly 2 hours before working out, eat a small meal containing both carbohydrates and protein, along with a bit of fat. This combination will help reduce the damage hard exercise does to your muscle tissue. Some well-trained strength athletes also have 100 to 200 milligrams of caffeine (equal to 1 cup of coffee or two cans of soda) before exercise to help promote fat burning and decrease their perception of exercise intensity. Whether you want to go there is up to you.
To promote muscle building and glycogen replenishment, consume at least 10 grams of carbohydrate and 20 grams of protein immediately after exercising. Wait too long and you significantly reduce your body’s ability to store glycogen.
After that initial post-workout feeding, eat again within 2 hours. If it’s impractical to eat a meal the moment you finish that last rep, consider using supplements such as a combined carb-protein drink and sports bars (sports bars are my last resort). Don’t forget the water.
7. Supplement when necessary. In addition tofilling the void immediately after training, supplements can support health and performance more generally. No one size fits all when it comes to taking supplements—it depends on what your goals are, among other things. See individual chapters for recommendations, and refer to “Supplement Dollars and Sense” on this page foradvice on cost-effective ways to acquire what you need.
8. Practice patience. Good things come to those who wait. Although you’ll feel better and see at least some visible changes quickly, big changes come every 6 to 12 weeks, depending on what your diet was like to begin with. (As I’ve said before, keep a log along the way. The best way to change old habits into new ones is to write things down.) Patience should come from the knowledge that this is the last major diet change you’ll ever make. You’ll be eating right for the rest of your healthy and fit life.
Go Forth and Conquer
As you prepare to move forward, I recommend two additional strategies for getting yourself on the right track. First, make sure you’ve read all (or at least most) of this book. The subjects covered have been as complex at times as they are far-reaching, and you’ll get the most out of it if you’ve read it all. That way, you’ll see the big picture instead of just a few snapshots. Of course, you’ll need to revisit the book periodically. It contains a lot of information, and getting the most out of it will require repeat visits.
Second, now that you’ve absorbed all this information, think even harder than you did initially about what you really want to get out of it. No doubt, one or more of the chapter-heading benefits grabbed your attention initially, but whether you want to get bigger or smaller, healthier or more energetic, you’re setting a unique course for individual change and improvement. In doing so, you’ll be developing the personal mindset that you can control your own destiny.
What can sound nutrition give you in addition to everything I’ve talked about thus far in The Power-food Nutrition Plan? Only you can know that for sure, but I can give you some ideas. For some guys, the discipline it brings to one part of life spills over into all other aspects. For many, healthy eating creates or enhances self-esteem. Others use it as a form of therapy to turn their lives around after major trauma or setback, whether personal or professional.
Once those changes have taken hold, you won’t think in terms of diets anymore. You’ll think, “I’ve made these changes to the way I eat, and these are sustainable changes.” In the end, that’s what it’s all about. The guy who’s lost 1,000 pounds over 10 years—losing, gaining, losing, gaining, losing—isn’t the winner here. It’s the guy who loses 20 or 30 once, for good.
We hope this has provided some insight into what you can expect from nutrition and The Power-food Nutrition Plan. Whatever brought you to this book, I can assure you that nutrition can be a force for positive change in your own life.
So put it down and get started!