Food!!!…carbs!!!…calories!!!!…for so long popular fitness culture has demonized these beautiful nouns. Labeled with such adjectives as “good”, “bad”, “off plan”, with such feelings as “guilt”, “punishment”, “remorse”.  Food is simply another variable in play to use for your benefit in moving, looking, and feeling your best. The best athletes have all these variables in check in perfect balance. An athletic mindset uses food as the fuel to positively benefit workouts, and get into a positive and productive fitness rhythm.

I chuckle inside when I hear people say that they are punishing themselves with overdoing cardio because they ate too much the day before. Use that wonderful energy to your benefit people! Pick up some heavy weights and build some shaplier legs and rounder glutes, your body is waiting with energy!! This mentality immediately has a positive snowball component in that the more muscle you have the higher your metabolic rate, and the more you can eat. Win – win..a positive/athletic mindset and a positive outcome.

The Phosphagen system is one of the ways your body creates energy. Particularly for short term (30 seconds to 1 minute) high intensity activities like weight lifting. This system uses CP (Creatine Phosphate)  to take the broken down componets of the food you over-enjoyed:  lipids, amino acids, and sugars to convert to ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate) which is the molecular unit of energy transfer. At onset of that goblet squat or incline chest press, your body, very effeciently, and quickly, ignites this system and sucks up those extra lipids, amino acids, and sugars (carbs) and uses your overindulgance to YOUR BENEFIT!!!! Of course when you are building a nice set of glutes it is much easier when you are using eggs, avocado, and ezekial bread as your building blocks over ice cream. 🙂

Cardio does not use this pathway of energy creation. Therefor calories in /calories out is an ineffective mentality when adjusting to your overindulgance. You are also not maximizing the athlete mentality as food for fuel and workouts as accomplishments. It is all tied together.

Personally, my “intuitive clean eater” has settled into a rhythm of fruits, veggies, healthy fats, and protein, but i DO prep my super duper intense strength and sprint workouts by slamming some complex carbs the day before. My body seems to benefit from this “refeed”. I feel faster, more powerful, and stronger during my intense workout the following day due to the increase in readily available energy. I am also using food to encourage stronger workouts and engaging an athletes mindset. Rewarding all around!

Find your intuitive clean eater rhythm by participating my next Cleanse and Kickstart