Fuel

One thing a lot of people don’t realize is that your gains don’t happen in the gym. Whether your goal is strength, bulk, or weight loss, you reach these goals as your body undergoes an adaptive process that occurs outside the gym. The successful application of what you do in the gym depends on what your body is able to do with itself afterward. This is why rest and diet are so important.

Rest: get at least 7 hours of sleep every day. (That was easy.)

Diet: don’t eat crap. (I rock at this.)

In all seriousness, what you eat will have a huge impact on your results. Some would even go so far as to say that the difference between a muscle-building regimen and a fat-loss regimen is your diet. Realistically, that’s some naive oversimplicity, but it does help illustrate the point that what you eat (and how much you eat) has major determinative effect.

A bit more to the point, though: for fat loss, you do want to create a caloric deficit. The idea, then, is to adjust your portion sizes so that your body, while it is recovering, burns more than you put in.[fn1] To preserve muscle mass, you’ll want to keep your protein high. Reduce your carb and fat intake instead.

Eating clean: ideally, where possible and affordable, stick to real food. Real food grows from the ground or comes directly from an animal. It is not manufactured; it is not refined; it is not enriched; it is not hydrogenated; it does not contain preservatives or high-fructose corn syrup. It really doesn’t come with fries and a Coke. Remember the caveman: caveman food is real food.

However, most of us don’t live on a farm, so we have to make do. Still, the best way to eat can be summed up with the following quote I’ve seen in a few places: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” What this means for us is that, when possible, what we eat should be:

1. real food: as unprocessed as possible
2. nutrient-rich
3. plant-based
4. portioned reasonably

Why plants? They are nutrient-rich and generally low in bad fat and bad carbs. When you’re at the grocery store, stick to the perimeter, where they sell the food that can spoil. Why do we want this? Because food that spoils is actually food. For the most part, stay away from the center of the store; that’s where they sell the cheap, processed, empty calories that keep Americans fat. As a general rule, the more hard-to-pronounce ingredients there are in a food, the worse it is for you. As far as grains go: stick to whole grains. The less processing, enriching, or preservatives added, the better.

Whatever you do, stay away from partially hydrogenated oil and high-fructose corn syrup. No, this is not some fear-mongering about how HFCS will kill you; just keep in mind that it’s a cheap, abundant form of sugar that has no real effect on you except to make you fat.

In fact, from a nutritional perspective, most things based on corn are pretty worthless. Don’t believe me? Just consider how little your body actually uses of any corn that you consume. As most of us have probably noticed by now, whole corn passes through us almost completely unchanged. How much benefit do you really think you’re getting from that?

But what’s good for you? More to the point, what’s good for you that you can afford? The best way to find good, affordable produce is to find your nearest farmer’s market; it’ll be cheap, in-season, healthier, and you’ll be supporting the farmers directly. Also, I strongly endorse the consumption of eggs and oatmeal. They’re loaded with good stuff, they’re cheap, and there’s an endless variety of things you can do with them to make them tastier and even better for you.

In completely unrelated news, we’re all wusses compared to this guy: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24898111-2,00.html

FN1: this does not mean you should weigh your food. Unless you are an actual bodybuilder or figure athlete less than 4 weeks away from a competition, there is no sufficiently compelling reason to micromanage your portion size like that. If you find yourself constantly weighing your every meal, it is a possible sign of an actual eating disorder. Don’t do that shit. Just be aware of what you’re eating and practice self-control.