THERE ARE 168 HOURS IN EACH WEEK... I train many of you from 1-2 hours each week. What YOU do with the other 166-167 hours each week will determine your success in reaching your goals. I'm not using this as a "cop out" by no means! It is any good trainer's responsibility to not only put you through an effective workout each and every session but to also educate on how to continue to make progress beyond the session.
Now, that we've covered cardio, lets look at nutrition. Many people who I don't work with have come to me asking nutrition questions. I get questions from me being a vegetarian to what I ate when I was a bodybuilder. The common thread in all the answers I receive is that people are following a particular diet that they have found online or from someone who has had success with in the past. The person will then go out and buy a list of particular foods and eat them religiously, start to see results and then hit a plateau. The reason? Like everything in life, you adapt to the stimulus. Food is basically nutrients designed to fuel and support the body. It is a stimulus used to evoke a response within the cellular level. If you performed the same workout every day for months on end, you would not see results as the body would adapt to the exercises and cease to make progress. If you are sick and take antibiotics for an extended period of time, your cell receptors will become burnt out and stop responding. Bodybuilders who use steroids are well aware they must cycle the different compounds in order to keep the cell receptors fresh and create an anabolic environment. The same is true with nutrition.
Many people will go on a diet and lose weight initially and either continue eating the same foods for an extended period of time and hit a plateau, or hit their goal and go back to eating the same foods which made them fat in the first place and put all the weight back on... and more because the body has been conditioned to over compensate for the extra calories and fats introduced.
It has been shown that eating the same foods every day will create a thermogenic adjustment to your metabolic thermostat. This means you will stop making progress. Your body won't process the nutrients as efficiently as well. Research in the Journal of Nutrition has shown that people who eat the same food over and over again tend to be less healthy than those who strive for variety.
In the study, participants who consumed the widest range of foods were 21 percent less likely to develop metabolic syndrome—a cluster of conditions like high blood pressure, high blood sugar, or increased body fat that ups your risk for heart disease and diabetes—compared to those who stuck to their standbys. This means you will more than likely not only not lose weight but can actually increase your waist circumference!
Now, you may be thinking, isn't it better to eat fewer different foods and avoid increasing the risk of eating more calories or foods that aren't nutrient dense? Eating a lower variety of food can help you lose weight but these foods must be balanced with micro and macornutrients to ensure a healthy metabolism.
The problem with some people's nutrient intake is, they find something that works for a while and never vary from it. Varying your foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains and low fat dairy will keep your metabolism elevated and working efficiently.
Varying not only your food intake but your caloric intake will help keep your metabolism running efficiently and provide enough variety to prevent your body to acclimate itself to the constant nutrients day in and day out.
Take a good honest look at your nutrient intake. Track your food for a week, using an app such as My Fitness Pal and see where your caloric intake is for any given day. Check and see if you eat the same foods. Do you eat a lot of fast food? Processed food? Do you rely on chicken and eggs as your main source of protein? Perhaps an evaluation of your nutrient intake and change in the structure of your meals may be what is needed. *Some information compiled from http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/food-variety-health-benefits