I am reading a great book by Darin Olien at the moment.
Superlife is a health and lifestyle guide, in which Olien, a nutritionist and superfoods expert, suggests that the key to a healthy, fit and illness-free life is in utilising what the author characterises as five life forces; Quality Nutrition, Hydration, Detoxification, Oxygenation, and Alkalization.
That’s a lot of food science talk right there!
In the book, Olien goes over (in a certain amount of detail) how to maintain these processes, which in turn gives our bodies the ability to do the rest of what they need to do to allow us to live strong and healthy lives. Olien argues in the book that we can maintain a healthy weight, prevent serious diseases and feel great in the process by maintaining this balance in our dietary and fitness lifestyles. He explains that this is possible without resorting to restrictive diet plans (which never really work in the long term).
The book also includes a “How-to-eat” user’s guide, a shopping list to support this, advice on “what to discard from our diets and a guide to creating a healthy, balanced eating plan" as well as advice on how to use supplements effectively.
What Olien’s book is really great at is in focusing on what the food we eat does to our bodies and how we live our lives. For example, it opens up the subject of the impact of protein on the body, what different vitamins do to us, what foods are good for the brain and the role mastication plays in our culinary lives.
Mastication essentially is about how we chew and break-down the food we eat in our mouths. Not perhaps the most glamorous or exciting of topics, it is however fascinating, and the book examines the impact of chewing on the brain, the tricks that chewing play on us, how to manage the food we buy and eat, and how understanding these topics can help us eat better.
Structuring diet and eating, just as when we plan our workouts, is vital in leading a fit, strong and robust life. In fact, both of these approaches are part of the same inter-linked process, and by getting both of them right we can nourish and maintain the physical, whilst engaging the mental to do so.
A lifetime of fitness is about the mental and physical working in harmony, directed by empirical evidence (what works, rather than what we think should work) that we keep under constant review as we move forward.
Get that balance right and the positive outcomes will flow.
Something to, er, chew on, right there.
Julien