Food or supplements, which is better?
That your body needs real food to perform optimally should be common sense, but when it comes to most people, it is not.
Exercise is one of the most powerful tools you have available to drop your insulin levels. This is important because elevated insulin levels are one of the primary drivers for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and weight gain. But the foods you eat are equally important to maintain healthy insulin and leptin levels.
You can’t expect to be optimally healthy if you only do one right and ignore the other.
Although you’d think professional athletes would know better, many athletes still make unwise food choices, and there’s no telling how much their performance and recovery from injury would improve with proper nutrition.
Most of us however, are not professional athletes who can actually get away with consuming extra sugar and carbs. Most likely, if you’re an average person with a regular exercise regimen, consuming sports drinks and energy bars will simply not benefit your performance or your overall health.
The fact is, high-sugar, high-refined carb dieting makes you more prone to muscle and joint deterioration and injury. Who knows how many careers have been cut short due to diminishing skills or injuries? There’s no telling how many careers could have been lengthened through optimal nutrition.
What’s the Correct Diet for Optimal Physical Performance?
Conventional sports nutritionists recommend a 4 to 1 ratio of carbohydrates and proteins, consumed during and directly after endurance events. Others emphasize eating the right foods at the right time, especially after exercising.
Your post-workout meal does not need to be laden with carbs. Rather, protein is key to stimulating your insulin response. Insulin increases your muscles intake of glucose, which refuels your body.
Sadly, Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars on energy drinks and energy bars each year. Bar and drink makers add dozens of elements to these products, including vitamins, minerals, herbs and whey.
However, the active ingredients usually come down to two simple substances: Sugar and caffeine.
When used properly, these products may have some benefits for intense, high-level training athletes. However, for most of you, the vast majority of these energy bars and powders only add hazardous toxins, chemicals, and useless calories to your diet.
Additionally, any good kinesiologist or muscle testing practitioner will show you how sugar dramatically reduces your strength. No other personal trainers in Eagan do muscle testing. At the Body Project we can muscle test you for the best nutritional products for your body.
When people that train at high levels need to replace their depleted carbohydrates with sugar immediately following a workout or game, if you’re exercising at a more moderate level, or not at all, these extra sugars just turn to fat, an overworked pancreas and worn out adrenal glands.
The fact is, eating whole, organic and highly energetic foods tailored to your nutritional type is the ticket to optimal performance, whether you’re a professional athlete or a weekend warrior on the tennis court.
If you have not already done so, we recommend that you determine your exact nutrition type so that you can completely customize your nutrition to maximize your weight loss program.
What About Sports Drinks?
Sports drinks hit $7.5 billion in sales last year alone, and according to the trade journal Beverage Digest, sports drinks were the third fastest growing beverage category in the United States in 2006, after energy drinks and bottled water. Of course they want you to believe sports drinks are healthy and increase performance!
But when you look at the main ingredients: water, high-fructose corn syrup, and salt, are you really giving your body what it needs to function optimally?
The real problem lies in their choice of ingredients – the use of high-fructose corn syrup in particular – which should be your first tip-off that this stuff is bad news.
High-fructose corn syrup — the number one source of calories in the US — is the most prevalent sweetener used in foods and beverages today, and has been clearly linked to the rise in obesity and metabolic syndrome. Just like other sugars it disrupts your insulin levels, which in turn will increase your risk of nearly every chronic disease there is. At the Body Project we can actually test the function of your pancreas to make sure you are controlling your blood sugar optimally, so you can lean and healthy
The ONLY time you should resort to these drinks is after vigorous exercise, for a minimum of 45 minutes to an hour, and you’re sweating profusely as a result of that activity. Anything less than 45 minutes will simply not result in a large enough fluid loss to justify using these high-sodium, high-sugar drinks.
And, even if you’re exercising for more than an hour, we still believe drinking plain, pure water with a pinch of sea salt added is the best option to rehydrate yourself.
If you are looking to take your body to the next level of performance all while taking the guess work out of it, call today to set up your nutritional appointment. 952-220-7201
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