Hollywood actor, Jason Statham, was right when he said: “Looking good and feeling good go hand in hand. If you have a healthy lifestyle, your diet and nutrition are set, and you’re working out, you’re going to feel good.” If you exercise and eat right, you’ll not only feel great but you’ll look great too.
It’s part of a personal trainer’s job to ensure that you follow the right diet that complements your exercise routine. But why is the correct diet so important for you to follow in order to gain the results that you want from your workout routine? This article will tell you why this is and how a personal trainer can help you achieve these goals.
What does a balanced diet look like?
About 20 years ago, the US Department of Agriculture developed the food pyramid concept to describe what a balanced diet should look like. It recommended that:
- The bulk of your diet is made up of carbohydrates.
- The next largest portion of your diet should consist of fruits and vegetables.
- At the top of the pyramid was protein, dairy and fats.
The theory was that the bulk of your diet needs to consist of carbohydrates. Fruits and vegetables needs to make up the next biggest chunk of what you eat. The smallest portion of your diet had to be made up on dairy, protein and fats.
Fast forward to today where a large percentage of the population is either gluten intolerant or avoids carbs because they are following a banting diet or a similar high-protein eating plan. Does this mean that because people are avoid carbohydrates like the plague that the majority of the population is not following a balanced diet?
There are many different foods that you can eat to get the nutrients that are derived from carbohydrates that don’t involve bread or pasta. These include:
- Cauliflower,
- Broccoli,
- Pumpkin,
- Avocado,
- Cabbage, and
- Baby marrows.
In fact, many retailers stock gluten-free alternatives to bread and pasta which means that people who are gluten sensitive don’t have to miss out.
The personal trainer’s role in diet
Nutrition and exercise indeed go hand in hand. An exercise routine will not provide the results that it is designed to do unless you eat healthily. In our article entitled Training and Nutrition: Two Sides of the Same Coin, we made the point that a good diet will provide your body with what it needs in order to perform optimally.
However, you mustn’t see the personal trainer as a replacement for a nutritionist or a dietitian. The former concentrates on your physical appearance and fitness ability. These professionals look at how diet can help to improve this.
The latter two professionals concentrate on diet and body composition. They will manipulate what you eat in order for you to reach a certain goal with respect to your weight and body composition. In addition, if you’ve been advised by a medical practitioner to change your diet in order to achieve a particular health goal, you’ll visit a dietitian or nutritionist. They’ll advise you to perform exercise in order to help you to achieve the goals that you’ve set out. However, they won’t tell you what exercise to do. This advice they’ll leave to the personal trainer.
A personal trainer knows the fundamentals of good nutrition and can help you to maintain a good, healthy diet. In conjunction with a superior exercise routine, your personal trainer will help you achieve the body that you’ve always dreamed of!
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
Being a great personal trainer is about so much more than just conditioning your clients’ bodies. It’s about giving your clients a mind-body experience so that they stay with you for a good long while. Trifocus Fitness Academy’s Personal Training Diploma – Platinum Package provides the perfect mix of courses to help you to achieve this dream. Read more here.
