Does Your Nutrition Match Your Training?

I come across this all the time on social media or from people I run into in various public places. Questions like:

"I'm trying to lose weight, and I go to the gym, but nothing is working"

or

"I'm training really hard six days a week, and not seeing results, how should I alter my training so that I can make more gains? What supplements do you think I should take"

And then I ask them what their nutrition is like, and they look at me like I have ten heads. I feel like they want to say "what does this matter?" or even maybe "none of your business".

The thing is that people really don't understand how important nutrition is to their fitness goals. We hear all the time that losing weight or getting fit is "20% working out and 80% diet". While these are arbitrary numbers, and not actually proven as the exact ratio, it is just to say that nutrition is a much larger  part of the puzzle, and it is so true!

Believe me, I had to learn all of this the hard way, which is way I decided to talk about this topic, so you don't make the same mistake.

If you know much of anything about me, I have always loved being in the gym. As a teenager I took weight training in high school and would go with my older brother, Steven, to the local Planet Fitness a few times per week. I picked up at least some of the basics here, but by no means was this type of working out anymore than just something fun to do.

For most of my life I have either been skinny or "skinny fat".  As I've progressed in my training, from having fun in the gym - to cardio bunny - to dabbling in weights -  to training,  my diet also progressed somewhat along with it, but it was no where near optimal. From eating mostly crap food as a teenager -  (we really need more nutrition education in public schools) to eating like a bunny - to "eating more healthy" - to eating healthy and then binge drinking and eating crap on the weekends, it didn't matter what I was doing in the gym, my body pretty much stayed the same, just with fluctuations in my weight.

Now when people ask me how long I've been training for, I don't tell them that I started as a teenager at planet fitness because this was not training, I also don't tell them the first time I actually started working with a personal trainer but was still eating crap food. I consider that I started training seriously when I started taking my diet seriously and not only training, but EATING like an athlete.(although my idea of what serious actually means is continuously morphing into a  higher standard as I continue to grow as it should). When my nutrition finally came into alignment with my weight lifting, that's when I actually started seeing results.

The body is an amazing machine, but you can't expect miracles from it. What you put into your body is going to dictate what you get out of it. Match your nutrition with your training and fitness goals. You need to fuel your body to perform optimally.

Step back and reflect on your own fitness goals and where you are right now with nutrition and training. Are you in the gym training your butt off, spending time researching programs to bigger biceps or killer abs, and not seeing results? Are you trying to put on muscle? Are you trying to get lean? What are you putting in your body to make this your reality? If you want to put on muscle, are you getting enough protein? Enough calories? Do you even know how much protein you need to get in? If you are trying to lose weight, and aren't, do you know how many calories you actually need each day and whether or not you are exceeding these? Are you aware of how many empty calories you are consuming or their sources?

It is absolutely a waste of your time to get your training to a level 8 or 9 in whatever sport you're in or goal you have if your nutrition is still hanging out in the 1's and 2's. Learn the basics, then find out what you need to change your nutrition to bring it up to the same level as your athleticism.

If you are overwhelmed by the idea of this, start by learning the basics of nutrition and what foods do for your body. Everything will start to make sense, and as you learn more you can continuously adapt. If you are brand new to the gym or fitness, even better. Start small with both your fitness and nutrition and build them both simultaneously. Be consistent, and you will see results.

Don't let all of your hard work in the gym or on the field to go to waste because of bad nutrition. Get what you work so hard for.