To exercise regularly is to feel alive, healthy, and to support a lifetime of well-being, strength, and happiness. However, exercise is but a single part of fitness. Without proper nutrition, exercise is not enough to create a healthy body, or safeguard a healthy mind. While you should definitely find the motivation to work out on a regular basis and stay in shape, healthy eating should actually be the foundation of a healthy lifestyle.
The age-old adage stating that you are what you eat is not so far from the truth, as your nutritional habits can influence your long-term wellbeing one way or the other, which is exactly why nutrition is far more important than exercise in the end. Here is how you can embrace the right mindset and reshape your diet plan to pave the road to a lifetime of health and happiness.
Food Is Natural Medicine
Ask any physician and they will tell you that prevention is the best medicine. Instead of enjoying processed foods, sugary substitutes, and mass-marketed snacks that bear no nutritional value whatsoever, your focus should be on wholesome foods that will help you balance your weight, meet your caloric needs, and reach your fitness goals faster.
Healthy foods contain ample amounts of protein, fats, and carbohydrates to give you the energy you need to push through every workout and win the day on a professional and personal plan. What’s more, wholesome foods are rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals essential for battling inflammation, improving all daily functions, and safeguarding the health of your central nervous system.
You Can’t Out-Train A Poor Diet
Whether you’re purely after aesthetics, or if you’re trying to build up strength at the gym, nutrition will play a vital role in getting you the desired results. On the other hand, if you fail to structure your diet plan around your training habits and long-term goals, you cannot expect to see much of a progress at all.
This is because of two things: exercise is extremely taxing on your body, and you’re not giving your body the macro and micronutrients it needs to repair and restore whole-body homeostasis. Before you know it, you’re slacking off at the gym, your performance is sluggish, and there might even be a nasty injury looming in the distance. Remember, you cannot outperform a poor diet plan.
Enriching Your Diet With Fitness Foods
The terms “fitness foods” and “superfoods” are often interchangeable in the health and fitness industry, but there is a difference. Both are healthy for you and should be the pillars of your diet routine, however, some foods are better for training and building muscle mass and endurance, and other foods are better for your overall immune system health.
For instance, it’s important to eat healthy snacks prior to a vigorous training session in order to supply your body with the energy it needs to perform at its best, but it’s also crucial that these foods make it into your post-workout snack as a quick re-feed when muscle-protein synthesis is highest. Superfoods, on the other hand, should be a part of your main meals of the day.
Make Superfoods Part Of Your Daily Routine
There are many “experts” in the health and fitness industry who would have you believe that you can eat whatever you want as long as it fits into your daily macronutrient requirements. This approach has a name, and it’s called the IIFYM diet, and it’s most suited to bodybuilders who need plenty of calories and cannot stand eating “flavourless” healthy meals all day long.
But this approach is fundamentally flawed. A calorie is not just a calorie regardless of its source – a cheeseburger has a different macro and micronutrient ratio than a healthy veggie-and-seafood meal, for example. It is for this reason, and many other, that real superfoods should find their way into your plate every single day, so that you can not only achieve your weight loss goals, but also fight inflammation and boost your immune system naturally.
A Parting Word Or Two
Fitness is not just about beating your track time or pumping iron at the gym, it’s also about eating healthy and eating well to support a healthy microbiome in your gut, restore proper functions in your entire body, and speed up your post-workout recovery. With that in mind, be sure to make nutrition your primary concern and you will have no problem ensuring a lifetime of happiness and well-being.
Sophia Smith is Australian based fashion, beauty and lifestyle blogger. She is very passionate about organic beauty products, yoga and healthy lifestyle. Sophia writes mostly in beauty and lifestyle related topics, mainly through blogs and articles. She is regular contributor at High Style Life and Ripped.
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