Maybe It's Your Nutrition

We're all making fitness, nutrition, and other lifestyle changes for different reasons. Many of us simply want to feel better while others want to lose weight or gain muscle or "tone". Perhaps you're getting into the gym on a regular basis and are on the right track. Maybe you've even been training for several years but you're just not seeing the results you saw when you first started. Perhaps your workouts are getting harder or you're not recovering like you used to? Today we're going to examine some signs that point to your nutrition being the culprit.

• Working out but not losing weight. In order to lose weight, you must be eat fewer calories than you burn. This is called a calorie deficit. In order to lose weight over any period of time you must consistently be in a deficit. There are best practices when attempting to do this, like being sure you are hitting your protein goals in order to minimize muscle loss. Many times, people think they are in a deficit when they actually aren't. You can do this without tracking your food (although it helps) but your focus should be on high quality sources such as lean meats, healthy fats, and fruits and vegetables.
• Not getting stronger. There are at least two primary mechanisms for gaining strength. One is the neurological component. The best example of this is when someone who is new to lifting weights experiences a significant increase in their strength in the first few months of training. They have not added a significant amount of muscle but their lifts increase substantially. The other way to get stronger is by actually increasing the size of muscles and muscle fibers, thereby improving the amount one can lift. Very often both of these mechanisms are taking place.
• Hitting a wall in the middle of a workout. Many of us have experienced this. You're cruising along just fine and then BAM you completely run out of gas and it takes everything in you to just finish. Very often, this is because we did not eat enough or perhaps ate the wrong combination of things that morning or even the day prior to our workout.
• Not sleeping well. There are several mechanisms for nutrition impacting sleep. Going to bed hungry or underfed can disrupt sleep or make it difficult to fall asleep. Overeating prior to bed or eating a meal that sits heavy in your stomach can cause indigestion or reflux that can wake us up in the middle of the night. Eating high glycemic foods or refined sugars prior to bed can cause fluctuations in blood sugar while sleeping and also lead to waking episodes. In addition, there are many micronutrients and vitamins found in a quality diet that can optimize conditions in our body to maximize quality sleep.
• ‍Late night snacking/hunger. Our bodies are finely tuned machines and signals of hunger, especially in the evening, are usually signals that we have not received enough nutrients to support our activity levels. ‍
• Always hungry. Like late night hunger, this is generally a sign that we are undereating, especially if we are active and/or work out routinely.
• Sore for days after a tough workout (or one that's no so tough). While it is normal to be sore after working out, this should not last more than a couple days. If you are sore on the 3rd or 4th day after, it's probably your body signaling to you that it is unable to fully recover. While sleep can definitely play a role here as well, nutrition is a key factor, especially timing of the post workout meal.

These are just a few of the signals your body might be sending you pertaining to your nutrition and fitness. The two are interwoven and cannot be separated and along with sleep and stress management form the 4 Pillars of Health. As I mentioned above, your body is an incredibly well crafted machine and is constantly sending you signals IF you are paying attention. As I first heard from Robb Wolf, you are an experiment of 1. While there are many general fitness (150 minutes of movement/wk.) and nutrition guidelines (primarily whole foods, adequate protein and water) that apply to all of us, not everyone responds the same to everything. Don't be afraid to make small adjustments and see how you respond.