When You’re Hungry, You Gotta Eat

Your body is smart. Your brain is smart... go figure. I hope so because if the brain is not smart, then what is? Your body notices what you eat. Surprise! You can’t just put a chocolate bar in your mouth and hope that your body will not notice. It will. Let’s say for example it's lunch time. You had breakfast before work, you may even have had a snack, an apple, a rice cake, etc. around 10 a.m. and now you’re ready for lunch and you have not brought your lunch with you. So you go to your favourite coffee shop and get a ham & cheese sandwich. It tastes great, and you feel full. But what does your body say? Your gremlin is yelling, asking for food. It sees this sandwich coming in. So it says Great! I love ham & cheese sandwiches.... so what’s this? Bread. Cool! Fibre and carbs are coming.... but wait a minute...your body doesn't recognize the refined & processed white bread, so it decides to just put it aside for now... and it stores it – on your butt, your thighs, your stomach, anywhere it can. The grehlin keeps asking for more food... So what about the ham? That's protein, right? But, it's processed ham, and again your body doesn't recognize it. It decides to store that, too. Next we have some cheese – great! Dairy and protein together! But, it's processed cheese, and your body doesn't know what it is. What does it do with it? Stores it! Same with the mayo. So the grehlin keeps asking for more and more food and will not shut up until you actually feed it... At the end of your lunch, all you've really eaten is a slice of tomato and a piece of lettuce! Tomato... lettuce... yes, that’s great... vegetable... but with that, you’re only good for a few minutes... It's no wonder you are hungry again in an hour – you haven't actually been fed properly. So what do you do at the end of the meal with that gremlin still yelling for food in your brain? You go get an oatmeal-raisin cookie! A bit of oat will help and a few raisins are good but all the refined sugar will be stored with the rest of the junk. So really, lots of garbage just added to the pile of unwanted inches covering your body. It’s just stuffing yourself with “stuff” that is not REAL. Now keep your attention on the next lines... we are not done here. Because some of you are thinking right now that it’s OK to store some ‘garbage-stuff’ when you work out a lot. You think that the stuff accumulated on your bum at lunch time will get out at 6 p.m. when you hit the gym. Well... I’m sorry to have to be the one telling you the hard truth... With no proper fuel, you go do your workout, and you crash. Your workout does NOT fix the problems you ate. As an example, when you are hungry yourself, do you open the refrigerator door or the garbage can to look for food? You want fresh good energy right? When your body needs fuel, it looks for good fuel. So it won't take the fat/garbage that it did not want in the first place. It stored it once... it will not go run to the garbage at the first sign of hunger. If you are not eating it, you are stealing it from your body. If the glycogene store is empty, your body will look for protein for fuel. It might take some energy from your muscles and bones, and then your workout makes you actually weaker than you were before. It will shrink your muscles, making you lose muscle mass, not fat. The garbage will still be there, but the muscles will be shrinking, changing your body composition. So how do you get rid of your garbage? You need to contract your muscles so they get rid of the accumulated fat. Therefore, it is really important that you feed yourself before your workout. Real food. You have to have the energy to squeeze properly.