Keep things simple. There’s absolutely no need to complicate matters until you can get the essential things right first! Most of you probably don’t need to know about your quadriceps or abductors, your beta-carotenes or branch chain amino acids, or the glycaemic index of your food. Most of you can’t even get calories in versus calories out right, so you don’t need to be panicking about complex stuff. You don’t need to be wondering, “Ooo, am I deficient in Vitamin D, or magnesium?” How about you start by eating a healthy balanced diet first, and start getting a bit more exercise. Once you’ve cracked those two, then you can start looking at the intricacies of your nutrition and exercise. But until then, keep it simple.
I try and keep most of my blogs/vlogs as simple as possible, mostly dealing with the basics, the really important stuff in my opinion. The odd occasion I have been more technical, I have been informed by several people that I lost them when I got to the numbers, or I lost them when I got to the technical terms. And that’s understandable, because for most of you, that’s either not what you’re interested in, or you haven’t learnt enough yet to comprehend the more complicated parts, or simply it’s not what you need right now.
So why do I see so many people fretting about the little things? Maybe you’re trying to keep up with John and Sandra at the office. If that’s the case, you need to put your ego aside. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, it doesn’t matter that they’re taking BCAAs, it doesn’t matter that they’re supplementing with Potassium, even if it’s because they read this article stating none of us are getting enough. Maybe you read that article yourself, and now it’s all you can think about. You don’t need any of it, certainly not yet anyway. You need to start off simple, and tackle those basic problems first.
I’ll be honest with you, even I don’t really bother with most of that intricate stuff. I know how much I eat, and how that affects my body, my shape, my body fat. But I don’t know what I’m deficient in, what I could do with supplementing, because so long as I feel fine, that’s enough for me. Your body’s pretty nifty like that, it tends to have ways of telling you when you’re not getting enough of something. Yes, it’s nice to stay a step ahead of that point, but for most of us eating “properly”, it’s very possible we’ll never reach that point anyway. So save your time and money.
So what are you worrying about so much? You’re over complicating everything, and by doing that you’re also making it a lot harder to stay on track. When you make things more expensive than they should be, when you make it more difficult get hold of what you need, when you put more pressure on yourself to adhere to strict rules, you’re less likely to stick with it. And when most people give up, they give up everything, not just the over-complicated aspects. For most of us, starting with the simple things like understanding your calorific needs, eating better, eating a healthy balanced diet, exercising a bit more, is going to do ten times more for you than anything else. And those are the bits that really matter, they are the important issues. Keep it simple, make it as easy for yourself as you can. Just get the basics right first. See you next week.
Dan Miller
Body Fuel Personal Fitness Trainer