Food Is Fuel

The monkey business diaries return, this means you must excuse anything that doesn’t make sense or any spelling mistakes (or any more than usual) as I am surrounded by screaming children and on constant watch to stop Millie stealing sweets from the café, think she gets that from her mother. You may have a slight indication of what todays blog is about by the title and I suppose it carries on from my last blog which helped to point out the reasons why we restrict carbs on our plan, if you haven’t given that a read, go back and have a look at AHHHH CARBSSS.

So I always like to ask the leaders what issues or questions pop up a lot in the groups as well what I see myself when I’m stalking you all, and the main issue that I haven’t yet addressed is the lack of protein in peoples diet, and as I’m not sure I can stretch that out into 1000 words I’m going to address the other essential macro nutrient which is fat, notice I say essential, I’ll touch on that again later.

Rule number 2 on our nutrition guide is “you must include protein with every meal!” I might have added some urgency to that quote; however, I think people are missing the importance of having protein in your diet. Protein or amino acids, are the absolute building blocks of your body. Medlineplus.gov states “Every cell in the human body contains protein. The basic structure of protein is a chain of amino acids. You need protein in your diet to help your body repair cells and make new ones. Protein is also important for growth and development in children, teens, and pregnant women”. I don’t just like to say it because I like the sound of my own voice, we just simply can’t be healthy and function without enough protein in our diet. When I see people having soup with maybe an off-plan bagel as a meal I secretly let out a little tear, this is not enough for your body to keep functioning. I think the problem is that a lot of people, women mostly will associate protein with building muscle, which of course it is great for, but it builds everything else as well, and I know for a fact you all love the classes, so if you’re aching afterwards, its protein that’s going to help take that pain away! And before you jump to conclusions, it doesn’t mean your going to develop a back like Dorian Yates…. I’ll put a pause in there whilst some you google him, its what’s going to help bring you back to your baseline. See muscle can burn off just as easily as fat can! Muscle will only develop and remain there if your regularly weight training and eating enough calories to sustain it, if you’re in a calorie deficit, protein is even more important or you will waste away to nothing and classes and your recovery become even more difficult. I hope I hammered that point away enough.

This brings me on to fat! The other essential building block of life, and I want to start the conversation by bringing to your attention why its been so heavily vilified over the years. In the 1960s, the sugar industry, or big sugar, as I’m going to be referring to it, massively downplayed the effects of sugar on our health and instead looked for somewhere else to point the blame, that blame was heavily directed towards fat! As sugar consumption was on the rise, so was heart disease, and this meant a big risk to the pockets of people at big sugar. The sneaky devils paid off a lot of scientists to sway the results of research which was the published in the Journal of medicine in 1967, WITHOUT the disclosure that it was funded by big sugar! Bloody shocking, I know! The study showed that cutting our fat was the best way to address coronary heart disease, which is clearly bullshit as animal fats have been in our diet since day one, and only since with introduction of refined sugar has the obesity epidemic really started to take a hold. I am very sad to say that not much has changed over the last 50 years, and big sugar continue to do everything they can to convince us that sugar is not the enemy here, well I say no thank you big sugar (the more I hear it, the more I want big sugar to be my new nickname). So as a result of this absolute bullshit, the low-fat fad started, and our supermarket shelves are plagued with fat free bollocks. Now don’t get me wrong, I use fat free Greek yogurt, but only because its less calories, removing fat removes taste, which means sugar is often added to help make it palatable, have a look next time you do your shopping and go for the full fat stuff instead!

Hold your hands up then, who is scared of fat? Because I see so many low fat options, or bacon and steaks with the fat cut off, and if your saving calories fair enough, but never do it for the fear that fat makes you fat! Our body stores our excess nutrients in our fat to help when food is scarce, animals do the exact same, everything our body needs is in fat, you can survive on steak and water alone for this reason, you won’t live too long on fucking soup and a bagel, so get it in you and reap the benefits. If that’s not enough to convince you, eat one fatty protein a day and tell me how much easier it is going to toilet, not literally obviously, I don’t want to know your toilet habits, but give me a thumbs up at class and we can have a giggle to ourselves. FAT IS FUEL, enjoy it!

Plenty to take away from that, but lets also take away that just because your told something in a reputable journal or on a TV advert, that it must be fact! Everyone is willing to lie to you especially when its for financial gain. Watch the TV adverts more closely, have you heard “made with real fruit juice”? well of course it is, it’s made with real fruit juice as well as about 50 other chemicals, or “made with 100% chicken breast”? Yeah, it’s made WITH it, but what else is it made with? Words can be so easily manipulated to trick you, question everything! I know some people will go, oh so we should question you as well Aaron? YES ABSOLUTELY! If I get something wrong I would want to know, I pride myself on telling you all the truth about fitness and nutrition because educating you all is what sets us apart from other, and if I get something wrong, educate me so I can educate others, never blindly follow anyone’s advice, its worth spending 5 minutes to look for yourself as well!

Peace and Love,

Aaron, AKA Big Sugar

PS, Dorian looked good didn't he