Nearly everyone has the desire to be more healthy. No big secret that one of the principle elements to this is how you eat. Eat better, and you’ll feel better. Feel better, and you’ll be more on top of it. Be more on top of it, and you’ll perform better at work. Perform better at work, and you’ll succeed more. This isn’t rocket science folks…which leads us to the first point….
1) Don’t treat eating better like it’s rocket science. KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. Stay away from complex diet plans. Eat simple quality. Avoid elaborate calorie counts, carb counts, special meal timings, etc., as all make staying on course difficult.
2) No Franken-foods. Author Michael Pollan put it best with a few simple adages: “Don’t eat anything that your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food,” and “Is it food, or is it food-like?” Go deeper with Pollan’s easy guide Food Rules http://michaelpollan.com/books/food-rules/
3) Eat Only Ethical Meat, And Eat Less Of It. Corn-fed beef is like “fine Corinthian leather,” in that it’s an attribute manufactured by an ethically-challenged marketer. Corinthian leather, was a term that was both meaningless and harmless. In the case of corn-fed beef, it is neither. Actual cows were designed by mother nature to eat grass, not corn, and have to be pumped full of antibiotics to keep them alive on such an unnatural corn-based diet. The factory-based system of meat production has countless other challenges. Eat only naturally-raised, grass fed/grass finished beef, and other “ethical meats.”
4) Give up soda. Start today. All soda, including energy drinks. Not just that bad HFCS stuff, but also the stuff that contains the ‘natural’ sugars and sweeteners. Diet stuff too. Quick, before you tell yourself you can’t, resolve to chuck it, and chuck it now. Cold turkey. You are stronger than it, and you know it. So prove it. So, now where to get the caffeine? For some, black coffee is love at first sight. For others, it’s an acquired taste. So acquire it already. Or, go for alternatives that many folks feel are superior for you and the environment, specifically teas, or my preference yerba maté. With any of the above, treat yourself to quality. Don’t sweeten it. In just a few days, you’ll acquire the taste and enjoy it for the rest of your (now longer) life. Do NOT replace your soda with nearly-equally-iffy substitutes like flavored waters, and pre-sweetened bottled coffee/teas/mate.
Will Hayes Fitness of Charlotte, NC 