Food Rules Can Create Food Prisons - Or Is Just Me Who Does This??

DON’T MAJOR ON THE MINORS!!! (or… stop making health rules into your own personal prison!)

Guess what. People – girls, in particular - are very, very good at making a religion out of food and training ‘rules’. Tell them not to do something and suddenly the baby goes flying out the window with the bath water. Suddenly it’s no longer ‘ok’ to eat a certain food combination, or use a certain oil – least the heavens open and a bolt of hot lightening strikes you down and adds a big fat kilo of cellulite right on the widest part of your hips! I dare you to tell me you don’t know what I mean – dare you!!

The fads surrounding nutrition are very clear and they generally start on social media and make their way onto mainstream media before the world explodes into a new religion!! Paleo. Cross-fit. Diets. Get a few celebrity names on-board and we have ourselves a new religion.

Here’s something I know to be true; Too much information is NOT helpful for most of us. Between FB posts (which are always truthful and/or researched of course – no question about that!), seminars, e-books, newsletters and loud-mouths – the overload of information is rampant.

On that; if you are taking a random FB comment as gospel, on just about any topic, without finding more out yourself, well… you sort of need to give yourself a sharp uppercut. I seriously do not care if it is said by an “IFBB pro” (cos there aren’t many of them around are there?), a ‘Sponsored Athlete’ (who has no interest in pushing their sponsee’s product of course), or an all-round honest person – a comment with no back-up (including my own!) is just there for entertainment and to pique your interest. Not to build one of the walls of your personal prison from.

If your bread-and-butter is dependant on training, nutrition, health and selling your product, I am certain that every detail is important. Staying in touch with the cutting edge of science and also balancing that with the latest fads and putting it all into one attractive marketing bundle will be the way to win likers for sure. I get that.

But for the majority of us who love to train and want to stay healthy, fit and happy – it’s pretty damn important to keep a balance on our approach. If you’re scratching your head and wondering what the hell I’m on about, I’ll try and make this really simple;

How To Make Food Rules Into Your Own Personal Prison

-          I would eat fruit because it is a brilliant source of vitamins and hardly upsets my fragile little insulin monster at all

-          However I may consider giving it away altogether because, sadly for fruit, it has those magic ‘ose’ (as in fructose) letters attached. Meaning it is sugar. And sugar is Satanic. Capital ‘S’.

-          I would definitely hold on to broccoli. That’s what bodybuilders eat. Broccoli.

-          But I wouldn’t admit to it. Because only fanatical bodybuilders eat Broccoli.

-          I would eat tons of cauliflower. I would use it as my pizza base; I would cook it whole in the oven; I would use it as ‘fake’ mashed potato. Cauliflower is Godly. Capital ‘G’.

-          I would not drink milk!! Give me a “Hell No!!” Milk is bad. Really Bad.

-          Almond milk is ok. Rice milk is ok. Soy milk is bad.

-          Actually – apparantely full cream milk is ok but low fat milk is still bad.

-          F***K it!! All too hard to figure out. Just give anything ‘milk’ a wide berth.

-          Chicken breast is still the most angelic and celestial meat in the whole world.

-          But never would I eat it with broccoli because Chicken & Broccoli is a terrible cliché.

-          I would stick with quinoa – but I wouldn’t call it “Quin – O – A” again, because I really did feel like a dick. I now know it to be “Keen-Wa”. What a stupid word for a yummy carb!

-          I would keep rice because “no one ever got fat eating rice” – right? Is that still applicable?

-          Unless I subscribed to Perfect Paleo Pete. And then I would have to make do with organic eggs and smallish piece of grass fed beef. Yummy as it is… watching a bowl of lettuce would become more exciting than eating this every night.

-          I would eat more smoothies. Green of course. Is there any other colour for a smoothie? Have you heard of a Crimson Smoothie? Of course you haven’t. Because the only smoothies that exist are Green Smoothies. Overpriced Green Smoothies. Thank you Boost – you rock!

-          Coffee is good. But bad. But great. But evil.

-          Green tea is ok. It tastes like horse-wee – but I’m told it’s great. I’m sure it is … because it tastes so bad. Even the very cool and uber popular (love that word. ‘Uber’. So sophisticated) X-50 Green tea. Guess what – I hate it. Horrible. Strong, nasty after-taste that keeps on giving for an extra hour or two. YUCK.

Supplements

-          Creatine, protein, glucosamine, ALA, glutamine, BCAA’s, leucine, tourine, casein, glutamine, magnesium, tyrosine, vitamin C, vitamin B, vitamin E – I’m so overwhelmed by the whole lot and every time I delve into it, I find information that negates the way I’m doing it – so I give up and pretty much don’t take any of them.

-          Protein powders should be ‘raw’. No added nasties. Sweetened naturally. Except they taste freakin terrible. Horrible. Awful. Close-nose-and-down-the-trap material.

-          Protein bars are chalky tasting chocolate bars. Demonic to their low-grade-protein core and the fibre content does not negate the carb content. Only fools (like me) are taken in by this and continue to chew-longtime on them. And I like the taste – gasp, shock, horror. Fancy admitting to liking them and eating them!! Occasionally.

Training

-          Reps, sets, rest periods, rest days, heavy weights, light weights, techniques, range of movement, partial sets, dropsets, matrixes, giant sets – all of it needs to be combined to a perfectly set program that interacts beautifully and is part of an overall progressive program. No wonder personal trainers are an essential expense – how the hell do you make sense of the information overload? And the ‘rules’ that are touted by some FB self-proclaimed gurus?

Estrogen

-          This is the word that is beginning to haunt my very soul!! I’m surrounded by estrogen information and I’m seriously worried about what I need to do to run far away from this fat holding, dimple making hormone!! To avoid it at all costs I need to avoid;

Heating anything in plastic, drinking from warm plastic bottles. Using makeup, perfume, deodorant, jewellery, hair dyes, cleaning products, gardening products and soaps that contain nasty hormones.

While I am fascinating and horrified and wanting to clean my life up at all costs – I seriously love perfume, and my fancy smelly soaps, and I’m not opposed to a bit of colour in the old locks. I can’t imagine trying to find ‘raw’ eye liner and, in the Northern Territory, seriously – any deodorant is better than none!! But I have immediately stopped all plastic heating! That one I could cope with easily.

Biggest Scams I Have Fallen For  - according to me only – sure to offend someone, somewhere…

·         Green smoothies – being full of goodness of course, this is not in question – but what people are prepared to pay for these things is truly unbelievable to me – I’d rather cook up a big batch of ‘green’ and drizzle with my favourite topping, sprinkle with some crushed almonds and serve along side a steaming steak – and probably still come in cheaper than a store bought green smoothie.

·         Raw food. It’s not even raw!!!! I thought Raw = Uncooked. How could I get this so wrong??

·         Oils – the do’s and don’ts that go with oils is amusing to say the least. Coconut, Canola, Palm, Flax, Sunflower, Olive, hell, let’s throw margarine and butter in there. Who to believe? Who not to believe? Does a dash of any oil really factor in that much in the big scheme of things? I tend to think IT DOESN’T!! But what would I know?

·         Pre-post shakes. If not consumed between picking up gym bag and reaching gym door – CATABOLIC!!!!!!! Hahaha – gotta laugh at myself sometimes. Ridiculous. Haven’t had pre/post workout shakes for well over a year now.

As always, most of the pitfalls I write about are ones I have fallen in myself. I can be very rigid in my approach to anything and I am now rigidly attempting to keep my life unrigid. Don’t try to make sense of that because it just won’t make sense. But I know what I mean and that’s all that really matters.

AT ALL COSTS –MAINTAIN COMMON SENSE. IF IT SOUNDS SENSIBLE – GO WITH IT. IF IT DOESN’T ….