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What is the best diet? What is the best exercise to lose fat in your stomach? Despite our level of experience, we all have asked Google questions like this!
Here's the thing: nutrition is not black or white - it's gray. There are so many factors that go into building and managing a healthier lifestyle.
Most of the time, we tend to focus more on "miracle" supplements than understanding the diet... to me, this means our priorities are off!
This is why we developed our systematic approach to nutrition, with the Nutritional Priorities Pyramid. With this pyramid, we have the ability to build a proper foundation to fulfill our nutritional goals.
In this article, we will discuss each stage of our Nutritional Priorities Pyramid. In addition, we will add a supplementary article to each, reinforcing each step.
Without further ado, let's dive in!
The Nutritional Priorities Pyramid is a section in our Fit Habit Facebook course. If this post helps you, you may join the free course at the bottom of this post.
The Nutritional Priorities Pyramid is our systematic approach to nutrition, leveled based on the priority of importance. If you can optimize one level, you can head to the next. As you continue up the pyramid, you can optimize the lifestyle you choose to have: feeling better physically and mentally!
Let's breakdown each stage.
Adherence is the most important of all priorities when it comes to nutrition. If you can’t stick to your diet, you’ll always fail.
Adherence to a specific diet can come from a variety of factors: preferences, genetics, and even habits. While we can't control all of these, we have the ability to control our habits.
Recall in a few of our previous articles: habits are formed through influencing our environment, and taking small incremental steps to accomplish your goals.
Lifestyle choices and our surroundings can have an impact on the foods we eat, the foods we prefer, and the diet we choose.
For example, the foods you grew up with and the culture we are around can vastly influence the foods that we eat. Trying to completely eliminate high-calorie cultural foods can be very difficult. However, restricting them into smaller portions or even minimizing the number of times you eat can actually make your diet or lifestyle change more manageable.
When it comes to losing weight or living a healthier lifestyle, making small changes in your lifestyle will make BIG changes overtime. When it is easier to achieve, it's easier to stick to.
Now if we attempt a new diet that severely restricts calories quickly, you’re going to have difficulty sticking with the diet. This is why most people quit: their diets eliminate food groups and drastically reduce calories.
When engaging in new lifestyle changes, start slowly. Don't overwhelm yourself with different dieting strategies or philosophies just yet. Focus on making better decisions and understanding portion control. Then and only then, you can slowly change your diet and implement new dieting strategies like Intermittent Fasting or Ketogenic dieting.
When it comes to adherence, the goal is a commitment to a lifestyle change. Losing 20lbs is a lifestyle change: you can't just do a diet, eat like you used to, and stop exercising afterward!
While our main goal might be overall weight loss, understanding macronutrients will introduce you to providing a variety of healthy options to your diet. Now let's discuss each macronutrient.
Protein is an essential macronutrient that helps repair and develop new cells in our bodies. These cells consist of our skin, muscles, nails, and our physique - pretty much everything that goes on in our body.
Protein also helps repair broken down muscles as a result of intense exercise and helps fight fatigue. This is especially important when it comes to dieting for fat loss, in which your calories are restricted.
The recommended daily amount for protein for someone who regularly exercises is around 0.8-1.2 grams per pound of body weight.
You can read more about protein in the article below:
Fats help regulate our hormones, health, and overall skin. Fats will provide you new cells and aid in nutrient absorption, making it an essential macronutrient.
There are four types of fats: saturated, trans, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats. Saturated and trans fats are typically deemed as "bad" fats, while monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are the "good" fats.
Here are a few recommendations when it comes to fats:
For more information on Omega-3's, click on the Fish Oil article below!
Carbs are our body's main source of energy. Our body typically turns all of the food we consume into glucose, making it a "nonessential" macronutrient. This is why Ketogenic diets can potentially work, as our body turns all of our foods into energy.
Carbohydrates are typically the last source of focus, so people typically put the remainder of their calories into carbohydrates after handling proteins and fats.
If you're looking to understand more about what foods are Protein, Fats, and Carbohydrates, be sure to click and download the Reforged Macronutrient List so you have a better understanding on these major food groups.
For more information on Protein, Fats, and Carbohydrates, you can click on the article below:
You've heard the saying: "an apple a day..."
As we continue to stage three, this is where we build a systematic approach towards accomplishing our vitamin, mineral, and fiber intake.
Micronutrients are Vitamins and Minerals that are found within our nutrient-dense macronutrients. Nutrient-Dense foods are typically lower-calorie foods like fruits, vegetables, starches, and grains.
Here are just a few examples of micronutrients:
There are plenty of vitamins and minerals that aid our body with various things, making regular consumption of nutrient-dense foods essential.
Fiber aids in providing us with the feeling of fullness, while regularly aiding in bowel movements.
The main types of fiber are as follows:
On to stage four, where nutrient timing and number of meals play is the next level of importance.
When it comes to protein, protein timing is important because there's only so much protein your body can absorb FOR muscle protein synthesis. This is why it is essential to disperse your protein throughout the day. You don't need to divide it up evenly, just make sure that you have your bases covered. You can achieve this in 4-6 meals with protein sources.
Nutrient timing is also important when it comes to pre and post-workout nutrition. Having our higher carb meals before and after our workout help optimize energy levels. This will allow us to perform our best during intense exercise. In addition, several studies have shown protein & carbs post-workout improves muscle protein synthesis significantly more than just protein alone.
For the number of meals, we should have daily, we should take the following factors into account:
Typically 4-6 meals daily would be a great spot to getting proper nutrients in and taking protein timing to account.
The last level of the Nutritional Priorities Pyramid is supplements.
This is coming from a Fitness and Supplement brand: supplements can’t cure bad habits or a poor diet.
We believe that supplements augment your lifestyle: if you have strong habits, exercise, and eat proper nutrition consistently, supplements will improve that.
You need to optimize every other step of the Nutritional Priorities Pyramid before you dive into supplements!
Now, we wanted to introduce you to how we divide our supplement categories.
Foundational supplements are focused on covering any gaps as a result of a specific diet, training, or lifestyle.
Foundational Supplements are as follows:
Performance supplements are focused on improving performance on various tasks, whether it is physical or mental exercise. These supplements may not provide direct nutrients, but they may help you perform specific tasks you desire.
Performance Supplements are as follows:
Lifestyle supplements consist of things that we may use to cover any other deficiencies or improve our lifestyles. While some supplements in other categories can be in this category (like caffeine and nootropics), these supplements were not covered above.
Some examples of Lifestyle Supplements are as follows:
Many diets discuss pyramid stages 2-5, but there's more to it than the diet: we need to start with the basics - portion control, habit-building, and introducing exercise.
Think about this similarly to the Hierarchy of Needs: these must be reinforced constantly to optimize our lifestyle - to perform our best to reach our greatest potential.
Before we conclude this post, we wanted to give you the opportunity to join our free Facebook Course: The Fit Habit. In this course, we go through a framework and various strategies on how to build a lifestyle we desire.
Click on the graphic below to join the group:
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to comment below, or email us at support@reforgedperformance.com. We are here for you if you need it!
Thanks for reading, Reforged Legion!
One of the most difficult things to implement is a diet or exercise regiment. According to one study, more than 50% of people will drop out of their exercise program within 6 months. Most of the time, this is a result of our exercise program not meeting expectations. Our hesitations typically come from ourselves - and it's never always one reason.
There are typically multiple reasons as to why we drop out of our exercise and nutrition regiments.
In this post, we are going to go over the five barriers that hold most of us back from fitness.
Let's dive in!
We all witness the initial water weight loss that comes from dieting... it's so cool to drop 5-10lbs in one week when we start.
And then, it slows down... it even stops.
Some people get disheartened from this and believe that it's in their genetics... that the diet didn't work... that no matter what they do, it's useless.
I've been there.
I've tried Intermittent Fasting, Ketogenic, and low-carb diets way before they were cool. To be honest, most of these methods were never sustainable for me in the long-term: I would eventually always stop them. Being that I grew up with a family whose meals were Mediterranean-styled, fruits, vegetables, and complex carbs were always a part of my life.
Sometimes, having trouble eliminating food groups in diets is not because of willpower or discipline... it's because of adherence. To us, adherence is the most important thing in a diet, as it eventually breeds discipline and consistency.
It was not until I incorporated Flexible Dieting that my entire lifestyle changed for the better.
In this post, we will explore the Flexible Dieting system in its entirety. It's a system I have used through quite a few successful fat loss and muscle gain phases since 2013.
