Picture this. It’s the beginning of spring and you decide that you’re going start going to gym regularly so that you can get that bikini body by the time you hit the beach at the end of the year. When you join the gym, they have a special at the biokineticist on site so you decide to take up the offer. She weighs you in – and your weight has doubled over the winter break. So what do you do? Do you sit crumpled up in a heap and reach for the nearest bag of crisps or do you decide to do something about it and adopt sound nutrition principles?
Nutrition Principles and the Gym go Hand in Hand
It’s not enough just to go to the gym in order to lose weight. If you do this, you’ll need to do about 300 minutes of exercise a week where your heart rate is elevated. Unless you’re a professional athlete, this isn’t feasible as we all have quite pressing demands on our time.
This means that in conjunction with a regulated exercise routine, you’ll need to adopt sound nutrition prnciples that you can apply to your diet.
Sound Nutrition Principles Don’t Mean Starvation
Going on a diet doesn’t mean that you need to cut out everything that you enjoy eating and drinking. Rather choose healthier alternatives or cut down on your portion sizes. So instead of eating a potato, for example, which is smothered in sour cream and chives rather opt for a sweet potato that is lightly grilled in grapeseed oil.
One thing’s for certain: if you cut everything out you’ll definitely lose weight but if you stray for a minute you’ll go overboard and indulge in everything that you were denied. You’ll also find it more difficult to get back on track because you’ll think of yourself as a failure and ‘incapable’ of sticking to a healthy eating plan. Don’t be hard on yourself. We all slip up here are there. What’s important is that you get back on the wagon!
What are Sound Nutrition Principles?
In order to be able to say that you adopt sound nutrition principles you need to eat a variety of foods on a daily basis that are drawn from each of the five food groups.
The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating says that there are five food groups:
“Foods are grouped together because they provide similar amounts of the key nutrients of that food group. For example, the key nutrients of the milk, yogurt, cheese and alternatives food group include calcium and protein, while the fruit group is a good source of vitamins, especially vitamin C.”
Trifocus Fitness Academy’s Specialised Nutrition Course – which is a top-rated nutrition course on the market – will introduce you to the basics of sound nutrition principles, including:
- Design a nutritional plan for clients.
- Learn how to read and interpret food labels.
- Tell the difference between ‘low GI’ and ‘high GI foods’.
