Balanced Nutrition

What’s up EarthFIT fam my name is Eli. If we haven’t formally met already, I’m one of the newest coaches here at EarthFIT. I studied nutrition and dietetics at Appalachian State University back home in North Carolina. I love food. I love fitness. I love that I’m very competitive in nature… that’s just a little bit of background about me. If we haven’t formally met, I would love to meet you further. Get your story in training.

While I’m standing in front of you today, we are rolling out a new nutrition series. So what I’m going to be doing is answering your nutrition questions. Whatever you have, whatever you need… If you hear something in one of these videos, if you need something from us, please drop your questions in the comments. Shoot me an email at eli@earthfittraining.com, ask Sam, ask your other trainers, but please make sure your questions get asked because there’s a very good chance that someone else has a very similar question to you or simply shares your question also.

So what we’re going to do today is we’re going to dive into a little bit of nutrition and dietetics. Just get our toes wet. If you hear something again today, please drop the questions, shoot me an email, and we will cover it in some of the remaining videos. So today what we’re going to talk about is simply balance – Nutrition Balance. The important part of balancing your nutrition with your lifestyle. We balance everything. We balance our checkbooks. We balance scales. We balance everything, but oftentimes the balance of our nutrition gets lost in our everyday lives. So I’m going to talk about three main points here. I would love for you to pick out one of these points and figure out which one maybe you should work on within the next week. The first point of balance for your nutrition is simply your ins and your outs, your calorie intake. 

Are you consuming enough calories? Are you over consuming calories? What happens is a lot of times you come into EarthFIT, you burn a lot of calories, pay attention to your MyZone, your Apple watch, your Fitbit, whatever tool you are using, pay attention to how many calories you burn during your workout. This is very important because it’s also important to remember an EarthFIT workout.

A training session in here is only 30 minutes, 45 (minutes) if you count the stretching. So if you think about it, if you burned 500 calories in 30 minutes and you came to the 5:30 AM class, you still have a whole day’s worth ahead of you, of energy that your body needs. So what happens is a lot of times we get caught in these calorie deficits. Deficits are good if you’re trying to lose weight, getting caught in a bad calorie deficit where you’re missing 5, 6, 700 calories a day is oftentimes where we see people plateau with their goals.

If you want to lose a little extra weight, if you want to get a little closer to your goal, a lot of times what’s happening is we just can’t get out of that calorie deficit. So pay attention to that. Look at it. I’m not asking you to count your calories down to the single one, but get a good estimate of what you’re taking in on a daily basis versus what you’re burning. How was it matching up? Are you replenishing enough fuel? Second aspect of balancing, balancing your macros. This can be a little bit more complicated and this pertains more particular to your goal. If you have a goal to gain muscle, you’re going to be balancing your macros, but you’re going to consume a little bit more protein. If your goal is just more energy throughout the day, good health might be very well balanced between carbs, fat and protein. 

The biggest thing to understand is that carbs, fat and protein are used from your body, from your head to your toes, in all kinds of bodily processes. If we chop one of those out and say, we’re no longer consuming fat, we are taking away a good aspect of things that occur within the body. And I can go over some of these things. If that’s a question, if you would like to ask, please drop it in the comments. Think about if you were to choose to not carbs completely out of your diet and that was lacking. Glucose – which is a simplest form of carbohydrate is your brain’s number one source of food. So this is why it’s important to balance because if you just decided to cut all carbs, no more carbs, your brain is going to be hungry. You might find yourself a little foggy headed. 

That’s why it’s important to balance. There are other bodily things that are happening throughout the day that use fat, protein, carbs. And it’s very important to keep them balanced so that you have enough energy and feel well throughout the day. The last and final thing about is making sure that you’re eating a balanced diet that you enjoy – a balance of good food, tasting food that you enjoy. We’re talking about taste and enjoyment, sustainability and longevity. I want you guys to be consuming food that you can continue to eat for a long time. I do not want anyone to be eating foods that they don’t like. We can find food that you do like healthy food that you do like, balancing that so that you’re not just eating sweets. You’re also finding a way to eat those healthy foods in the proper way. We want to make sure that everyone is balanced. Everyone is fueled. Everyone is properly ready to attain their goals here at EarthFIT. Thank you guys so much for your time. Again, most importantly, if you have any questions, please drop them in the comments. I want you guys to think about those three things as we move forward this week. Thank you guys so much for your time. Hope you guys have an awesome day.

-EarthFIT Coach Eli