When it comes to choosing a way to improve yourself it seems the world of fitness is swarmed with different directions to take. Dozens of diets, hundreds of self-help books, promising products on the shelves, gym signs around every corner all screaming 'pick me, pick MEEEE!'.
The thing is, a whole lot of that bunch is downright unworkable. And I don't mean the obvious scams that anyone with a bare minimum of common sense should be able to figure out for themselves - you know the ones, the ab-rollers, the slim corsets and the super special pills based on whatever fad some hot chick is telling you about on TV. That those won't work should be obvious to anyone, if not for any other reason then simply because if it was that easy then everyone would be doing it and there'd be no need for other methods of getting fit.
No, what I mean is that a lot of those diet and nutrition plans seem aimed for people who have no other concern in their lives than what to eat next. It's not that they are bad per se, or that they aren't healthy or even that they won't work; I'm pretty sure that they are fine, and if you follow them to the letter then even a couch-o-saurus will be able to shed extra pounds at a regular pace.
The problem with them is that unless your life is being ran like a well oiled machine then you simply won't be able to follow them for long. You'll have to cheat, and it won't be necessarily be because you got the munchies or lacked the will to do it.
Take one of the most often dietary plans out there - calculating your daily calories for maintenance (i.e. the bare minimum that you consume, what your body needs just to exist) and take a portion of those while feeding yourself every two to three hours. Let's go over that again. You need to eat while you're awake every two to three hours, which comes down to five or six meals a day, half of which span the time you're at work.
In order to achieve this you'd need to spend a portion of your time the evening before every single day calculating what you'll be putting in all those meals (because good luck finding a cafeteria whose snacks aren't going to be packed with processed ingredients and too many calories to fit in all those meals), put them in plastic containers, figure out where to store them the next morning, then keep it all in your head while trying to keep your boss, clients, coworkers happy and every other ball you got in the air going.
Are there people who can do this? Absolutely. Am I one of them? Well, not if I have a choice.
It turns out I do (have a choice that is), but I'm just ranting here because there's a whole industry that recognizes all this and capitalizes on it. No time to pack all those lunches HUH. Well. Well, well. Why don't you buy these protein bars from us? Why don't you get these pre-packed meals we'll deliver at work? I'm pretty amazed at how every single one of those companies insists, advertises and pushes in your face all these products that try to make you think the one true way of having a healthy nutrition goes exclusively through them.
The thing is, homo sapiens have been around for a few thousand years now. I'm pretty sure my ancestors didn't restrict themselves on eating no carbs, I'm damn sure they didn't eat every couple of hours and I'm pretty damn certain they had to be pretty fit in order to take down their meals at the end of speartips every day.
So that's my rule of thumb for anything I do: It has to be doable (a diet is absolutely useless if I won't do it) and it has to follow even a wide definition of common sense.
Humankind wasn't created yesterday. Diets were.
The thing is, a whole lot of that bunch is downright unworkable. And I don't mean the obvious scams that anyone with a bare minimum of common sense should be able to figure out for themselves - you know the ones, the ab-rollers, the slim corsets and the super special pills based on whatever fad some hot chick is telling you about on TV. That those won't work should be obvious to anyone, if not for any other reason then simply because if it was that easy then everyone would be doing it and there'd be no need for other methods of getting fit.
No, what I mean is that a lot of those diet and nutrition plans seem aimed for people who have no other concern in their lives than what to eat next. It's not that they are bad per se, or that they aren't healthy or even that they won't work; I'm pretty sure that they are fine, and if you follow them to the letter then even a couch-o-saurus will be able to shed extra pounds at a regular pace.
The problem with them is that unless your life is being ran like a well oiled machine then you simply won't be able to follow them for long. You'll have to cheat, and it won't be necessarily be because you got the munchies or lacked the will to do it.
Take one of the most often dietary plans out there - calculating your daily calories for maintenance (i.e. the bare minimum that you consume, what your body needs just to exist) and take a portion of those while feeding yourself every two to three hours. Let's go over that again. You need to eat while you're awake every two to three hours, which comes down to five or six meals a day, half of which span the time you're at work.
In order to achieve this you'd need to spend a portion of your time the evening before every single day calculating what you'll be putting in all those meals (because good luck finding a cafeteria whose snacks aren't going to be packed with processed ingredients and too many calories to fit in all those meals), put them in plastic containers, figure out where to store them the next morning, then keep it all in your head while trying to keep your boss, clients, coworkers happy and every other ball you got in the air going.
Are there people who can do this? Absolutely. Am I one of them? Well, not if I have a choice.
It turns out I do (have a choice that is), but I'm just ranting here because there's a whole industry that recognizes all this and capitalizes on it. No time to pack all those lunches HUH. Well. Well, well. Why don't you buy these protein bars from us? Why don't you get these pre-packed meals we'll deliver at work? I'm pretty amazed at how every single one of those companies insists, advertises and pushes in your face all these products that try to make you think the one true way of having a healthy nutrition goes exclusively through them.
The thing is, homo sapiens have been around for a few thousand years now. I'm pretty sure my ancestors didn't restrict themselves on eating no carbs, I'm damn sure they didn't eat every couple of hours and I'm pretty damn certain they had to be pretty fit in order to take down their meals at the end of speartips every day.
So that's my rule of thumb for anything I do: It has to be doable (a diet is absolutely useless if I won't do it) and it has to follow even a wide definition of common sense.
Humankind wasn't created yesterday. Diets were.
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