We all have a relationship with our food.

A lot of people workout to support their eating habits.  You know these people, and their comments are ringing in your ears right now...”Well, I guess I’m doing an extra mile in the morning to make up for these nachos!”.  Or, “I just finished a hard workout, so I made room for some brewskies!!”

They’ve heard the calorie mantra of Burn-more-than-you Consume...and they do a great job of BARELY keeping equilibrium.  Eat crappy, work it off.  Repeat ad nauseum.

Our prescription is a quantum shift for most people.  We eat to support our performance.  We eat a real food diet, and tinker with timing and portions to make us better people. 

We have better and more consistent energy at work, we sleep better, we don’t get sick.  In the box, we have very observable data points...our work capacity in the form of time and reps.

What do you say when you see an athlete quickly improve his raw strength, power, and speed?  Say it took about two months, and he suddenly had a visible change in body composition and he started kicking your ass.  The guy has to be on something.  Right??

Right.  And if you’re in a CrossFit box, the likely answer is that they guy is on a real food diet (i.e. Paleo) and tuning his intake (i.e. Zone).  And yes, that is probably it.

In the past two months, I personally took a my repsectable diet and cut out grains, beans and dairy.  It wasn’t that much, but I did it.  I also began weighing and measuring my food by Zone guidelines about 3 weeks ago.   All this while working out less than in the past...3-4x week. 

That guy above that you said was on steroids is me.  You know what the cool part is?  That guy is going to be you as soon as you change your mind and decide that you are going to start taking advantage of your food, not letting it take advantage of you.

To look at it another way, think of your food as a drug. 

Drug (n); a substance used in the treatment, cure, prevention, or diagnosis of disease or used to otherwise enhance physical or mental well-being.

You take it 3-5 times a day.  It can be a recreational drug that makes you happy for a couple minutes or lets you fit in with your friends at night, only to give you side effects like the Deadly Quartet (google it), low energy and a flubby midsection.

Or, it can be an anabolic drug that increases your energy, body composition, and a myriad of other quality of life factors.  To quote Robb Wolf, “Most people have two hidden motivators...perform better and look great naked”.

I’ll take a hit of the good stuff, thank you.

What do you think...what’s your mindset?  No more food posts until we get 10 comments on this entry :)