I had originally wanted to call this section nutrition and training rather than training and nutrition but I was afraid that if you had read the word nutrition first, you might not have come to this section at all. Nutrition has become one of those turn off words for several reasons. One being that we like the food that we like and we don’t want somebody telling us what we should or shouldn’t be eating. Another is it seems like almost weekly they come out with a new diet and each one claims that theirs is the best. In no way am I going to claim to be an expert on the matter. What I do know is, proper nutrition is the key factor in your overall health and wellbeing, physically (leaving the spiritual and the emotional aside) and it is even more important with training, exercise, and performance. I would most definitely say that proper nutrition is the most important aspect for the athlete and leads to greater success in the areas of power, strength, endurance, and performance.

I grew up believing, as well as most other athletes did and still do, that our energy and performance would be its best with a large carbohydrate load. I know that for many this is still a common belief. For years this was my thinking and for my pre-game day and pre-game meals I would load up on the carbs, usually, a lot of pasta, bread, and potatoes and less of the meats and greens. Throughout my athletic experiences and career I have found that my energy levels varied greatly and for years I struggled to reach my goal weight. Over the last few years I haven’t struggled with my weight near as much but my energy levels still seemed to be all over the place. Throughout the last 3 years I really started to buy into the effects of protein, and how it can really help with recovery from muscle soreness and have also seen and experienced firsthand how it really helps with building muscle mass and increasing fat loss. On average, when I was sticking to my diet over this time any time I gained or lost weight, the weight I gained was muscle weight and the weight I lost was fat. The true professionals that I have had the privilege to work with that understand the importance of nutrition, and have brought just a simple thing like whey protein to their regiment, have had noticeable differences.

I have had the opportunity to work and workout with many amazing athletes over time. The same type of people that stand out in my mind who excelled not only in the weight room, but in there endurance, their drive, and their playing performance are all guys who saw the importance of taking care of their body. Whether it was through supplements, diet, or a combination of both it has always been the guys who took the time to put the right stuff into their bodies that got the most out of their body. This last off season I saw a guy break down and completely divulge himself into this type of thinking and made what went into his body more important than anything else in his training. The results that that I saw were amazing. He lost 50lbs in total, while he had to have put on 10-20lbs in obvious muscle mass his overall fat loss had to be around 60-70 lbs, where, a lot of that may have also been retained water weight, I had never seen anything quite like it. Here’s the biggest kicker of it all, he was still eating more than I eat. When I say that, it doesn’t mean he was having to force himself to eat some disgusting diet food several times a day. He was getting to eat as much as the meat that he loved already and probably more of it along with some great fatty foods.

Remember, I’m not a diet expert but as I’ve seen in both his and in my regiment I wouldn’t recommend any other type of diet. The diet that he was and is still using and that I have also taken on over the past 6 months is a combination of the metabolic and anabolic diet. This diet is very scientifically based. Some of the basis of the diet is on insulin levels which depend on what you put into your body. For instance, when you have a carb load your body’s insulin has to spike in order for the sugar to get broken down properly and carried through your blood stream to the rest of your body to be used as energy. The problem with this is that when your body goes through a carb load it takes a lot of your bodies energy to be able to break it down to be used properly in your body. The other bad thing about carbs is often times it is stored as fat.

I understand that last little bit might have been a bit more than you wanted to know but it is one of my favourite scientific aspects to this diet. The reason being, if you didn’t guess or know, I’m a diabetic. As a Type 1 diabetic insulin has become a big part of my life and when I can see its importance and other benefits or disadvantages in my diet from insulin other than it just lowering my blood sugar I find it quite interesting.
The rest of the exact specifics and science to this diet I will leave for you to discover as I don’t know most of them and don’t want to mislead you. What little I know is that on this diet around 40-50% of your diets calories will come from protein, around 40-50% will come from your essential fats, and around 10-20% of your diets calories will come from carbs. It’s not all that simple, your greens play a major role as well and the diet depends on you. For instance, it is dependent on your size; height and weight, your goal weight, and distribution of weight; muscle to fat. The diet is also ancestrally based. When you look into history and see what our ancestors ate it helps this diet make more sense. They lived off the land and the animals that were around them and this is what they got their energy from. They didn’t need to load up on all these complex carbohydrates to go out and work the land and put in a good days work. I don’t believe I would get any arguments that our ancestors in general worked much harder and much fuller days than our current day society.
This diet won’t be as difficult as I’m making it out to be but if you are reading because you want to know how and what professionals do to take care of their body, it might be a good idea for you, too. As I learn more I will try to simplify some of the specifics and sciences, in the meantime I would like to share with you a nutritional system that has helped me follow the same concepts of this diet and has helped me to get more out of my body than ever before.

Over this last off season I had a cousin of mine approach me about the nutritional system that her and her family were using. A couple things that really spiked my interest besides the great health and nutritional benefits that her family was getting out of it were; for one she also has a type 1 diabetic son and they are always looking for the best of the best. He has always struggled to put on muscle mass and was seeing major gains using this company’s whey protein because of many of the amino acids within it. Then also, using their meal, fruit, and vegetable replacements he could reach 100% of his daily value in fruit and vegetables, and all the while it was all fairly low in carbohydrates. The importance of this for a diabetic means that he doesn’t have to give himself near as much insulin, and was therefore, dealing with a lot less high and low blood sugars. The second thing that really caught my interest was that she said the Dallas Cowboys were using these products. When I checked that out and found that they were, I figured this stuff had to be good. Whether you’re a Dallas fan or not the thing about the Cowboys is that they are on the cutting edge of everything. They have the most money, the best of the best, and they sell more than any other team in the NFL. They sell over twice as much as the next closest team, which was the Packers, in merchandise and memorabilia annually.

My cousin was using this system to lose weight and cleanse her body while her son was using it to gain weight and reap the same health benefits of the cleanse. In her first month of using the products she lost 15lbs and is continuing to have great success. The biggest difference that she told me that I would notice that her and her family had experienced was the energy increase they had. She said that the kids were all of a sudden excited to go to school and they felt much less stress in their lives. At the time she had approached me I was already in the process of looking for something more than my over the counter whey protein and red bull from time to time. I wanted something that was going to improve my life allowing me to live healthy, and get over the energy fluctuations that I was so often experiencing. I decided to trust her and try it out. The best part about it is that it is very healthy. There are no stimulants in any of the products like caffeine or ephedrine; there are no addictive agents within these products. It is just simply rich with vitamins and minerals that are good for your body. When you take care of yourself and care about what goes into your system, even just by drinking more water for instance, you can improve digestion and help to get rid of impurities or stressors, which cling to your body’s cells and can lead to retention of water and fat. These products, I believe, help with your body’s vitality and help your body reach its mental and physical potential.

The product that I have been raving about is Isagenix. I am an Isagenix independent associate and I love my product. Not, only because I use the products and have had great success with them, but because I believe that with the help of good nutrition you can reach your bodies potential and goals. I haven’t talked to anybody whom I’ve had use these products that haven’t had some success with them. In most cases people have told me that they really noticed a difference in their energy levels throughout the day. I cannot guarantee weight loss, but in the cases that I had where people have used this product to lose weight, have followed the program to a T, and stuck with it, these people have had great success in losing the pounds that they wanted. To learn more about these products go to johnchick.isagenix.com.

I have always been one of those guys who runs everywhere; on the football field and the basketball court. That has always been my edge, the only difference between always and now is that now it seems to come easy and I don’t have near the muscle soreness that I once did. I have more time to plan my next move or get off a block than worrying about catching my breath or thinking about conserving energy. When I had started this football season I was about 5-10 lbs lighter than what I played at in 2007 but am much stronger than I was and looked thicker than I was. I had my position coach as well as other coaches and players ask me how much weight I had put on in the off season. They didn’t believe me that I had actually cut weight, but the fact was that I had just put on more muscle mass and lost some fat. The real point that I wanted to get through to you in this section is that what you put in your body and your over all nutrition is by far the most important thing for your health and well being, physically that you can control. If you are any type of athlete or trying just to get in shape, figure out what is best for you and cut out the bad stuff. One point that I would like to make is that too much of any substance can be bad for you. What your body needs is balance. Here is the link for more information on the metabolic and anabolic diets that were discussed earlier www.metabolicdiet.com.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my thoughts on nutrition. I hope you gained something from this material and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me. If this interests you in any way and you think that you might be interested in these types of products or are curious to my specific nutritional plan please visit my website johnchick.isagenix.com. Take a look for yourself at an array of products that might be just what you’re looking for. There are many informational videos within my independent associate isagenix website that might flip the switch and help lead you to the success that you’re hoping for. Finally, see what monetary possibilities there are, through having better nutrition for myself and sharing it with others I have also been able to make a decent income. I know that in our society the obesity epidemic is out of control. There’s nothing better than being part of the solution to this problem and being satisfied in the product that you sell. My goal is to really broaden this business and to share it with people who would love to both; be in better health and have more money. Again, if this sounds like something that interests you visit the site or contact me. Thanks again, and please enjoy the rest of the site.

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