When you commit to a fitness goal or decide to improve your health, chances are working out will be the first thing to come to mind. You might join a gym, or sign up for a new fitness class and think that’ll be enough. But that’s only half the story.
Without looking at your diet and the nutrients that you’re fuelling your body with, you won’t be able to achieve your fitness goals and your training will only go so far. Let’s take a look at the top 5 reasons why your diet is just as important as fitness.
Reason 1: Food is fuel
When you go back to basics, food is what we use to fuel our bodies. Without the right calorie intake and nutritional balance our bodies won’t function how they should. Our long term health will be damaged and your body won’t be operating at its optimum level. That means when you add training into the mix your body will struggle to keep up with you. It’ll feel tired and sluggish, and you won’t see the progress you really want.
Regardless of how much you exercise you do, you can’t overcome those challenges. Food is fuel and the basic building block for us to mould our health.
Reason 2: Eating habits
How do you feel after a tough session? Hungry? You’re not alone. Often when you increase your training, you start to consume more calories. Some people might not always make the right food choices. Anyone else guilty of rewarding themselves with a chocolate bar after an intense session?
When you fall into unhealthy eating habits - whether that’s unnecessary snacking, overeating calories or something else, it’ll impact your health and your training. You might find weight loss slows down or stops entirely, you might struggle to continue lifting a certain weight or you might find your mood is impacted. Our eating habits affect so much more than we initially think and without addressing them, it’ll be tough to achieve your fitness goals.
Reason 3: Food choices
Ever heard the phrase you can’t out train a bad diet? It’s well known for a reason. If you’re overeating by 250 calories a day, that adds up 1750 calories in just one week. The average person would need to jog 4 hours a day at 5mph to burn that off.
Your food choices need to be aligned with your levels of fitness and your goals. That means prioritising healthier, nutritious foods consistently. Otherwise, it’s really easy to sabotage your efforts without realising it.
To really succeed you need to understand and be in control of your food choices and eating habits. Making sure that your body gets the right fuel and you’re nourishing your body fully.
Reason 4: Fat loss
If your training goal is fat loss that can’t happen with exercise alone. Snacking, poor-quality food, overeating, all take you further away from your fitness goals, it doesn’t matter how much exercise you do.
The quickest way to see results when it comes to fat loss is to give your body the right nourishment while maintaining a calorie deficit. This isn’t just eating less but also burning more calories through training. Unless you’re tracking your diet and your training, you’re just shooting in the dark and hoping for the best.
Reason 5: Healthy heart
We sometimes overlook our fundamental health. The fact is that having a healthy heart is paramount to us living a long and healthy life. But that starts with what we eat. A healthy diet not only stops you gaining weight, reduces your risk of diabetes and lowers your blood pressure but it can reduce the risk of developing coronary heart disease.
As a muscle, the heart needs exercise to strengthen it, and any exercise that raises your heart rate is beneficial. But that alone won’t prevent heart disease. In fact, the best way to prevent the build-up of fatty deposits on your arteries is through a balanced, nutritious diet.
Diet and fitness. One isn’t more important than the other. Diet and nutrition are both critical for fat loss and, ultimately, to make you healthier, fitter and achieving your fitness goals. The issue comes if diet is overlooked in favour of training when It’s something that should be taken as seriously as your fitness. One shouldn’t exist without the other, well at least not if you want to be healthy and see long-lasting results.
When you join PTME as a member you'll receive comprehensive and realistic nutrition coaching based on your goals and timeframes from your dedicated personal trainer.
Comments