Most bodybuilders and athletes don’t match the quality of their nutrition to the incredible physical demands they place on their bodies. In fact, most athletes do not eat well enough to even support general health during intense exercise.
According to many nutrition studies, most Americans eat less than 20 different foods in their lifetime. That's right, their lifetime. Think about it, count the different food you've eaten.
Bodybuilders restrict their food choices even further. Often bodybuilders only eat 5 or 6 foods in total; chicken, rice, oatmeal, egg whites, protein supplements and maybe some green beans! That’s the staple diet of most bodybuilders – day in and day out.
However, restricting food selection really does handicap your ability to achieve optimum health. The typical bodybuilder's approach to eating is a very narrow-minded, lazy approach to nutrition that not only does very little to support general health during intense training, it probably retards the physiological adaptations desired from training. What you think is a healthy daily diet might not be so healthy.
The most effective way to optimize health and therefore ensure much better results from training, is to increased the variety of foods consumed each day.
There is a simple rule you can follow that will increase the variety of foods you consume each day – add color into your diet!
When purchasing foods at the market go for bright colors and I’m not talking about the design on the cereal box either! For example, when choosing vegetables and fruits (yes, fruit should be a staple of every bodybuilders diet), instead of the usual bananas and box of raisins, chose blueberries, raspberries, kiwi fruit, cantaloupe and other melons.
Research shows that brightly colored vegetables contain more nutrients. Therefore, peppers, pumpkin, squash and greens such as broccoli, kale and spinach should be an athlete’s first choices in the produce section.
If you follow this simple advice, I can virtually guarantee the improvements you’ll achieve from training in the next three months will be double what you’ve experienced in the previous three months.
