It is no secret that if the TRP could give any struggling man a piece of advice using only one word, it would be: lift. It is talked about very often here, but there isn't a whole lot of discussion about nutrition. A lifting routine is pointless without proper eating habits. I veer away from using the word diet as it implies there being an end point. There is no end point to being healthy. It is a life style. There are two benefits of healthy eating I would like to discuss and it is simply physical health and mental health.

Physical health

The number one rookie mistake I see with new gym goers is that they completely forgo the eating healthy part. I have friends that think they can transform their body by doing strong lifts and drinking a protein shake afterwards. This isn't true, and it shows in how they haven't made any significant progress. There is debate on the ratio of Gym:diet, whatever it may be, I am confident the diet weighs more. A fat man who can bench 300 pounds is still fat.

At the beginning, everyone wants to get ripped because of aesthetics and getting women. If you do become ripped, you will have this profound new outlook on life. Your body used to be your cage. A mind and soul trapped within a dysfunctional prison. Get to around ~10% body fat and lower, and your prison just became a vehicle. You can use this vehicle to take your mind where it wants to go. If you've never been fit before, you will experience true freedom for the first time. You'll be able to climb, push and pull the environment around you, something that fat body could never do. But it isn't exactly the lifting that gets you there, you need to eat clean foods. A fat man that eats from the earth won't be fat for very long. What exactly do I mean by eating from the earth? Well it simply means that your food sources occur naturally. This means animals, fruits, and vegetables. All the big name diets out there... Atkins, Keto, Paleo, they all share this. In fact most of them are preaching the same life style but just saying it a little bit differently.

Your body is comprised of the food you eat (Duh). Everyone knows this. However in the western world we as a society look the other way because food is so abundant now. We eat for pleasure, not for fuel. In fact there has never been a point in human history where the next meal was so guaranteed. The entire concept of a restaurant is still relatively new. For most of our history if you either grew your food or you killed it. For the past few hundred years and especially after the 50's with the rise of fast food, a hot meal is readily available everywhere you go. For this reason we've become mushy and fat, with a myriad of health problems that come from eating like shit day in and day out. Start eating for fuel, and watch as the pleasure comes from every other aspect of your life in the coming months.

Mental Health

The brain is comprised of mostly fat. It uses fat you eat to operate. So if you want to have a high powered brain, wouldn't you want to feed it the most high quality fats? By eating avocados, red meat, and olive/coconut based oil, you will be consistently feeding yourself clean, high quality fat. Eating healthy will make you feel better, but also make you think smarter too. Think about it, we know now that we feel what we feel because of chemical reactions. Different chemicals release into the brain to give us different feelings. You've heard these in the forms of dopamine, serotonin, lipids. The food we eat is directly responsible for if we feel good or not. Everything else spirals out from there. Feelings of sadness, anger, irritability, its amplified by the food. The same goes for feelings of happiness, energy, mental clarity. A lot of people would say they suffer from depression or anxiety and have no idea that it's really because of all the damn sugar and trans fat. There absolutely is clinical depression, I don't claim that there isn't. But I would wager many people are simply experiencing the side effects of habitually consuming sugar. Hence feeling like shit. When eating food think not about how it will taste but how it will feel in your gut. Be aware of your feelings. Learn to manipulate these chemical releases like dopamine and serotonin, and you truly can be in a state of happiness a majority of the time. By simply 'feeling good', it touches every other aspect of your life. Your work will improve because you are more alert and energetic. Your relationships will improve because you radiate positivity. Your fitness will improve because you are using more efficient fuel. All of this contributes to your frame. As you continue to become healthier and healthier, these aspects of your life will snowball.

So if you are a fat person reading this, how do you start? There are a million ways to skin a cat and the same is true for healthy eating as well. Of the many different strategies I have personally tried, I enjoy the Ketogenic and Intermittent fasting strategies the most. Both of those require explanations long enough to be their own post so I won't get into that here. Become a student of nutrition. Learn how master your body, as Socrates once said: "No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which the body is capable."