“An apple a day keeps the doctor away”

It will take more than an apple a day to keep the doctor away, but if you are an athlete and you are training long days and constantly on the move, don’t resort to an energy drink. Try an apple instead and see if it gets the job done without creating a nasty addiction, spiking your insulin levels, making you slower and fatter, rotting your teeth or making you crash just a while later.

I wanted to start our first official blog out by talking about nutrition. As everyone knows, nutrition is the base of any type of human performance.  Therefore to guarantee succesful performance our diet has to be based on good quality food.

What is good quality food?

A good quality food diet is based on garden vegetables, especially greens, lean meats, nuts and seeds, little starch, and no sugar.  This is also known as the Paleo diet.

If we take a second and think of food as fuel, all you motocross and rally car drivers out there understand very well the importance of a good fuel mixture in order to achieve optimum performance from our vehicle’s engine. Well, the same thing happens with food.

Most likely you aren’t really sure how to do this with your food just yet. Nothing to worry about, because we will keep it simple and tell you straight forward how it is done.

Eliminate all liquid sugar (Juice, soda and alcohol) and hydrate with water. Make sure that every meal contains 25%-30% protein (from meat source), 25%-40% carbohydrates (from veggies and some fruits) and remainder should be fats (from nuts, seeds and oils). If your fish intake is low, we recommend fish oil supplement to get omega-3 fats which are essential in any healthy diet.

If this is far from what your usual diet looks like. Take a second and  just start by eliminating liquid sugar, followed by dairy and make sure to keep your grocery cart to the perimeter of the grocery store and try to avoid the aisles to protect your health. Food is perishable and the stuff with long shelf life is all suspicious. And if you are really all in with the plan you will want to go gluten free as well.

If you are capable of following these simple guidelines you will benefit from nearly all that can be achieved through nutrition. If you kept the good work up during the week, don’t be so square and kick your heels up and give yourself a well deserved cheat day.

So, to all of you athletes out there trying to do it, stop messing around with crazy fad diets, supplements and other BS that won’t get you anywhere and start cleaning up and start bringing it home.

Coach Carl -keepin’ it Paleo- Paoli

For more information on the Paleo diet visit:

www.paleodiet.com

www.paleobrands.com

or contact Coach Carl Paoli with any question or concerns at carl@nakasbsm.com