4 Nutritional Challenges for the New Year

As probably seen in earlier posts, I have thrown down a couple of nutritional challenges to start of the year and potentially help everyone get into that realm of "being fit". Lets remember that we work out for 1 hour of a 24 hour day. That leaves us with 23 hours to complete the cirlce and actually make that 1 hour intense workout worth something! So with that being said, lets recap the first two and bring on the third and forth! As a note, you can tackle these one at a time in order from 1-4, or all together. I would recommend for the nutritional newbie to take things slow though, i.e. one step at a time.

NUTRITION CHALLENGE #1:
Eat protein with every single meal. EVERY meal! What kind of protein? A once living, breathing, roaming, walking, swimming, animal!
To spell it out even more: (in no particular order of relevence)
- Chicken, Beef , Pork, Fish, Shellfish, Eggs, Turkey, Lamb, Venison, Duck

NUTRITION CHALLENGE #2:
Drop sugar from your diet for a minimum of 2 weeks and see how you feel at the end. Once you realize how great you feel continue on with the NO SUGAR challenge. Of course its ok to indulge every now and again, but for the ones that have a soda or ten, a cookie, a doughnut, candy, etc. on a daily basis needs to stop! Try it and see what happens. The benefits will definitely outweigh any kind of negatives your pesky brain will come up with.

NUTRITION CHALLENGE #3:
Now that we have rid our diets of sugar and we are eating protein with EVERY meal, (yes this includes snacks) its time to take away the comfort food of our time: Breads, starches (minus the occasional sweet potato or yam), grains, cereals, wheats, pasta, rice, corn, and the like.
Here is a good article about the evil that are these!
"The Definitive Guide to Grains"
These things have been linked to all types of illness, disease, allergies, and just all around health problems. If anything, drop sugar and grains from your diet to create longevity of life! Once again, try it out for minimum of two weeks. After the two weeks, evaluate how you feel and carry one once you realize the benefit that you have just given your body.

NUTRITION CHALLENGE #4:
Once the first 3 challenges have been completed either one at a time or all together, its time to bring the final piece to finish our Nutrional Puzzle. Eat some GOOD fats with all your meals. By good fats I mean:
Olive oil, coconut oil, coconut meat, avocado, nuts, seeds, some nut oils, REAL butter, lard, EFA's (Omega 3's), Animal fats
Heart healthy fats that will help promote a healthy lifestyle. A plug from the FDA (although they are akin to the Anti-Christ in my opinion). This is now a primary fuel source for our body since we have ditched the grains and sugar, so you want to make the right choices. Not to mention they are more caloricly dense than carbohydrates (sugar and grains) at 9 calories per gram than 4 calories per gram respectively.
Read: "Definitive Guide to Fats"


Bringing it all together......
Once this has come full circle, whether it takes 2 weeks or 2 months, you WILL see a noticeable difference in how you look and feel and I would imagine that you will want to carry on this new lifestyle change from here on out. It will only allow you to live a longer, happier, and healthy life so why not?