The Modern Diet & it's Effect on Health & Performance

Whether you're eating for health, performance or just simply to get by, finding the right foods and the right balance is increasingly difficult!

With the invent of overly industrialised, hyper-palatable & tasty foods matched with relentless advertising, poor health advice and now decades of bad food choices, putting the right food in your mouth at the right time is increasingly difficult!

With the literally endless amounts of 'information' available, people trying to endorse their ideals and lack of true guidance it is also a battle to decide to make such a life changing choice that actually goes against our own innate instincts and desires.

To put it simply, when calories are on offer your body wants them. When those calories hit every receptor in your brain, make you feel great (for a short period of time!) and disrupt the regulation of hormones and your response to those foods, you (and i) are going to eat more than you need!

This leaves us with 4 specific issues relating to every aspect of health and performance:

1 - Blood Sugar Control. Or the lack of it, leaving you with those constant highs and lows that negatively affects your energy levels, concentration, satiation (fullness) and therefore leaves you craving more. Sugar Rush!

2 - Insulin Sensitivity. When you consume food insulin is released, this is the hormone in the body that basically acts on the energy coming into the system. Everyone can have a unique insulin response to individual foods, however the typically bad foods for insulins response are high levels of sugar, refined carbs and poor fat sources. As you continue to stress your insulin response more insulin needs to be released, this gets to a point where you become insulin resistant and this is thought to be the prominent pre-cursor to metabolic syndrome. That can lead to obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Cardiac issues and more.

3 - Systemic Inflammation. This inflammation, throughout the body, adds additional stress to numerous functions in the body and will leave you feeling things like chronic fatigue, low energy levels and poor cognitive function.

4 - Increased Gut Permeability. Due to the nature of some of the foods now available to us year round (processed, refined carbs etc) the stress on our gut microbiome is continually increased. Due to the nature of digestion and absorption is altered, this allows certain elements into our bodies that should not be there (more inflammation) and reduces the amounts of good bacteria further down into our gut. Lose lose.

So what can you do about it and how can you genuinely change your eating habits for the better?

Well first of all this is a very simple illustration of what is going on!

Second, it will vary from person to person. Body type, metabolic rate, food history, activity levels and a myriad of other factors will affect how you metabolise food, how you feel and how you control your weight / fat levels.

My immediate targets for any individual would be: