A gym environment can be a daunting, frightening place. Often intimidating to a newcomer, male or female, young or old, the gym culture and scene can often scare one away before they even get started. Personal trainers all have a story about the client they saw once or twice and then never returns calls. Everyone probably has a friend that joined, got the sneakers, swore they were cutting fast food and admonished those around them for not caring about themselves... until a month later when they were back to the old ways with a passion.
Beginning anything, but especially lifestyle changes, requires discipline and determination, but the most important thing is education! Having even a a cursory understanding of what will make your transition to being a gym 'person' will only increase your chances of sticking with it and being on your way to a healthier, better you. These areas are as follows: proper diet, proper and safe supplementation, cardiovascular training, resistance training, and professional assistance. This article will cover diet and supplementation. Part II will focus on training and what a personal trainer can do to help your efforts.
Proper Diet
The honest truth? Sticking to a healthy and balanced diet can be one of the most painful and difficult lifestyle changes an individual can undertake, but is also in the end the most significant principle for true results. While results can be seen by simply picking up some weights or running on a treadmill, after an initial shock to the system, those results will be halted (what is termed a plateau). Proper diet is the key to long-term results. Increased energy, slimming waistlines, even help in preventing disease are all attributed to diet. This does not mean that one cannot enjoy a pizza or a bowl of ice cream as a treat or reward, but it does require the discipline to pick and choose in the food battle. It is the conscious effort to make educated choices which can include portion control or reduction, substitution, and balance. Nutrition is a science unto itself and the new (or advanced) exerciser should be cognisant of the ramifications of an unhealthy or unbalanced diet. Type II diabetes, high cholesterol, and heart disease are just a few of the illnesses on the rise in America that can be linked directly to poor eating habits.
Proper and Safe Supplementation
The exerciser is inundated with advertisements everywhere, from television to online articles to fitness magazines with supplements promising incredible results, ridiculously slim waists in a matter of weeks, and eye-popping vascularity. Often times these six or eight page articles show amateur or professional bodybuilders and their their incredible transformations, accompanied by scientific proof, charts which blow the competition away, and a list (the famous proprietary blends) of all the ingredients you've never heard of that are destined to make the user next in line for the magazine cover. Sure, some of this may work for a while until your body acclimates, and it is possible for most of these ingredients to not harm your body in any way. But if you've never heard of it, and it's on a list twenty spots down, do you really need to ingest it? Probably not.
The answer? Keep it simple, and you'll be safe, solid and much more forgiving on your wallet too! The average person (or even the intense bodybuilder) can benefit greatly from a cocktail that can be as simple as a daily multivitamin, a source of omega fatty acids such as flax or fish oil, and a good protein source such as a powder or in the form of energy bars.
A good multivitamin will help greatly with keeping your body's nutritional needs and can help offset lack of intake from food sources, or to help fill a requirement (the RDA or recommended daily allowance) that may be lacking. In the Northeast for example during a cold, harsh, winter, a person may be lacking Vitamin D which comes primarily from sunlight. A multivitamin can help meet the RDA and keep that person's levels adequate.
Protein is made up of amino acids, some of which are not made readily available in the body. These are the building blocks of muscle and chain together to provide energy, recovery, and increases in muscularity and strength. Some amino acids, called essential amino acids must be found from sources such as a protein supplement or from the diet because the human body does not supply them readily on its own. This is crucial for proper nutrition. Simple rules for choosing a protein supplement are to be aware of fat, sugar, and carbohydrate content. There are many different available supplements that contain little to none of these factors that can dilute the effectiveness of the supplement. These factors should be paid special attention to especially when ingesting protein bars from sources such as Met-RX or Powerbars. While these companies provide products that taste great, careful examination of many of their supplement bars will show large amounts of fat, or sugar. In some cases, sugar is replaced by sugar alcohol, which can cause unwanted gas and upset stomach. As always, proper research is helpful.
For slightly more advanced supplementation, a B-complex vitamin mixed with ginseng can give a good energy boost. Limited caffeine intake or sources such as green tea can provide the same results as well as antioxidant help to fight free radicals. A straightforward source of creatine, a natural substance found in the body provides strength and size increases. With moderate ingestion for periods cycling four to six weeks, followed by a month long period cycling off, which helps to keep the body's reaction to it at maximum potential, creatine is a reasonably safe addition to the healthy exerciser's lifestyle.
Conclusion
By keeping it safe,simple, and by educating yourself, you will be well on your way to a better, healthier you!
Next: Part II, Cardiovascular, Strength, and Pro Assistance.
Real Time.net, http://www.realtime.net/anr/10eattip.html, http://www.realtime.net/anr/anrrda.html
Aaron Krygier is a Certified Personal Trainer through American Fitness Professionals and Associates(AFPA).
Aaron Krygier - Actor,writer,musician,producer from Buffalo, NY. Predominately a stage/screen writer, but interests in all aspects of the craft including ...
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