C.I.A - Nutrition

There are two categorises of variables we can manipulate in order to positively affect one's body composition. The first category relates to literally anything we put inside our body, food, fluids, supplements and drugs. The second category includes variables such as exercise and sleep/rest. We're all familiar with the phrase “reaching a plateau” in regards to training, but what many people overlook is that for the very same reason we reach plateaus in training we also reach plateaus with our diet, supplement and drug protocols. This “reason” is generally expressed as homoeostasis, our body's constant need to maintain equilibrium. Nothing lasts forever, whether it's the effect of a drug or a specific training protocol. The human body has a somewhat frustrating tendency to acclimatise to any kind of stimulus eventually. So what's the best way to combat the effects of homoeostasis in order to achieve one's body re-composition goals?

Consistent Intuitive Adaptation.

Our society is becoming more and more health/image conscious. As a side effect of this trend, newspapers and magazines are constantly employing nutritionists to create diets for the masses. The important thing to remember is that everyone is different, and it's completely unrealistic to assume that someone who's never even met (or spoke to) you could possibly know your body better than you. The other problem with these “one size fits all” diets is that they never change, they work under the assumption that your body's metabolism is at a constant. Your metabolism is the sum of countless reactions dictated by several variables within your digestive system, it's never at a constant! This is where consistent intuitive adaptation comes in, you need to learn how to listen to your body and make smart changes in your diet to help you achieve your goals.

Consistency

Consistency plays a huge role in the development of any self-intervention strategy, it's impossible to know exactly which variable is having an effect if you're constantly changing all of them. Being realistic is the corner stone of any success, it's often the case that a small but consistent change to one's diet will yield far greater results than a larger inconsistent one. For example it's unrealistic to wake up one day and say “I'm going to eat clean for the rest of my life, starting today I'm completely changing my diet and lifestyle” and actually stick to these drastic changes. It would be far easier, healthier and successful to start by changing something smaller and less extreme. A good tip to ensure consistency is to keep a food diary, I personally find it keeps me honest and motivated.

Radical changes rarely end well.

                                              

Intuition

There's an ancient Greek proverb which reads “know thyself”, I feel this sums up the single most important aspect of any individuals self-intervention body re-composition strategy. You have to know your body, and you have to listen to it. In 2010 I had the privilege of meeting one of our generations greatest body-builders, Phil “The Gift” Heath. As a nervous aspiring young body-builder I asked him a couple of fairly generic questions about diet and training. Phil is a true professional, he told me the following "In order to look how you want to look you have be in tune with your body, you have to listen to it and learn what works for you. The easiest way to do this is by looking in the mirror, but first you've got to get in decent enough shape to be able to see what your body is doing and how it responds to different nutrients". To be honest I think intuition is something you develop over time, but the take home notion I want to convey is that your body is absolutely the most accurate source of information once you learn to read it. So don’t just rely on the scales as a marker of progress, take a look in the mirror every now and then too. How you look and how you feel are the two easiest ways to judge your progress, for example if you’re feeling sluggish or “fat” after a meal it might be a good idea to change the macro-nutritional composition of that meal in the future.

Yes I stole that from The Martix, nobody's perfect.

                                                 

 Adaptation

After intuition comes adaptation, the changes you decide to make based on your intuition. It’s a pretty straight forward concept, consistently adapt your diet and training regiments in line with your intuition successfully and your body will adapt positively. As I’ve already mentioned consistency is crucial, so don’t go making tonnes of changes at once. When it comes to nutrition extreme changes are never a good idea in my opinion, it’s far better to make smaller easier to maintain changes. To some extent the same is true with training. I think it’s important to have long term goals, i.e. improving your bench press. But there’s no reason to think that having a week off from doing a particular exercise is going to have a negative effect on your long term goal. I think a little variation in training style is always good, just don’t do something completely different every week.

If you get it then you watch too many films too.

Conclusion

I’m aware that this has been largely targeted at bodybuilders, but it doesn’t mean that the concepts/philosophies aren’t useful to everyone. I definitely understand why most people wouldn’t want to look like a bodybuilder, but you can’t deny that bodybuilders know what they’re doing and have done for decades. Developing a self-intervention strategy is a learning curve; it takes years to properly “know thyself”. I guess what I’m trying to say is stop using second hand information from magazines, newspapers, books etc. to make life changing decisions. Because the people writing those plans have never met you, and they certainly don’t know your body anywhere near as well as you do (or have the potential to). And if you really can’t be bothered to start learning then hire a nutritionist, one who knows what they’re doing.

So not her.