A healthy portion of enquiries I receive by e-mail on an ongoing basis have been based on nutrition and healthy eating. Since our focus on this page is exercise and fitness, I tend to steer clear of nutritional concerns altogether. Nutrition science is a vast and complex field unto itself that has spawned volumes of information and publications over many years, authored by nutritionists, dieticians and other field-specific nutrition experts. Indeed, if it is dedicated and specialised nutritional advice you seek, nutritionists and dieticians are most definitely your go-to people.
Having said that, just like a bicycle with a wheel missing, we tend not to get very far with our health and fitness goals if we neglect either physical exercise or nutrition. Dieting without exercise can work against you and exercise without dieting similarly doesn’t work quite as well either. I believe the time has come to tackle some of the more common nutritional concerns fitness enthusiasts in particular tend to raise.
As a fitness professional, I should point out that while fitness instructors and personal trainers do receive nutritional training, their roles do not include prescribing diet plans or detailed and personalised nutritional advice. Fitness professionals will provide general advice about healthy eating, primarily for the purpose of ensuring the food you eat serves and supports your fitness goals rather than works against them.
We notice that it is one thing knowing what to eat, but a whole other kettle of fish actually implementing or translating that knowledge into practice in the real world. We therefore play a vital role as motivators to help and inspire clients to actually follow healthy eating guidelines or diets provided by other competent specialist professionals, rather than setting or refining the guidelines ourselves.
Indeed, general guidelines applicable to most are quite readily accessible and even actively promoted by health authorities. An excellent source anyone can look up is the European Food Information Council. Their website provides plenty of recommendations, calculators and suggestions wholly tailored towards improving eating habits. The local authorities are also doing an excellent job of adjusting such recommendations to the local context. Another useful guide is the ‘Eatwell plate’, which has been adopted by the authorities in the UK.
Just like a bicycle with a wheel missing, we tend not to get very far with our health and fitness goals if we neglect either physical exercise or nutrition
Personalised nutritional guidance beyond the scope of such resources should really be provided by nutritionists and dietitians who can perform more in-depth screening, identifying and catering for more subtle individual needs with appropriate methods and strategies. Wherever you look for your nutritional guidance, the operative phrase should remain ‘healthy eating’, because better health remains the ultimate goal, or at least achieving your specific goals in the healthiest possible way if such goals are more specialised. It is precisely this notion that appears to be the cause of much dietary confusion in the fitness world.
It’s only natural that this had happened, because we have taken so much from the competitive sports world in terms of effective ways to train. This is all well and good when we are talking about exercises, sets and repetitions, but things are easier to take out of context when we start doing the same with nutrition.
When we read about cutting out certain major nutrients, or purposely dehydrating, it is important to keep in mind that these are strategies designed to achieve a certain condition or weight for a competition, match or event, something inherently temporary in nature. Such strategies should not be confused with eating habits that are maintained indefinitely, not for winning a competition on a particular date but for attaining better health and long-lasting results.
This idea by default also excludes diets and measures intended to achieve results extremely quickly or, in other words, ‘fad’ diets. Such systems usually promise dramatic losses of weight over short periods of time, but over the long term can lead to problems worse than those you originally tried to fix.
Extreme diets can lead to loss of muscle mass along with the fat and fluids, which means that upon cessation of the diet the body will actually need less energy than it did before. Resuming normal dietary practices thereafter means that more of what you now eat is considered excess, so more fat is gained, often even more than we had in the first place. Cutting out essential nutrients can also lead to malnourishment and a host of other complications detrimental to overall health.
If the normal ingrained and underlying routine remains the same and stimuli for change are fleeting and temporary, then so too will the results they trigger. The body is highly adaptive and responsive to the changes we make in our lifestyle practices, so the key to lasting results is a routine that also lasts.
A sustainable system that teaches us what foods to eat and in what approximate quantities, as well as what to stay away from, means we can continue to make effective dietary choices indefinitely without following extreme meal plans that are difficult to maintain for more than a few weeks.
So next time you consider following a diet, ask yourself one simple question: “Can I maintain this indefinitely?” If the answer is no, then your results from it certainly will not be definite either.
Check out the accepted nutrition and healthy eating guidelines and remember, being motivated to follow even the most basic of guidelines is more effective than the most prefectly plan diet plan that you lose interest in after a couple of weeks.
matthew.muscat.inglott@mcast.edu.mt