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You can do it, put your back into it…
You can do it if you put your a** into it…
Brace your core, now squat it down and do it…
10 more reps, you got this, now go get through it…
-Ice Cube (probably)
Happy Friday, Coach J here from Anyman Fitness – and welcome to the latest edition of The N.W.A. Newsletter.
Each Friday’s N.W.A. Newsletter will have 3 parts:
- A Nutritional Tip to help make your diet healthier and easier to stick to.
- A Workout Tip to help make your training sessions more effective and fun.
- An Attitude/Mindset tip to help you strengthen your greatest asset – your mental toughness.
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I will also give you my single favorite piece of social media content from AF over the past week and link to it on either Instagram or Twitter.
Without any further ado… let’s get started, shall we?
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N.W.A. Nutrition Tip Of The Week:
Salt is, and always has been, an essential nutrient in our diets.
And yet, “common knowledge” tells us salt is bad for us and consuming too much of it will cause blood pressure issues.
As with most things, if you ask 2 different people about their views on salt intake, they’ll tell you 2 different things.
Let’s clear up any misconceptions you have about salt and if you should worry about keeping your salt intake down.
First, it’s important to know you need salt to survive.
Salt has a crucial role in many of our processes and bodily systems.
Salt helps to regulate your heart rate, digestion, respiration, brain activity, and blood cells.
Not getting enough sodium in your diet can lead to kidney disease, cirrhosis, congestive heart failure, and a myriad of other health issues.
So, how did salt become widely known as “bad for you”?
The answer is actually quite simple.
Many studies around food have one, glaring issue with them: The are “observational” studies, and not actual clinical studies.
Observational studies have their subjects fill out questionnaires and regard those answers as truths.
And when these observational studies have their results examined, those who eat more salt in their diets tend to have higher blood pressure.
So that means it’s true, right?
We should all watch our salt intakes and eat as low sodium as possible?
Not so fast… there’s always unintended consequences when your study is based on humans and their answers are taken at face value…
Think for a moment… what kinds of foods tend to be high in salt?
Highly processed foods, that’s what.
Foods from a box or bag have been created to taste good – their manufacturers want you to overeat, so you head right back to the store and purchase more.
And salt tastes good!
We are primed biologically to enjoy the taste of salt.
Food scientists know this and try to find *just the right amount of salt* in order for your food to taste amazing.
But what if you do your best to eat whole foods?
What if you do like our clients do, and shy away from anything in a box or a bag?
What about then?
If this is you – if you do what you’re supposed to do (exercise frequently, eat whole foods, drink mainly water, etc), you could be drastically UNDEReating sodium in your diet.
If you’re pushing your body hard and eating right, you NEED salt.
And lots of it!
So don’t be shy – salt your food liberally and don’t give it a second thought.
If you’re an inactive person, you’re overweight, and you have high blood pressure, watching your sodium intake is a good idea.
But if you’re taking care of business, there is zero reason to reduce your salt intake.
It is a myth that salt intake is bad for an active, healthy person, plain and simple.
If you do your best to eat whole foods, your salt intake will be within the normal range, and being sure to salt your food thoroughly is an excellent idea to keep your bodily functions humming along nicely.
To read more nutrition myths you may be misinformed on, check out the Top 21 Nutritional Myths of 2021 from Examine.com here.
N.W.A. Training Tip Of The Week:
If you want to be more consistent with your training, you want to search for the best way to reduce the friction required to train.
Anything you do requires you to defeat inertia in order to succeed.
If you have a task you want to get done, you’ll need to take action and begin the task.
Starting any task is half of the battle.
Possibly more.
We often get our minds twisted up in knots trying to come up with excuses when we don’t want to be bothered with something.
Have you ever told yourself you’ll wake up before work to exercise, and ended up skipping instead?
No judgement if you have; I’ve been there many times myself… I’m only human after all…
So, what was it that caused you to hit the snooze and pull the covers over your head?
Was your bed warm and cozy?
Was it cold outside?
Or did you tell yourself, “I’ll just exercise after work” just to get too busy and end up skipping altogether?
It’s tough to build a new habit.
You have to defeat inertia and stay consistent for awhile before any new habit is solidified.
For some people, that might take a month.
For other people, that might take a year.
Everyone is different, but either way, you’ve gotta figure out a way to stay in the game, so to speak.
I always tell my clients to make fitness as “easy” as possible for you.
Lay out your workout clothes and your gym bag the night before so everything is ready to go.
Put your alarm clock across the room and force yourself to stay out of bed once the alarm sounds and you turn it off.
Always choose a gym closer to your house, even if the facilities aren’t as swanky as you’d like.
The ratty, bare bones gym 2 minutes from your house is a MUCH better idea than the huge new globo-gym 40 minutes away from you.
Especially if you’ll only get to the globo-gym about half the time.
One of my favorite tricks to stay consistent is to pack your gym bag and head directly to the gym after work.
No going home first!
This was huge for me – I used to go home after work, change into my gym clothes, and then go to the gym.
There were many times where I would crack to temptation and put on my sweatpants and grab a bag of chips instead of heading to the gym for a proper workout.
Once I started packing my gym bag and driving directly to the gym, no questions asked, my consistency and results skyrocketed.
Don’t make your life any more difficult than it needs to be.
Reflect on your situation and ask yourself, “How can I make it easier to do the things I know are good for me?”
Planning your life to make good habits your default actions is like living your life on “Cheat Mode”.
N.W.A. Attitude/Mindset Tip Of The Week:
In our coaching community, we track our macronutrients.
There are many reasons why tracking your macronutrients is beneficial for you.
First, it ensures you’re eating the right number of calories for your fitness goals.
Second, it ensures you’re eating plenty of protein, which is far and away the most important macronutrient when trying to get healthier.
Third, it ensures you’re not going too overboard on either your fat or your carbs.
Both fat and carbs play a vital role in your body composition, but over/under eating them can cause issues if you’re not careful.
Perhaps the biggest reason we require our clients to track their macronutrients is because it guarantees their success.
That is far and away the most important reason to me.
If someone joins us for coaching and they follow our program exactly, they need to get some killer results as a reward for their hard work.
And if you’re tracking your macros, that means your calories and protein are on the right track, and the client’s body changes will come to them rapidly.
As it should be. 🙂
But what if you’re in a situation where you can’t track your intake properly?
What if you’re on a vacation or at a social event and you have no idea what the nutritional information is?
What do we do then?
Do we try to guess-timate the macros in everything we’re eating and keep the numbers in our head?
Should we pre-pack our meals in Tupperware containers and be ready to eat only the food we’ve brought?
No, silly, not at all.
There’s no reason to be obsessive – we need to practice mindful eating, and this is a great opportunity.
When your plan gets a wrench thrown into it, it’s time to scrap the old plan temporarily and come up with a new plan.
When you can’t be “on plan”, so to speak, instead of freaking out for no reason, make your new plan to be “off plan”.
It’s a small mental shift to make before you go out into a social situation you can’t totally control.
Plan to be “off plan”.
Tell yourself, “I’m not going to track anything tonight, I’m just going to make good decisions. I’ll stick with the protein focused meals, I’ll do my best to keep the overall calories reasonable, but I won’t worry about exact numbers.”
While you may not be “perfect” with this approach, perfect is often the enemy of good.
And it’s frequently the enemy of “consistent” as well.
Before nutritional labels were introduced in the 1970’s, old school bodybuilders would simply go by their hunger cues to determine if they were eating too much or too little.
Hunger was seen as a good thing.
That meant you were likely losing fat.
Even if you don’t know the exact information in everything you eat, I’m sure you can make a good, healthy choice, and live to see another day.
The overall, arching goal of macro tracking isn’t to make you track your food for the rest of your life.
It’s to give you the tools, the skills, and the confidence to get to the point where you don’t *need* to track your food ever again.
And practicing being “off plan” on a regular basis is a great way to start loosening the screws on those macro-tracking training wheels.
One Favorite Social Media Post Of The Week:
We don’t have a healthcare system.
We have a sickness subscription service with a recurring revenue model.
Fix yourself with water, protein, real food, and lifting weights.
Share this on Twitter | Share this on Instagram
I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Anyman Fitness N.W.A. Newsletter.
I’ll be back next week.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Best,
Coach J
Anyman Fitness
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