Food Matters | Why Quality Counts Part 3
Before you continue reading, make sure you’ve already read part 1 and part 2 to Food Matters – Why Quality Counts.
…As soon as I implemented some of my “5 A Day” and started pooping again, I started feeling Healthy AF and continued to see more improvements with my other measurements – progress photos, the number on the scale, my performance in workouts and how I felt throughout the day. I was still eating boatloads of cereal and even expanding my horizons trying food like Frosted Mini Wheats and Trix but I was also making sure I got a daily dose of fruits and vegetables.
At this point I was fully engulfed in helping others hop on the Macro Train…choo choo! I’d helped dozens if not hundreds of people at this point and the question that often came up was “so how many fruits and vegetables should I be eating?”…It was a question I hadn’t quite managed to find an answer to…yet.
I remember giving a seminar in Rochester, New York and someone raised their hand and asked that question. Without hesitation my response was “don’t eat like an asshole.“
That’s where the expression was born! However, being a long time CrossFit athlete hell bent on quantifying everything I did in the gym and now tracking my macros, I knew it was just as important to quantify what eating good quality food meant…I needed to find the antonym to what eating like an asshole meant and come up with a very clear picture for it.
I would like to state that although getting your micronutrients is extremely important for long-term health, performance & other lifestyle factors, when you first start tracking, the emphasis should primarily be with hitting your macronutrient goals. You’re smarter than I am so I’m sure you’ve already figured this out, but the truth is, it’s very hard to hit your macronutrient goals and not eat some good quality food. I managed it, but only because I’m dumb & a little bit weird, so it didn’t really occur to me that chugging shots of olive oil & eating entire packs of turkey slices for dinner wasn’t normal – just a reminder, I was a bachelor at the time!
Here’s a little diagram to help you visualize what the hierarchy of nutrition should look like.
Coming up later this week, I’m going to examine the parameters for not eating like an asshole. These are the factors we’ll look at that have helped me structure my healthy eating equation:
- Fiber
- The 80/20 rule
- The 800 gram challenge
What have you found helpful in quantifying the more nutrient dense foods in your diet? Comment below if you have some ideas you’d like to share!