Are you training to 'gain' or to 'lose'?
Posted On: July 5, 2008
Most of us fall into either of these categories. Some train to 'gain muscle' while others exercise to 'lose weight'. Which ever category you fall into, it's important to either goals that you have a eating habit that promotes recovery.
Now before I go much further I want to state that even if you’re just training to stay in shape or keep fit that having an eating plan/habit that helps you recover plays an important part in any of these goals.
First let’s define recovery in regards to exercise. When we exercise what we are actually doing is breaking down the bodies tissues as well as stressing the body’s central nervous system (CNS) in order to ‘tell’ our body to adapt and change. The adapting and changing that occurs is what can be referred to as the ‘training effect’. In order for our body to adapt and change it needs to have different nutrients to help promote these changes.
For the purpose of this text, adapting and changing is recovering our body in order to perform these activities again at or above our previous abilities.
So how do we promote a recovery minded eating habit? We need to look at the things that need to be recovered, our immune system, our skeletal and other muscle tissue as well as our fuel and nutrient stores.
Now we know that eating a combination of foods with a variety of colours and sources will provide us with a ‘balanced’ diet. When you exercise however, these needs become more important.
Without getting too complicated let’s look at adding these types of foods into our diet in order to help boost our immune system, repair and build tissue as well as replenishing our macro and micro nutrient needs:
Citrus fruits multivitamin & mineral supplement Artesian water beans & legumes (edamame) lean meats and fresh seafood Low GI grains and vegetables
by eating these foods in combination not only will you help restore your body, you will also be able to be more alert and stay focused!