In the sports nutrition world, there’s been a lot of talk about intermittent fasting and other deprivation=based eating strategies. If you want to experiment with this type of eating, go for it. We can discuss your results over lunch! Oh wait, you don’t eat lunch! Or is it dinner?
Instead of treating your meal plan like a complex military strategy, keep it simple. have three square meals a day and augment those means with two healthy snacks to help make up for the nutrients you might miss. For example, if lunch was a little protein-heavy you can have some fruit for your afternoon snack to balance things out. This strategy keep your blood sugar stable instead of peaking and crashing, which can lead to overeating and a generally poor feeling.
Of course, it’s a busy world, so sometimes those midday snacks might not be doable. If this is the case, three square meals a da wil work, but still try to get those snacks in there to keep you from showing up at meal feeling famished. That’s partly what a snack is for- to spoil your appetite!
Try to finish eating eating approximately three hours before you hit the sack. Digestion interferes with your sleep cycles-and a good nights sleep is crucial to proper fitness. If you do need to break this rule, a small protein-based snack would be the snack of choice before bed. A least it’ll help recovery during sleep.
As for nutrition timing around your workout, provided you’re eating enough you should be able to blat through each 30 minute X3 workout without issue. Generally speaking, the human body has the glycogen stores and blood sugar to get through an hour workout, so you shouldn’t need to “load” preworkout. And exercising on an empty stomach isideal anyway, becuase digestion competes for your body’s resources. Blood flow is split between pumping through your muscles and around your stomach, so you do neither well.
Vices to Avoid
Caffeine and Alcohol
Should you drink them? In excess, they’ll both kill you. But in moderation, studies have shown drinking one or two 4-ounces of wine a day has an assortment of benefits, from heart health to stress reduction to general longevity, and two or three 8 ounce cups of coffee a day can potentially increase your metabolism. boost performance, and help with mental faculty. And they both taste so good!
Ultimately, the choice is yours. While some alcoholic beverages have some long-term merits, they’re still empty calories that aren’t going to help your immediate results.
Caffeine, on the other hand, might help performance marginally, it’s not the actual coffee that’s problematic, it’s the sugars and weird creamers you put in it. Drink your coffee black or with a splash of low fat milk. But keep in mind that these next 90 days with X3 are an opportunity to really clean up your act. So push yourself out of your comfort zone. you don;t really need coffee to function, do you?
Other Cheat Foods
In the real world, the occasional cheat meal helps keep you sane. Life is too short not to eat a little pie sometimes. The problem is that people have lost sight of what ” a little” means. So to get back to clean, healthy basics for the next 90 days.
Toss The Junk
If you haven’t done this yet, do it now. Place your garbage can in an open space, open up the cabinet and start throwing out the lawbreakers. Snacks with saturated and trans fats, sodium, and sugar should be the first to be thrown out ( i.e. cookies, pastries, candy, processed meats, potato chips, soda, high-sodium frozen foods, caned soups, etc) It’s junk fuel- empty calories-and you won’t get anywhere powered by them. Throw them away, and don’t let anyone give you more. Don’t be nice, don’t take a bite. Say:”Thanks, but I am not eating that kind of stuff anymore. Lead by example.