You would never expect one workout to make you physically fit. A single minded focus on one type of workout – a steady diet of barbells and weight plates, for example, will not necessarily make you physically fit. For similar reasons, an obsession with a singular kind of food, such as eating tons of pasta or bullying only non-fat dairy products will not give you a well fuelled, well nourished body.
When you incorporate the concept of cross training in your exercise program, you vary your activities so that you develop the three primary factors of first -rate fitness – strength, cardiovascular conditioning and flexibility. You reap the rewards in many ways, the visible benefits of a balanced physique, the health benefits of a strong heart, lungs and joints, and the psychic benefits of feeling motivated and having the energy to follow through your ambitions.
Cross training in the food department pays the same dividends. The steady supply of quality fuel from a variety of sources will benefit your appearance, health and energy level. More specifically these are some of its advantages;
Eating the same foods, even the healthier ones, with a little variety gets you into a nutritional rut. You would never dream of exercising only one isolated muscle group. The same disadvantages, boredom, and imbalance, result from monotony.
Cross training will help provide all the essential nourishment. No single food or food group has all (or enough) of the more than 40 nutrients your body needs to function well. Including amino acids, fatty acids, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, not to mention the more minute substances science is only beginning to identify.
If you neglect certain foods you will not be able to perform at your best in the short run or optimise your chances of well – being over the long haul.
Dietary cross training will reduce your risk of disease. Nutritional variety helps you maximise the unique health benefits of food, such as the cancer fighting properties of fruits and vegetables rich in vitamins A and C, or the cholesterol lowering properties of dried beans.
Cross training will keep your eating pleasure high. Healthy eating does not sentence you to a regime of alfalfa sprouts and rice cakes. Just as your sports program needs to be enjoyable if you are to maintain long-term interest, so should your kitchen cross training be a pleasure. There are too many foods to choose from in your average supermarket, you have plenty of opportunities to explore variety. Begin by altering your choices within each food group on a daily basis.
Variety is the key to success. Do you eat the same cereal every morning? Do you always make salads with iceberg lettuce? Do you routinely have sandwiches on wholemeal bread? Instead check out the array of other selections you could make.
Amongst your Breakfast Cereal Alternatives are whole grain waffles, pancakes, muffins, porridge, ouinoa, brown short grain rice (with fruit) and millet. The produce section carries a spectrum of salad greens you may not have even tried, things like, romaine, red-leaf-cabbage, Chinese cabbage, spinach and radicchio.
Celeriac is great mashed or roasted with Marsala. Celeriac does not taste like celery and is low in carbohydrates!
Parsnips, try these roasted or pureed, they are also great refried in butter or Olive oil. Swede mashed with carrot and lots of black pepper and salt.
Sweet Potatoes; they make really good chunky chips and one of my favourite puddings, sweet potato pie.
Aubergines; stuffed with mince, avocado, cucumber and sorrel soup, fried courgettes with tzatziki, the list is as long as you want to make it, be adventurous.
As for the bread used in your sandwiches, try sour dough bread, bagels, pumpernickel, raisin and rye will help spice things up a little. But these are things you should not have every day. No cereal grain can be called a complete food so do not make these foods the bulk of your diet. Full fat dairy products are good sources of calcium. Natural fats and oils found in both animal and tropical oils such as coconut oil – cold pressed oils such as Olive oil are natural parts of our diet as is butter, it is simple, it’s just cream from milk. Avoid margarine, it is not a dairy product and it is not a fresh food.
The major challenge of nutritional cross training is to consistently add new foods to your daily repertoire. If you have been neglecting one of the food groups such as grains, try to add one serving to your line up each day. For variety’s sake make the same attempt to add one new food to your menu each week. Permanent change takes time, just as it does in physical training. So try it and enjoy the process.
See you soon.
Toby your friendly Gym manager!
Nutrition | Alive | 
January 23, 2012 7:50 pm | 
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