WHY YOU DON’T HAVE ABS: IT’S YOUR FOOD DUMMY-by Colin Stuckert

Today’s Topic: Training your ass off but fucking it all up with your diet
Goal: Get you to make better food choices
How: Simple mindset shifts, informed decisions, and a damn Crockpot

TRAINING HARD AND NOT EATING WELL

I see this all the time:

• Athletes work their ass off in the gym (some everyday)
• They get stronger and fitter
• But they never reach the body results they SHOULD

My box, CrossFit Estero, has ~250 members. I see most of these athletes a few times a week for long periods of time.  What I see WAY more than I would like to are plateaus.

And it’s always the same body-comp culprits: lack of sleep, drinking too much, and ashitty diet.

Diet comprises approximately 80% of what determines your body composition and health (granted you aren’t doing crack or smoking cigarettes obv).

Over the years I have noticed that people will listen if you give them nutrition advice but translating it into action is a VERY low probability event. There are many factors why this is so: confusion, false food beliefs that the masses still toss around, not actually caring, not knowing where to start, skepticism, etc.

In my Box it usually boils down to two types of athletes:

• Clients that seek answers, absorb information, and make changes

• Everyone else

I’m hoping to reach the “everyone else”

I want to motivate you, nudge you, scare you, do ANYTHING to get you to take action; small action, large action, any action.

I want the importance of food ingrained into your brain.  I want every bite, sip, or nibble of your favorite junk food to elicit a pang of guilt. Then, with enough guilt and knowledge, you will start making changes.

Mindset is everything.  If you can start thinking about food through new eyes you can start making real changes. Once you implement a change in your eating you will start to enjoy six-pack abs, long sexy legs, a nice ass, and mountains of success and happiness. No really, food can do all that.

Food should be thought of as a drug.  A drug creates a hormonal response in the body.  Food does the same damn thing.  Hormones are linked to everything that goes on in our lives:

• Happiness
• Depression
• Motivation
• Energy
• Sex drive
• Weight loss
• Weight gain
• Anger
• Stress

Do you see how food can be pretty frickin important?  This list comprises everything you do in your life and your hormones are responsible for it all. Your food can improve your life or take away from it.  Simple as that.

Training is important but diet is where you see body composition results

FOOD IS EVERYTHING

We all want to look better, that’s a given right? Well, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret grasshopper…you ready for this?

Food determines your body

I don’t care if you have amazing genetics, you will pay for poor choices now or later. Sure, you hear stories of NFL stars eating fried chicken all day and performing like machines but they are the exception, not the rule. And being jacked doesn’t mean one is healthy either.

Think of the many females that seem to have the ‘skinny gene’ and regularly consume junk food like a vacuum.  These ‘skinny fat’ are destroying their bodies (and promoting cancer and disease). Think of all those girls that were perfect in high school/college and you then see them a few years later and they are overweight. That is a diet that didn’t adapt to match an aging and deteriorating body.  Your body eventually breaks down from misuse, it’s inevitable.

You are what you eat. You’ve heard this a thousand times, so why then are you still eating goddamn pop tarts? You want your ass (or stomach) to look like gooey cherry-red filling?

Face Palm ←—The frustration of being a Coach in this business.

He eats clean

COLIN’S “THREE MOST IMPORTANT FOOD RULES”

(yes I referred to myself in the 3rd person, what of it?)

1. Eat Real Food

2. Cook something damn it

3. Utilize slow cooking 

Awesome steaks now at Target

1. EAT REAL FOOD

• It shouldn’t include chemicals or synthetic alterations
• It shouldn’t last weeks, months, or years
• It should be prepared well and respected
• It should have been alive recently
• It should be unprocessed
• It should go bad if it sits on the counter

What this looks like:

Animals, Seafood, Tubers, Sweet Taters, Veggies, Fruits, Nuts, Seeds, *Pastured/Grass-Fed dairy products

What this doesn’t look like:

Grains (highly processed), Beans (gut issues), Lentils, Bread, Processed sweets, cookies, cake, juice, soda, artificial sweeteners, margarine

Eat real food as fresh as possible with no processing and nothing fake added

Further reading on the subject:

What is The Paleo Diet, How To Eat Clean With The Paleo Diet

Real home-cooked food

2. COOK SOMETHING DAMN IT

If you want to know what goes in your food (and you freaking should) then you need to do most of your eating at home where you have control.

Restaurants use crap ingredients to cut costs. They inflate meals to make it taste better and be more addictive; sugar, salt, msg, etc.

I’m not demonizing all restaurant food; I love to eat out, but I prefer places that serve fresh local ingredients and that use clean cooking ingredients and techniques. My local options include Chipotle or the higher end restaurants that are $30 a plate.  Not many options to choose from but that’s OK because that is how you stay healthy and ripped: home-cooked food

LET’S COMPARE THE TWO:

Restaurant food:

• Pros: Relatively quick (depends), no clean up or prep
• Cons: expensive, processed, terrible for you, makes you gassy, makes you fat

Home cooked food:

• Pros: Cost effective, healthy, clean/unprocessed, tastes way better if done right, the key to a six-pack
• Cons: Shopping, Clean up, Prep

Further reading on the subject: Cooking Like A Badass

Reaching a high level in anything, diet or fitness or whatever, requires small consistent action steps in the form of habits for a long-long time. You slowly build these habits over and over until you have them so ingrained into your being that they are apart of who you are and what you do.

Eventually you will reach a lifestyle, a level of health, and a body that you are proud of. It isn’t going to happen if you don’t get your food in check.

3. UTILIZE SLOW COOKING

A huge complaint I get regarding food and diet is the amount of time it takes, and I DO agree with that to an extent.

Enter slow cooking 

Slow cooking is easy, can produce amazing meals, and requires minimal shopping, prep, and clean up.

Buy a slow cooker and start using it. It may be the missing ingredient in your food program. Here is a recommend recipe book for slow cooking.

Further reading on the subject

Easy and makes plenty of meals

REVIEW

1. Eat Real Food
2. Cook something damn it
3. Utilize slow cooking

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to go “all or nothing”.  It all starts with one step, one change, one habit, one meal, one dish, one anything.  ”The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” -Chinese proverb

Start making changes immediately:

• Eat out less often
• Start cooking more often
• Slow cooking ONE MEAL
• Skip dessert one time, then two times, etc

No one develops a lasting habit(s) overnight. It takes time, sometimes a lot of it. The key is to get food and its importance ingrained in your mindset and how you think about it. From there you can make better decisions on average and your results will compound into more results.

If you tell yourself that you will start your diet tomorrow, you are 100% lying to yourself. I reckon you will continue your entire life convincing yourself of your own bulshit.

You either start now or you start never. There is no tomorrow, next year, or later. There is only now.

NOW get your ass in gear NOW!

Yours in Fitness,

-Colin Stuckert