Make Food Your Medicine: Meal Planning For Health, Well Being & Training

1. Course Promotion: it's no secret that your diet is the number one determining factor of your long term health . We all know that healthy eating is important, but with so much contradictory information out there, how do you do it correctly? Hi, I'm feelings. Hard fitness and 19 coach and Amazon Best selling author Today I want to show you how you can improve your health and nutrition through proven diet strategies that are based on actual science and research. In my course, I will teach you everything you need to know about healthy nutrition, the right food choices and proper meal plan. Now, this is not some fat diet that makes Bages promises and keeps. Instead, we will build a diet that is right for you from scratch. This means coming up with individual health goals like losing weight, were improving your energy levels and then designing and diet with the right calorie bounds foods that you like the right amount of protein fence and cars and the small number are very effective supplements. They're actually proven to work and not just marketing. Along with this, I will awesome teach you the five aspect of truly healthy diets and how you can apply them correctly. So often, people obsess over Diane aspects that have little to no impact on their health. If instead you focus on what truly matters, and I will show you exactly what that is. You can set up your ideal that in less than 30 minutes, enjoying the benefits for years, if not the rest of your life. I also included lessons on the most common knighting trends, like boo free paleo low car and vegan diets. Using actual data from scientific studies, I will show you when and if you really need those diets and when you can simply ignore them along the way. We will also answer some very important questions, like Does Meet really cause cancer? Two X rays, cholesterol and our carbs Bad for you. From my experience to see lasting results, you need to know how your body works and once your energies will help you reach your goals . This is what this program focuses on. No fat diets for gimmicks but actual sign space advice that is proven to work. I want to thank you for checking out my course, and if you liked it so far, be sure to read the description for more details and watch the preview clips 2. Introduction & What You Will Learn: hi and welcome to the course. In this introduction, I want to give you a short overview of what you will learn throughout the course. As you will see in a few seconds. This is not your typical dieting or nutrition course, But before I tell you why let me first say something about myself. So you know who I am and why you should listen to me. My name is Felix Harder, and I have a fitness and dieting coach. A couple of years ago, I published my first book, that Jim Bible, which became an instant Amazon bestseller on Let Me to publish five more books related to health and fitness. In 2016 I started teaching online fitness courses and now have thousands of people taking my programs and following my block, nutrition and fitness dot net. What sets me apart from many other coaches out there is my approach to fitness. Everyone's body is different and will react differently to special workouts and diets. This is why I don't give advice that is based on just my experience. I always make sure to recommend only what scientifically proven toe work not just for me but for the average person with all these diet fats and work out gimmicks out there. I think this is the most important thing looking at the facts, to decide whether a workout makes sense or if it's just pure high. That's what I did for this course and what you're about to learn. As you probably know, healthy eating is a huge subject, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of diets and supplements out there, promising to help you improve your health and well being. Unfortunately, you probably also know from experience that most of them never deliver on their promises and aren't worth their price tag. This course is not like that. Instead of telling you to eat this and not that we will go of the most important fundamentals of what it takes to set up and follow a healthy diet, we will start with the principles of healthy eating. If we look at the studies available on dieting and nutrition, we can make up the five most important factors of a good diet. They are calories, food composition, macronutrients, meal timing and supplements. Each of these five factors will be dealt with in a separate section with multiple lessons. After I covered the most important factors of a healthy diet, we will look at simple changes that you can implement today to see results quickly. Changing your eating habits can be intimidating, so to make everything as painless as possible, I will guide you through the process step by step with small changes that will get you big results in the section called Health Midst, Diet Heads and More. We will talk about the most common dieting myths that simply aren't true. With so much false information out there, I believe it's essential that you're able to identify these big lies. The next section, called Common Diets, explains deals with, well, the most common diets out there, like paleo vegan, gluten free, intermittent fasting, low car and more. We will talk about that pros and cons, and I will show you if they're right for you or if you can safely ignore them off course. Healthy Eating also includes knowing about the most important minerals and vitamins, which is what we will cover in the section called Micronutrients. Your body needs micronutrients Onley in small amounts. Nonetheless, they're very important for your health and well being and Lastly, I also included a couple of healthy recipes that apply everything I taught throughout the course so you can prepare delicious and healthy meals. As you can see, we have a lot to cover, so let's get started. 3. What Is healthy eating: nutrition and healthy eating is the study of how food effects are. This includes understanding which nutrients we need, what kind of food best provides them and how our body uses them. What we have to keep in mind, though, is that humans don't eat individual nutrients but foods, which is always a mix of multiple substances, nutrients and sometimes chemicals. Our goal is to consume the right combination of foods so that our dad provides all the nutrients and other substances we need to stay healthy and so that we can live a long life . Unfortunately, nowadays, many people follow a diet that includes a poor combination of fruits. Not only are they missing out on important nutrients or consuming others in excess, they also put their health in danger. In this course, we will go over how to prevent you from making these mistakes and how to set up a healthy diet that provides enough of all the essential nutrients without any excess of calories. While creating this course. That was important to me to target my advice to the average person that leads a busy life. That way you will learn to design a diet that is right for your lifestyle and your needs. After all, dieting and eating healthy to improve our lives and not make them overly complicated. So let's get started. 4. Who this course is for: this course is for anyone wanting to perfect the art of healthy eating. This means it's right for you if you're a beginner with little to no dieting experience, and also if you already have tried a number of diets and simply never got the results you were hoping for. Also, the advice in this program is targeted to the average adult, so you don't have to worry about me using difficult nutrition. Lingle that only scientists understand what sets this course apart from others is that this is not some fat diet that tells you you need to eat this food at that time while also trying to sell you overpriced supplements. Instead, we will look at the science behind healthy eating and design a diet that is right for you from scratch in the program. I will not only give you practical tips that you can use to improve your diet today, but we will also go over the most important rules of healthy eating and what you need to focus on, do not get overwhelmed by all the contradictory advice on the Internet. This includes the bunking, the most common dieting myths, for example, that you need to perfectly time your meals three hours apart or that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Unfortunately, there's so many false dieting gurus out there that it can be difficult as a beginner to distinguish between good and bad advice. That's why, in my course, and make sure that I give all my students a complete picture of the fundamentals of healthy eating, using science and strategies proven by actual research, my goal always has been to create courses that really make a difference in your life and help you get long term results. 5. The Principles of Healthy Eating: As you can imagine, dieting and nutrition are huge fields. So to start off this course, I want to give you an overview of the most important principles that underlie a healthy diet. Now, this isn't to say that there are also other factors that will affect your health. Off course. Dieting and especially healthy dieting is always the product of many different variables coming together. But what I will teach you in this lesson are the most important factors that will affect your health ranked by their influence. So we will first talk about the most important factor than the second most important and so forth. Now, with all this contradictory advice out there, you might ask yourself, How can you even decide on the most important factor or the second most important factor in the first place? This is actually a lot more straightforward than you might think. When we look at the available research on dieting and health, you can see some very clear patterns. No matter what study you'll look at there always some factors that influence the outcome more than others. If we group these patterns, we can identify five distinct dietary factors each of which will have an effect on your health. So when two diets are different from each other, it will almost always be due to a difference in these factors. So here they are first calorie balance. Your calorie Bounds describes how much energy you consume from foods and drinks versus how much energy your body burns on a regular basis. Energy here is measured and calories Next. Food composition, food composition describes your food sources so where your proteins, carbs and fats come from, third macro nutrient amounts. Macro nutrient amounts described how much protein carbs and fats you consume daily. Fourth, nutrient timing, nutrient or meal timing refers to when you consume your meals and how you space them out. And lastly, supplements supplements refer to all the pills, powders or extracts that you can take to improve your diet. With these five factors in front of us, you have to understand one thing. If you change one of them or more of them, its effects on your health will also change. The easiest example would be that if you consume less food, meaning reduce your calorie intake, you would lose weight, which, if you're overweight, comes with a serious health benefits. Pretty straightforward. But what we want to do throughout the course is looking at what types of features healthy diets have in common so that we can replicate them and enjoy the benefits off course. The recommendations will be geared towards the general adults, Children, the elderly and people with special conditions or diseases would want to see a doctor first before making these changes. One more thing before we get started, even though all the principles later above will affect your health, they want to the same extent. Like I said before, we will rank them. So, for example, both your calorie intake and supplements can impact your health, but each to a different magnitude. Eating the right amount of calories is a lot more important than taking the right supplements. Most people already know this, but still forget it when listening to bad health advice. For example, if a supplement company told you that all you needed for perfect health was there, supplement something is clearly off. After all, this would mean you could eat junk food and drink coke all day without any negative side effects, as long as you would take their supplement Obviously, this is not the case, but many people still buy supplements that make similar claims. So to help you identify the most important principles, we will rank them accordingly. This means getting on Lee the first few right is a lot more important to your health than getting only the last few right. Of course, our goal is to get all of them right. But such changes can take time, and it's often better to start with smaller changes first and work your way towards a complete diet. So the good news is that you can safely ignore the lesser important principles at first while focusing on the important ones, and you will still see amazing results only once you're comfortable with the bigger ones, should you also tackle the small principles. 6. The True Food Pyramid: using the principles from the last lesson. So calorie balance, food composition, macronutrients amounts, meal timing and supplements. We can build a pyramid to visualize their impact on your house. No, I'm sure you're already familiar with the concept of nutrition pyramids or dia pyramids. Usually they tell you which foods to focus on in which to limit. This is not such a pyramid, even though we will look into specific foods later in the course. At this point, it's more about the underlying principles. Believe it or not, there is one factor, which is even more important than what you eat when it comes to your health. So let's have a look at the true health pyramid. As you can see, calorie balance is at the very bottom. What this means is that any diet that is designed for health purposes has to include the right calorie balance. In fact, your calorie balance is the most important variable in your diet and the base of the pyramid, which holds up the entire structure. Ignoring this aspect would be fatal because believe it or NRA, you can become overweight by only eating healthy foods. I will talk about the principle of the right calorie bounds in another lesson and more detail. But for now, just keep in mind that this is the most important aspect of your diet in the base of the pyramid. Without it, everything will collapse like a house of cards. Okay, the next important principle is your food composition. Like I said before, food composition deals with what kinds of foods are actually being consumed. Unlike calorie balance, which tells us on Lee how much food is being consumed, but not what kind of food. So remember food composition is what you eat and how it affects your health. Next up the pyramid and third and importance are macro nutrient amounts. So how much protein fat and carbs you consume? The reason they are important is because in order to ensure optimal health, you need a minimum intake off proteins and fats. So even if your daily calories are optimal and they come from healthy sources, not enough protein or not enough fed can become a big problem. Okay, at this point, we're already pretty high up the pyramid. This means that anything that comes after the 1st 3 factors of calorie balance, food composition and macro nutrient amounts will only have a minor impact on your diet. Success off course. This doesn't mean you should neglect the following factors, but make sure you have the 1st 3 in place before moving on. Also, if you lead a busy life and want to follow a diet that is as simple as possible and straightforward, then you want to make sure to focus only on the 1st 2 or 1st 3 aspect. These alone will account for 85 to 9% off dieting success and are enough to get your great results. One reason why many people give up on their diet goals is because they overcomplicate things, which leads to confusion. You don't have to follow a perfect diet to see improvements and health as long as you stick to the lower parts of the pyramid. OK, but what if you want to perfect your diet and 100% then you could also consider the last two aspects off the dieting pyramid, which are meal frequency and meal timing as one aspect and supplements as the last meal. Frequency and meal timing basically state how often and at what time of day you eat and supplements refer to anything that is not considered a normal or natural food. I will go over them in later parts of the course. But like I said before, they aren't nearly as important as many fitness schools make them out to be. Most of the supplements out there are pure hype, and only a handful will actually help you in the long run. 7. Bodyweight & Health: As you can imagine, calories, impact our body weight and our body weight impacts. Our health calories are literally the building blocks and energy needed to keep our body alive. One of the best documented findings throughout the history of nutrition research is that your calorie balance is the Onley determining factor off your long term body weight. This means if we exclude changes in water retention and other short term factors, how much you eat will determine what you wait. In fact, body weight and calorie intake have a new 1 to 1 relationship, which is why it's so important to watch them watching. Calories doesn't always mean that you have to track them, though, but it does mean that you should be able to estimate your daily calorie needs and know how to meet them. The truth is that you can eat on Lee healthy foods, time your meals perfectly and take the best supplements, but still gain weight if you don't control your calorie intake. So if you want to lose weight, you have to have a calorie deficit in place before anything else. Vice versa. If you want to gain weight, you have to have a calorie surplus in place before anything else. With this in mind, let's take a look at the relationship between body weight and health. Obviously, if over a long period of time you don't provide your body with sufficient calories and energy, you will see a decrease in overall health due to the close relationship between calories and body weight. You can estimate if you're getting enough energy simply by looking at your weight. If it falls within the range of healthy ways for your height and age, you're probably getting enough energy and calories for ideal health. If, however, you fall under or over the ideal range, chances are that your health is or will be compromised in the future in terms of proportion . Toe other aspect of your diet More than half of the total health effect of your dad will come down to body weight and therefore calories. Let's see what happens when you're under or overweight. So first, the relationship between low body weight and health. If you don't supply your body with sufficient calories, your weight will eventually decrease to a point where your health will begin to suffer Now , even though the logical endpoint of this would be starvation. Your health begins to suffer long before being underway for too long will deprive your body off the building blocks and energy needed to maintain your immune system, which is why underweight people are more prone to infections and diseases. He will get sick more often and recover more slowly. Another problem is that calories are needed to maintain bone and muscle mass, which will also suffer in a low calorie environment. This leads to fatigue and high risk of fractures. This is especially true for the elderly, which are already at high risk of bone conditions. Sports performance will also suffer as your body will not be able to activate as much muscle tissue as it potentially could put together. This means there is such a thing as being too skinny. Now, what about the other extreme high body weight and health? Unfortunately, in most developed countries, the number of overweight people is increasing, along with health risks associated with excess body weight. The reason for this is not always the weight per se, but the excess body fed, which impinges health. First of all, a large amount of body fat literally weighs down the body and wears down knees and other joints more quickly. Larger tissue masses also require more blood to be pumped through them, which leads to high blood pressure and higher risk of heart problems. Also, body Fed stores secrete hormones, which negatively affect your health. This usually happens because they raise bad LDL cholesterol levels and lower good HDL cholesterol levels. Now, at this point, I could tell you about the other health risks associated with obesity. But let's talk about some good news instead. Being outside the healthy weight range does not automatically lead to terrible health. Why? Because the affect your body weight has on your health will also be influenced by time. Generally, how long you have been overweight effects. How much long term health damage will occur if you've been overweight for a year or only a few months, and plan on going back to a healthy weight than long term effects will be minimal if not non existent. If, however, you've been overweight all your life and don't plan on changing anything, your health will definitely deteriorate much faster. The mama, also how much you fall outside the healthy range matters as well. A few pounds more than normal aren't as much of a problem than, let's say, 50 or maybe £100 more than the momma wait. 8. Calories & Bodyweight When Eating the Right Foods: now that we covered the general effects of calories and body weight on health. What conclusions can we draw from this for our diet plan? First of all, this means that the main objective of your diet should be to reach a healthy weight. I will tell you what exactly this means later in the course, but for now we can say that since our body weight is such an important factor in our health , the primary role of your diet should be body weight optimization. This means if you do nothing for your diet other than watching your weight and staying within the healthy weight range, you will still enjoy tremendous health benefits. I know it sounds unfair, but those folks we'd all kinds of junk food at irregular times can still be fairly healthy as long as they watch their weight off course. Not as healthy as someone who also eats quality fruits, but we will get there in a bit. Another important implication is that if all you could do to improve your diet was changing , one thing you would want to adjust your calories to an amount that would get you to await within the healthy range. So if you're overweight, simply eating less or becoming more active would bring you the biggest advantage over any possible change in your diet. I know this sounds almost too good to be true because everyone will tell you that what you eat is important, and it is. But even more important is how much you eat and how it affects your body with to give you a drastic example. Even if you got everything else about your calories, right, the benefit would still be smaller than if you only got your calories right? A. Really good example of this is the Twinkie diet, which I will talk about in the next lesson. 9. The Twinkie Experiment: I talked at length about the importance of body weight and health. Well in 2010 mark, how and nutrition professor from Kansas took this hypothesis to the extreme when he decided to follow when he called the Twinkie diet. For the next 10 weeks, he would eat primarily junk food like Twinkies, Garrido's Orioles and Brownies. Now, of course, this is not a diet any nutritionists would ever recommend, and I don't either. But Mark wanted to prove two things. First, that weight loss ultimately comes down to calories in versus calories out, and that just losing weight comes with a serious of health benefits. So what he did is he ate all these snakes but nature to always be a calorie deficit and get enough protein through protein shakes just to ensure health. So what were the results? After 10 weeks? Well, he lost £27 reduced his body fat percentage from 33 to 24%. Even more interesting is that his blood work also improved, especially as cholesterol levels. So what's the conclusion that even if you change nothing else but your diet through eating less, you would still improve your health, given off course that you're slightly overweight. Also, to achieve this weight loss, you need a calorie deficit. Now, would Professor Hope have gotten even better results if you follow a healthy diet with a calorie deficit? You bet. But that wouldn't have made as many headlines not, would it? 10. How Many Calories Do You Need Daily: no that I talked at length about the importance of calories and body weight. Let's get down to business. How many calories do you really need on a daily basis? So to support your health and fitness, your body weight should be in a certain range based on your height. What you have to know first, though, is that even for the same height, there are a number of factors that will influence how maney daily calories you need to consume first and foremost your level of daily physical activity. Obviously, those who work office jobs need to eat fewer calories than those who work factory or construction jobs Daily. Physical activity also includes how much exercise. The more you exercise, the more energy will burn and can therefore consume more without gaining weight. Also important are genetic differences. This is kind and fair, but some people simply burn a lot more calories just because of their metabolic speed. There is really nothing we could do to change this, so don't get too caught up asking yourself if you have good or bad genetics. Next is muscle mass, whereas £1 of body fat burns around two calories a day £1 of muscle mass burns up to 10 so almost five times more. This means even if two people weigh the same and are of the same height, the more muscular one will be able and need to consume more calories to maintain the same weight. Last but not least, gender on H also make a difference. Men generally burn more calories than women, and young people burn more than older. But once again, there is nothing we can do to change these factors. So don't worry about them. Okay, now, while all these factors might seem to make the path to a healthy body weight more confusing , the question of how many calories you need to consume per day really isn't in practice. And the next lesson, I will show you how to do this using a simple two that is found online. So stay tuned 11. Overview food composition: Based on what I outlined over the last few lessons, we can draw several conclusions. First of all, there are such things as healthy and unhealthy foods, but it's basically impossible to say what they are without knowing your individual diet. Why? Because first of all, most foods are some combination of different ingredients, some of which are more or less healthy. Egg yolk, for example, contains lots of saturated fat, which is bad in excess. But it also contains plenty of mono unsaturated fed, which is quite healthy even in high amounts. Also, what is healthy and unhealthy will depend on your particular nutrient needs. Vegetarians and vegans often have deficiencies in iron and Omega three, which are derived from fish oil. So people who follow a vegan or vegetarian diet will benefit a lot more than other people from eating foods high in iron and omega three, or maybe even supplementing both substances. This also means that if you have met your overall micro and macro notion requirements and keep your overall calories and check eating some junk food here and there is not a problem , it on Lee turns into one. If you eat so much that it substitutes more healthy foods and therefore creates nutritional deficiencies while also creating a calorie surplus. What you should remember is that calorie balance, taken together with food composition, will have by far the largest impact on your health. We're talking about more than 3/4 of potential health effects of your diet, so just watching how much and what you eat will already give you most of what you can possibly get out of a diet in terms of health benefits. This is especially important for people who are busy and have little time to plan their diet and meals. You don't need to time your meals to the minute and take some wonder supplement to be healthy. In fact, you should only think about meal timing and supplements after you've already have your calories and food composition in place. So to wrap up this lesson, here's a short overview off the most practical recommendations. When it comes to food composition regarding protein intake, meat eater, shirtmaker lean meats, their primary source of protein, along with eggs and healthy dairy products, vegans and vegetarians should focus their diets. I'm complete proteins for complementary sources like soy rice and beans, and the like. When it comes to carp and take fruits, veggies and whole grains are a great way to promote health. The last process, the better and the more very the sources, the better. In regards to fat intake, unsaturated fats should always be favored over saturated fats. They can be derived from foods like olive oy, avocados, nuts, seats in the leg. 12. Protein Needs for overall health: now that we talked about what protein is, The question arises of how much protein you need to enter a long term health. We know that everybody needs some protein, but how much is enough? This question is tricky because it raises another one. Enough for what? In my fitness and muscle building horses, I usually recommend fairly high protein diets to ensure optimal muscle growth. For these people, a range of 0.8 toe one gram per pound of body weight per day would be optimal. But this course is targeted more to the average person that might be active, but with a smaller focus on building muscle. So in this case, your protein needs are a lot lower here. A minimum of around 0.3 grams per pound of body weight per day should be maintained. But since this value on li translates to around 40 grams of protein a day for most people, it shouldn't be a problem for you to eat again. This is only the minimum amount, and going over it is not a problem. In fact, I recommend shooting for a slightly higher value, even if you are looking to build muscle because of the benefits of high protein foods and regards to weight loss and satiety. Somewhere around 0.5 grams per pound of body weight per day would be a good value. This is especially true if you're a vegan or vegetarian, because plant based proteins are generally digestive less efficient, meaning your body will be able to absorb less protein from the same amount of food if it comes from plants instead of animal products. When talking about the protein intake for health, we should also discuss another extreme. Can you eat too much protein? The answer is most likely no as long as the protein comes from. Mostly unprocessed were minimally processed quality sources, and at the same time you're higher. Protein intake does not lead to critically low fat or carb intake. Studies that reported kidney or health problems related to high protein intake, for example from protein shakes usually did so only when participants had already existing health problems, where were also consuming high amounts of processed foods and saturated fats 13. how many carbs should you eat per day: In theory, carbs are not essential for our survival. This means there exists no minimum carp and take you need to consume every day. However, eating carbs does come with some benefits when done right. Like I said before, carbs are the most efficient energy source in food and therefore grade for physical exercise. This is why I recommend a fairly high carb diet in my muscle building and fitness courses. Next, the fiber found in many forms of carbohydrates, like whole grains, fruits and vegetables, eights in the digestion off other foods and keeps your G I tract healthy off course. In addition, these fruits and vegetables also come loaded with vitamins and minerals. Therefore, as long as the stick to quality carbs. It does make sense to consume a minimum intake of around 0.3 grams off carbs per pound of body weight per day. Going over this value will also be no problem again, as long as you stick to quality carbs. Don't overeat on simple sugars or candy, though. Those will definitely hurt your health and can lead to weight gain because of the high amount of calories 14. overview macronutrients: when we remind ourselves of what we have learned over the last few lessons, there are quite a few implications to be drawn from. First of all, a wide range of different macronutrients splits can be healthy as long as you meet your protein, fat and carbs minima and are deficient in any minerals and vitamins. You will stay healthy, since these minimum are fairly low, at least when not dieting. For muscle gains, you can feel the rest of your daily calories with any combination of proteins, fats and or carbs. It really doesn't matter all that much where these calories come from, as long as the sources are mostly quality foods, this might surprise you because we're often told to eat a specific amount of protein or fed or a special combination that is way more complicated than what I outlined before. However, for the average adult and assuming you have no special health conditions, these fancy diets are not proven to do any better than some other macronutrients split. If both are made up of quality foods, this is pretty good news for fans of the flexible dieting concept. For example, if you like a certain diet style, like a high fat diet. You can absolutely follow on if your protein and carbs requirements are meant. And the fact comes from mostly Mona Unsaturated sources. Same of you love carps like I do. You can eat all the rice in the world with no problem if the rest of your diet covers your other macronutrients meats. This also explains how people who follow seemingly contradictory diets can all be healthy. Paleo, for example, vilifies carbs, and much of the diet is built around proteins and fats. Vegans, on the other hand, consume much less fat and protein because of the lack of meat in their diet, and often substitute this with more carbohydrates. Nonetheless, when implemented right, both diets can be healthy. So to conclude this section, what are my recommendations for the average person? Basically, when you're setting up a diet that fits your lifestyle again, make sure to first watch your overall calories. Then choose healthy foods that cover those calories, And third, make sure to meet the minimum requirements for protein and fat, while also consuming some healthy carbs. After you've reached these minimum daily requirements, you will still have some calories left, which can be filled with anything you like. Study after study has shown that none of the three macronutrients will hurt your health When coming from quality foods. Make sure to choose a set up that you like and that will fit your lifestyle. Most people give up on dieting because of inconvenience, which is a way bigger risk factor than any certain food off course. If you have goals like building muscle and increasing workout performance, your daily mackerel requirements will shift towards the higher protein and carb diet. I explained how to die correctly for these purposes in my courses on fitness and Trish. 15. Nutrient Timing Introduction: nutrient timing is the concept of when you provide your body with certain nutrients. It could be further broken down into several aspects. Meal timing, which refers to what time of the day you eat your meals. New Frequency, which describes how many meals are eaten per day, means spacing refers to how far meals are actually space. So, for example, three hours apart of each other and your macronutrients split in each meal. So are all the meals evenly split in regards to protein carbs and fats, and lastly, you also have pre and post workout meals. So is there an ideal time to eat before and after working out? In theory, all these factors could be mixed together to result in endless possibilities for nutrient timing. You could, for example, it's six meals a day, which was the traditional advice for fitness enthusiasts for a long time. Or you could fast for part of the day and gorge during a short window of a few hours, like intermittent fasting proponents do. You could also change the size of your meals and divide them into bigger and smaller ones, or you could size them evenly off course. There's also the possibility to eat certain things before and after your workout, or maybe even during if you're somewhat familiar with the most common dieting trends, you know that they're actually advocates of all these dieting styles, even though they seem to contradict each other quite a bit. What most of them forget, however, is that nutrient timing Onley makes up a small fraction off the effect your diet will have on your house. If all the other factors beneath it on the nutrition pyramid have been accounted for, this one only makes up around 5 to 10% of overall results. This alone should be enough reason to not freak out about nutrient timing too much. It's just not worth the effort. Of course, there are still some things you want to keep in mind when designing or died, which we'll talk about in the following lessons 16. Nutrient Timing Facts: with all these different died recommendations and popular diets out there, it can be easy to get confused. Do not lose track of what's important and proven to work. I will now summarize what we know about nutrient timing from research and actual data. First of all, pre and post workout nutrition Do improve workout performance and recovery. This is especially true of your pre and post workout. Meals are high in carbs and protein now. Since exercise is important to health, we could say that this would be a health benefit off nutrient timing. Another possible argument for nutrient timing would be that regular protein intake supports the maintenance of muscle mess. This is because our bodies cannot store unused protein like that, can store a news carbs or fed when extra protein is consumed and not used to repair or grow tissue and will be burned up immediately and not stored for later use. If the body then needs protein at a later point and cannot find any in the digestive track , it will turn to your muscles and break down muscle tissue to provide the proteins required for vital functions. It does therefore, make sense to provide a constant supply of protein to the body to prevent the breakdown of muscle tissue while also ensuring that dietary protein is used for the formation of new tissue, for example, muscle growth. Now, with these two arguments in favour of nutrient timing, does this mean you should perfectly time your meals? Not really. First of all, the two points I mentioned before are only important. If you're an athlete or looking to build muscle mass, the average person doesn't really need to care about them unless, of course, they're pursuing such goals next. There are also a number of arguments against meal timing which I will discuss now. We know, for example, that all kinds of new frequencies and overall health, which is what this course is all about. Studies the compared different varieties of eating schedules from six meals a day on the one end through alternate day fasting on the other, found that it is possible to maintain great health with all of these setups, as long as calorie, macronutrients and food sources were controlled. So these results do suggest that notion timing in regards to health is not an important factor at all. We also know that the myth of eating more smaller meals to keep your metabolism running and therefore burning more overall calories is false. When total daily calories are equal, there is no difference and metabolic rates between eating several small wheels a day and one big meal. While researchers did, in fact find that your metabolism does slow down a bit when you don't eat for an extended time, it speeds up immediately. Once you eat a big meal again, therefore, it canceling out all the difference. Smaller meals simply create a smaller boost metabolism, so the overall metabolic rate, when measured over a day, is basically the same for both set ups. Another common myth is that breakfast is the most important meal off the day, and missing it would be devastating to your health. This is not true. In fact, most myths related to the importance of one certain meal our faults. This also includes the example that you shouldn't eat carbs at night. The study simply don't support this, and the only time where it's important to provide your body with certain nutrients is before and after your workout, as I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, this also means that if you don't enjoy a large breakfast, you can keep it small or even skip it as long as you make up for it later in the day, saying with any other meal, of course. 17. Nutrient Timing Recommendations: There are a number of nutrient timing recommendations and implications based on what I presented over the last lessons. First, nutrient timing is not as important for health as many people make it out. To be off course. If you're an athlete or looking to build muscle at the fastest rate possible, then your meal timing will matter. And I recommend you take my fitness nutrition course where I explained how to do this in more detail. But if you're only concerned with general health meal, timing doesn't play a big role, and you can be healthy even when following extreme diet setups like alternate Day fasting. This is good news because it means you don't have to be meticulous about your timing and don't have to stress out about getting your nutrients at the exact time every day. Don't freak out of one day. You miss a meal, for example. It's not going to hurt you in the long run off course. This also means you shouldn't expect big health improvements when all your change in your diet is how many meals you eat or when you eat them. Focus on the lower parts of the notion. Pyramid first to make sure you read the big benefits there. None of all that being said, I do have some recommendations for the average person. They will make your meal planning easier and less stressful. First start off by planning for 3 to 6 meals per day. You can also include Cenex as long as they fit into your total calorie and macro split. Simply choose um, you plan that fits your lifestyle best next to avoid cravings, it's a good idea to spread the meals evenly throughout the day. The traditional diet plan off a breakfast, lunch and dinner with one or twos. Next one between will do perfectly. You can push the last meal of the day pretty late if you usually have hunger cravings before going to bed. Lastly, make sure to monitor your individual feelings of hunger to adjust to those times. Most of us aren't that hungry in the morning, so you don't need to eat a big breakfast. This will leave more room for larger mutes later in the date. For example, in your lunch for dinner, you can also leave more time between earlier meals so you can eat more frequently later, so eating a bit in the morning and then waiting for 4 to 6 hours before lunch might be a good idea. That way you don't have to wait too long between lunch and dinner. 18. Supplements Introduction: last on the list of the ingredients of a healthy diet are supplements. We all know that supplements can never replace proper diet, planning and nutrition, but they can still provide some benefits. This is especially true for nutrients that aren't as common and normal foods and therefore are tougher to get from our regular diet. Also, when you travel a lot or simply lead a busy lifestyle, supplements can make your life a lot easier. Which is why, even though their overall effect on your health small, they do have a place and the well rounded diet. Unfortunately, with so many different supplements on the market, it can be difficult to choose the right ones. I remember how intimidated I was after my first visit to the local supplement store, where they had literally hundreds of powders, bars and pills. It's also have full that most supplement ends make promises that are often exaggerated and sometimes even flat out lies. You should always be skeptical when someone tells you that their new product will provide health, energy or something similar if you simply take it every day. The truth is that the supplement industry is huge, huge, as in billions of dollars. It is also true that most of that money is spent on worth. Assemble mints that will have any effect on your overall health. So to help you find the ones that are worth their price take, Here's my shortlist off the best supplements that are proven to improve your health. First Vitamin D Vitamin D is a vitamin. We need to absorb and use phosphorus and calcium, and for the normal growth, development and maintenance of bones and teeth. It's involved in regulating your heartbeat and protects against muscle weakness. Our bodies main source of vitamin D is sun exposure, and this could be a problem for people during the winter where those that live in colder parts of the world. That's why a vitamin D deficiency is relatively common in adults, particularly older adults, mainly because of limited exposure of bare skin to sunlight. People who typically wear clothing that covers all or most of their skin and those who are homebound have an increased risk of deficiency. If this applies to you, consider supplementing with 1000 to 2000 you, which stands for international units of vitamin D a day next, zinc, zinc is needed for the body's immune system to properly work. And since the body doesn't have a specialized storage system for him, we need to consume zing every day. Now, even though most people get enough zing from their diet, supplement again can make sense. If you have a weak immune system and often suffer from colts, it can also help with acne and other skin problems. And it's popular in combination with vitamins E. Make sure, though, that you stay under 40 milligrams a day because too much zinc can be toxic long term. And lastly, omega three fatty acids, which are most commonly found in fish oil. Not only does fish oil eight with healthy bone growth, maintain healthy cholesterol levels and strong ligaments, it's also a great overall health supplement, so I really recommend you take it. Okay, so these air the common supplements that I recommend you get for general health. In the next lessons, I'll go into more detail on supplements for certain situations, like improving your immunity or, if you are vegan, 19. Why Multivitamins arent a good idea: probably the most well known supplement for health are multi vitamins, which you can get for cheap at any local supermarket. Now, even though the idea of multi vitamins is good, so getting all your daily requirements in just one pill their execution is usually not optimal. And why I don't recommend taking them first. Of all, the ingredients and multi vitamins are almost always either under or overdosed. Vitamin D, for example, is usually included in too small of a does to make a difference, while other micronutrients that you already get enough of your normal diet are overdosed like in the case of selenium. In fact, many of the ingredients in a multivitamin aren't even necessary to supplement and are just included. To make the customer think they're getting more. For less and more healthy and effective approach to supplementation is to build your own stick off personal supplements that you take every day and cannot just based on your needs . So how do you do this first off start by setting health goals and identify possible deficiencies, for example, you might often feel tired and weak, even though you sleep enough and not too much, either In this case, your health goal would be more energy and general resistance. I always recommend you talk to your doctor first about your symptoms and let him do a blood test to actually measure for possible deficiencies. If one exists, he will then recommend you certain supplements to make sure everything goes back to anomaly . The less accurate but still possible strategy is to simply start supplementing the most common supplements recommended for a certain health co. In the following lessons, I will list them for things like bone health, immunity, fat loss, vegan diets and more. You do not want to start by taking all of the supplements at once, but instead take one for a few weeks and see if it makes a difference. If so, keep it in your stay and then try the next one. This process takes time, of course, but it will have you perfect the diet and supplements take that is right for you and your health needs 20. Supplements for vegans & vegetarians: many vegans and vegetarians are able to follow a balanced diet, which consists of whole grains, seeds, nuts and vegetables or fruits. That way, they can get most of their required vitamins and minerals. However, eliminating meat from your diet also eliminates a number off sources for specific micronutrients, which we will now talk about supplementing them makes sense to prevent efficiencies and ensure long term health. First on the list is vitamin B 12. Vitamin B 12 is important for cognitive ability, and deficiency can cause anemia. Unfortunately, basically all natural vitamin B sources are animal based. Therefore, supplementation is recommended for vegans. Vegetarians who consume dairy products or eggs do not need to supplement it. Supplementing vitamin B 12 is pretty straightforward. Simply take 25 to 100 micrograms a day in the form of capsules or pills. Next is calcium. Calcium supports muscle function, transmits nerve impulses, helps cells to communicate and is involved in the release of certain hormones. Most of the calcium stored in our bones and teeth, where it's used for structural purposes. We get calcium, mostly from yogurt, whey protein supplements, milk, cottage cheese and other things that most vegans and some vegetarians do not consume. Therefore, vegans are encouraged to aim for at least 600 milligrams of calcium per day, which could be easily covered with a good calcium supplement. Iron is another mineral. You should consider supplementing if you are vegan because it is involved in various body leave functions, including the transport of oxygen in the blood. Now, iron deficiencies are not very common and developed parts of the world. But interestingly, women have a higher recommended daily intake because they lose some iron during their period. You can get iron through a plant based diet with foods like lentils, soybeans, brown rice or old meal. But studies show that deficiencies are still more common among vegans than meat eaters. So if you are deficient, which only a blood test will show, you should consider supplementing, which will help with the fatigue, impaired mental capacity and impaired immune function that come with a deficiency 21. Supplements for joing health: healthy joints are important not only for sports performance, but for a high quality of life and to prevent osteoporosis. If you feel your joints are at higher risk, for example, because you lift heavy weights regularly or simply because you're getting older considered taking one of the following supplements Calcium calcium should best be taken along with vitamin D. As together, they ensure strong bones and ligaments by preventing early loss of bone mass and also fractures. A good calcium supplement can be effective in reducing joint inflammation and pain, especially in the niece. If you prefer to get your calcium from foods, go with milk, yogurt and broccoli, and those of around 600 milligrams per day would be ideal. Next is fish oil, which are already recommended in the supplements for general health because that has been shown to help with overall joint pain. Another great supplement is Sis's. Sis's is an herb that has been used for hundreds of years to heel. Bone fractures and joints. In one trial had cut the recovery time after a bone fracture in almost half, you can get its benefits by supplementing around 300 to 600 milligrams of CIS is pretty. Keep in mind, it does sometimes relax the muscles so it shouldn't be taken before a workout. I feel so for no methane or simply M s M is also supplement that is set to help with joint pain. It is a naturally occurring compound founded fresh fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, research on M S M is still limited, but my personally experienced supports this claim and have had great results with it so far . One study found that around three grams of M s m twice a day improved symptoms of pain and physical function, So this might be a daily dose you want to shoot for and last but not least, make sure to also get enough vitamin C if you suffer from joint pain because it is a powerful antioxidant and joined food. So a vitamin C deficiency can lead to slower joint healing. 22. Supplements for improved sleep: sleep is another factor that is extremely important for your overall health and quality of life. A good night of sleep does wonders for you By bringing down stress levels and helping your body recover, obviously not sleeping well. We'll take these benefits away, and prolonged sleep problems come with many health risks. However, many people don't want to solve this problem by taking mets, which can have all kinds of side effects. So what are some good natural supplements that will benefit your sleep quality? First, magnesium magnesium deficiencies are linked to low, sweet quality and very common among athletes, which lose it through a sweat. In general, the sleep enhancing effects of magnesium Onley works if you are deficient, and people with normal magnesium levels may not see any benefits to sleep quality when supplementing. Also, magnesium won't make you sleepy, so you don't need to worry about taking it at the wrong time. A standard dose of magnesium is anywhere between 200 to 400 milligrams a day. Next is melatonin, which is the hormone responsible for regulating our sleep. Our bodies produce melatonin in low light settings, and high levels of melatonin will put you to sleep. This is why it especially house people who have a hard time falling asleep to supplement correctly. Take between 500 micrograms toe one milligram at first to see how you react to it. If you don't see any effects up the dose until you reach five milligrams of melatonin, which should be your maximum does the supplement should be taken around 30 minutes before sleep. The third option is low vendor or live under oil. Levent oil is known for its relaxing scent and Arla vendor supplementation can also improve the quality by easing anxiety and reducing intrusive thoughts. It helps you fall asleep faster while also improving sleep quality itself. To supplement correctly, take 80 milligrams of low Venda Khalfan hour before bed. 23. Supplements for better memory and focus: research shows that taking the right supplements cannot only help your normal health, but also your brain fitness and protect against mental decline in the future. You wrote the best options to choose from blueberries. Blueberries contain certain molecules which protect the brain and positively influenced its activity. They also support the growth of neurons and their interaction. Even better, blueberries are safe and do not interact negatively with other mass, which makes him the ideal supplement for more Mary and focus. To supplement correctly, take around 500 to 1000 milligrams of a blueberry supplement or eat around 100 grams for the real thing per day. Another great supplement is back open Mainieri, which is a swamp lands used, traditionally an Indian medicine. It is usually recommended for elderly people, but people from other age groups will benefit from supplementation as well. Basically, what it does is it improves working memory, which describes the ability to focus on a certain topic while also retaining it for later. You should take around 750 to 1500 milligrams of lycopene. When you Harry along with food once a day, it has to be supplemented for at least one month to see results, so make sure you don't expect results too soon. And lastly, you could also take a supplement mix that you will find it most. Pre workout supplements for more memory and focus. These are healthy meaning with caffeine. Together, they not only raise your energy levels but also improved focus and attention span. If you aren't used to either, start by taking 100 milligrams off the inning and 50 milligrams of caffeine. Once you get used to it, you can gradually increase the dose of both, but don't exceed 200 milligrams of either, for optimal results should take this mix 30 minutes before you need to increase your intention and focus. 24. Supplements Overview: okay. So even though supplements will only have a small effect on your overall health, including them in your diet makes sense, especially when you're pursuing a certain health goal or want to prevent deficiencies off course as always, only pay attention to them once he had set up your diet according to the more important principles lower on the nutrition pyramid. This is also the reason you shouldn't trust supplement companies that make huge claims and tell you that that product will turn your health around or make you lose weight without any other changes in your diet. Supplements are meant to support an already good diet. They cannot substitute a bad one. Therefore, always focus on eating a balanced diet first and foremost afterwards, you can consider taking the supplements for certain health goals like I outlined before. 25. Basics of health eating: sticking to a healthy diet seems more complicated today than ever. With so many diets from paleo too low carb to vegan, you can easily get confused and lose track of what's important. This will stop today. Instead of getting lost in details, we will cover the most fundamental factors of healthy eating. Even though they might seem obvious to some people, I can tell you that the vast majority still doesn't understand them or at least doesn't implement them in their diets. What this means is that most people should make the changes. I'm about to tell you first before committing to a super complicated diet and also before spending hundreds of dollars on dieting gimmicks and supplements. Okay, so what are these principles? I have divided them according to protein, carb and fat sources, to help you understand the more easily So for the average diet situation in the modern world, most people will benefit from the following changes, getting the majority off their protein from complete or complementary protein sources. More on what? These are later getting the majority of their carbs from mostly whole grains, fruits and vegetables, getting the majority off their fats from sources of unsaturated fats and consuming mostly foods high in vitamins and minerals. These air four simple rules that will improve your diet so much that will pretty much automatically become healthy. No, I know these rules didn't contain any specific foods to make things easier for you obelisk fruits that fit these rules in the next lessons. But if you struggle to remember them, then there is an even easier rule to summarize the four rules in tow. One. If you look at all the four rules more closely, you will see that unprocessed foods such as vegetable fruits, nuts and ex all comply with them. There are also some minimally processed foods that do so, such as lean meats and certain dairy products. So you don't have to overcomplicate things here, and as long as you stick to these food categories, you will be fine. 26. Making changes towards a healthier meal plan: changing your diet to improve your health and to lose weight usually goes hand in hand. As you saw in the last few lessons. Foods that are generally regarded as healthy, like vegetables, grains and fruits are also low in calories, promotes satiety and her great for weight loss. Now, depending on what your current diet looks like, including these foods, while also implementing the weight loss principles I outlined before, can be a pretty big change. I will now present you with my game plan for making gradual changes to your diet so you won't feel overwhelmed by having to do everything at once. This plan is based on this section, along with the last section on setting up your weight loss diet off course. If you already have some experience, you might not need this plan as it's made for people who prefer small changes. I want to give you some tips to help increase the chances that your transition toe weight loss and healthy eating is a smooth as possible and leads to long term changes. The following strategy includes three steps. If you're just getting started and don't have a lot of experience with dieting, then I want you to make small changes and only go one step at a time. Don't make any more changes or go to the next step until you get used to the first change. A lot of people try to do everything at once and end up getting nowhere. Many of these people then think that healthy eating is just too hard for their busy life and give up quickly. But if you make small changes and get used them before taking the next step, it never feels like too much and will be a lot better in the long run. Okay, so in step one, I want you to calculate your daily calories like you did before and subtract 20% from them . Now make sure to reach those calories by eating mostly healthy foods. This means that you have to try to as best as you can eat a diet based around lean proteins , fruits, veggies, whole grains and healthy fed sources. Can you have some junk food here and there? Off course. Just don't make it all the time and keep overall calories and check. If you do this, you will already see good results because you have your calorie deficit in place and will be getting enough vitamins and minerals for general health. Once you have implemented Step one and can successfully stick to this new diet in the next step, I want you to track your daily macros, especially protein, to make sure you're getting enough for muscle maintenance. A good idea is to build every meal and snack around protein. Source. This could be a piece of chicken, meat or fish, or, if you're a vegan or vegetarian, that maybe some beans and nuts. Once you have the protein, you can add veggies and some fruits as well. This will already be a pretty filling meal, but if you need additional energy for workouts than also include quality carbs like rice, potatoes or canola now you don't really need to include dietary fit and every single of your meals. But make sure to reach your overall total for the day. Now that you have a calorie deficit in place, eat mostly healthy foods and reach your macros every day. You're pretty much set. There is one more thing, though, that will help you stick to this diet in the long run, and that's a meal schedule. Try to eat your breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks at about the same size and time every day. Now, even though you probably remember that I set meal, timing doesn't matter all that much. It's still a good psychological anchor toe. Always eat your meals at the same time in the same size. This will really make it easier to stick to the plan. And if you get to this point and feel comfortable with the changes you made to your overall died, then you're golden. This is pretty much the perfect set up for long term success. 27. How to track calories: properly. Tracking your calories is very confusing to a lot of beginners. There's so many absent programs that are supposed to help you, but many of them are just too complicated or full of annoying ads to help you make this process as simple as possible. I will share my tools and strategies with you in this lesson and teach you which foods are important to track, in which you can simply ignore an interesting side note. Before we get started. Research has shown that people who track their calories lose more weight. Not only that, they also have an easier time keeping the weight off in the long run. Now, to probably track your food, you will need three things. Food, obviously a calorie tracker M. I just fit tattoo, which you can get for free in the APP store and the kitchen scale. Some people will tell you that you don't need a skill and can simply guess the weight of your fruit. You can try this, of course, but from what I've learned over the years, this takes quite a bit of experience and is not a good strategy for beginners. Looks can be deceiving, and if you're not careful. A few inaccuracies here and there can quickly add up to a few 100 calories or more. That might be enough to completely throw you off your target value, leaving you unmotivated and wondering why the hell things are working out. That's where the food scale comes into play. It takes the guesswork out of counting. You weigh the exact amount of any food that you want to the Graham and doesn't know exactly how many calories of it actually is going into your body. A good kitchen scale doesn't have to be expensive. Mine was around 30 bucks, but you could get cheaper ones for a lot less. Now this video, I want to teach you how to utilize your scale to accomplish two things. One. Ensuring that your calorie of macro counting is sufficiently accurate and to simultaneously making the overall process easier and less time consuming. Because if you use your scale correctly, the whole process will actually be a lot faster than if you guessed your food weight all the time. You know my five top tips on how to do this correctly. Number one. You don't always have to worry about the small things as a good rule of thumb. Anything less than 50 calories isn't worth worrying about. This includes things like a splash of cream of coffee, a little bit of ketchup on sandwich or some parts of your cell. It late lattice. As long as you're being generally consistent with your system, which is way more important than being accurate, by the way, you can often neglect those minor foods, I say, often because every calorie counts. And if you forget to attract too many of these minor foods, they will add up to something big, and it will have an impact on your diet. Also, keep in mind that some foods like olive oil, for example, are very calorie dance, and even just a teaspoon will already have quite a bit of calories. Number two. Sometimes you only have to wait once. If you eat certain foods regularly, you only have to weigh them Once. Use your scale to measure out the normal daily portion of your oatmeal and whole, for example. Now you have your frame of reference. You know what the right amount actually looks like visually, and it's thus much easier toe eyeball accurately from here on out. Maybe you'll eat a little more tomorrow, but you probably eat a little less than next day. It'll be close enough over the long run. Number three. Raw or cooked. Always make sure if the calorie value for your food that you're tracking us for the raw food or the cooked version for foods like rice, which taken a lot of water when being cooked. This makes a huge difference in getting this right will make or break your diet. The same goes for foods with skin or peel bananas. I usually wait without the peel, but you will find different calorie values for chicken with and without skin, so watch out for this number four. Check the calorie and macro values in your tracker app. Even though most calorie tracker APS come with a pretty large database, there often falls for misleading values. Sometimes other users have added their own foods with wrong macro values, which is why you should always check a trusted source like weapons. These online calorie tracker. If you feel leather value for a certain foods, might be off. Trust me, I've come across many of these false values, and it's really frustrating Number five. You only really need the food scale for one off occasions if you follow a recurring meal plan, which is what I recommend, because it's by far the simplest and easiest way to do calorie and macro counting than the prepping and longing of food is going to become routine and automatic. You know what this days portion is going to be because you know exactly what it was last week and the week before. Thus you don't need the scale again. The scale should be used for one off foods for foods that aren't totally easy toe eyeball each and every time. When I started diet, I usually only used my scale for the first week or two and then cook the same meals again. I only need the scale again when I want to try new meals. 28. Protein Explained: If you follow any fitness block or listen to any personal trainer, they will all agree on one thing. Protein is important. Not only is it important for building and repairing muscle fibers after exercise, but it actually has thousands of other essential roles in the body, including the production of antibodies for the immune system, manufacturing hormones and enzymes that are involved in most reactions in your body. Aiding in the digestion and absorption of food. Maximizing the transport of oxygen to tissues and providing structure from muscles, tendons, ligaments, organs, bones, hair, skin and all other tissues. For body composition purposes, protein is actually the most important dietary mattress Nugent. The reason for this is that muscle is literally made out of it. If muscle is the car, then protein is the metal out of which the parts are built. Prodi not only provides the building blocks for muscle growth, it also supplies the amino assets needed to reduce muscle breakdown. So, in essence, protein both builds new muscle and saves existing muscle from being lost. Both functions are very important and maximizing muscle and minimizing fed. Let's now look at what happens when you consume protein about 90% of the protein you eat is broken down into amino assets and becomes part of the amino acid pool that the body draws up on when it needs to build or repair muscle or any other tissue. Unlike carbohydrates and fend, which the body can store for later use, amino acids have no form or starch in the body, so it's important you have some protein every day. But wait before we continue. Let's clarify one thing. What are amino acids, anyway? Um, you know assets are the building blocks of protein and are necessary to support muscle growth. Amino acids are usually categorised as essential and non essential. There are eight essential amino acids, but you don't really have to worry about them too much. Just understand that your body cannot create them, and they must be obtained from foods and or supplementation on the other side. And non essential amino acid can be produced in the body by reconfiguring other amino acids 29. Fats Explained: fats are an important part of your diet, but often misunderstood. So let's find out what that really is all about and debunk a few myths along the way. Besides protein and carbohydrates, dietary fed is one of the three main macronutrients besides protein, one of the essential macronutrients. That means your body needs some Fetty assets to survive and cannot produce them from other foods. You also need fed to regulate a former production and to keep your skin and hair healthy. That also helps you absorb vitamins A, D, E and K, the so called fat soluble vitamins and lastly, fed sells. Insulate your body and help you to keep warm. One gram of fat has around nine calories, which is more than twice the number of calories in a gram of carbohydrates and protein, which each have four calories. Program. There are two main types of fit saturated and unsaturated fats saturated. Feds are often referred to as bad fats as they raise your LDL. Cholesterol level cholesterol is a soft, waxy substance that can cause clogged or blocked arteries. Therefore, high LDL cholesterol can theoretically put yet risk for heart attack, stroke and other major health problems. The debate is still unsettled. Whether saturated Fendt directly increased serious heart problems, though. But until we know more, it's best to limit foods that are high in saturated fats. Foods that contain a lot of saturated fence are animal products such as butter, cheese, whole milk, ice cream, cream and fatty meats. Some vegetable oils, such as coconut palm and palm kernel oil, also contain saturated fats. You can easily identify saturated feds as they're usually solid at room temperature. Unsaturated fats, on the other hand, can help you lower your LDL cholesterol. Most vegetable oils that are liquid at room temperature have unsaturated fats. Among the unsaturated fats. We can distinguish two kinds. Mona and saturated fence, which include olive and canola oil, and Polian saturated fats, which includes sunflower, corn and soy oil. One last type of event that you will stumble across our transfats transferred es its form. When reached low oil is infused with hydrogen. This is often done to keep foods fresh for a longer time. The problem is that studies show that relatively small amounts of these fence will increase the risk of different health problems, including heart disease, Alzheimer's breast cancer, depression and war. Therefore definitely tried to avoid will limit foods with hydrogenated or partly hydrogenated oils such as heart, butter and margarine. 30. Carbs Explained: carbohydrates are the last of the three main macronutrients. Just as with fat and protein, they're a lot of debates around carbs. Before we get into these, let's first find out what carbohydrates actually are. Carves, airfone and foods, including fruits, vegetables, grains, potatoes, pastries and candy and are considered the body's preferred energy source. Where, specifically, carbs are sugar molecules that are a union of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Think of carbs as one or more sugar molecules that are bound together and broken down by the body to be used as fuel. When you consume high carb foods, you buy breaks them down into simple sugar glucose, which is then transported throughout the body to provide energy, fuel important reactions and maintain blood sugar levels. Any glucose that is not used is stored in your liver and muscles as glycogen, or if the stores are full as fat during high intensity activities such as weight training or springing your body, uses glycogen and converts it back to glucose for new fuel. If glycogen levels are low, hard workouts become increasingly difficult to complete, and your performance will suffer next to its importance for workouts. Carbohydrates have other benefits they include supplying the nervous system with fuel. Well maintained blood glucose levels will directly benefit the nervous system, which not only means better concentration but also better muscle recruitment or fatigue resistance and even more work out motivation. Much of the fatigue of long duration training is due to a tired, nervous system and not the result off sore muscles. So providing the nervous system with an adequate source of blood glucose is important for optimizing workout intensity and duration. Refueling glycogen stores, in addition to glycogen, is rule as a provider of energy for high intensity workouts. It's storage, and the muscle plays a role in the regulation of muscle growth. Low levels of glycogen by themselves have been shown to down regulate muscle growth that is just having low muscle glycogen levels, irrespective of training, intensity and protein intake, can temper muscle gains and increase the risk of muscle loss. This is just another reason why getting enough carbs is a very important factor when wanting to build muscle secreting insulin. The more carbs who eat, the more insulin is secreted. This is important because insulin has a profound effect on muscle growth when insulin is secreted into the blood that binds to target receptors on the muscle cell surface and increases muscle growth. Because of the powerful anabolic effect of insulin and the fact that car consumption secrets more insulin than the other micronutrients fed and protein carbohydrate consumption is anabolic muscle tissue. This means it helps grow it. 31. How Much Fat Per Day: In order to maintain your general health and fitness, you need only around 0.3 grams per pound of fat free mass per day. You're fat free mass is everything in your body that isn't fat. So, for example, muscle water and bone. This translates to roughly 15 to 20% of your daily calories for most people, and is a target value that you should not undercut both when dieting to lose weight and went to build muscle. But as you know from the last section, what types of food you eat is also important. Obviously, you want to limit your saturated fat intake and avoid artificial transfats. You want to favor mono unsaturated and Polian saturated fats. This approach is ideal both for health and body composition. Specifically, I recommend you get the majority off your dietary fed from Mona and Saturated fats, and that you keep your saturated fat intake at or below 10% of your daily calories. We will talk about which foods are perfect for this in more detail in the less non fat composition, so be sure to watch that one carefully. Now there's one more case we need to talk about where you want to further increase your unsaturated fat intake above 15 or 20% and that is when you're bulking. Booking is the term used for going into calorie surplus to ensure optimal muscle growth. Skinny people looking to put in size often have a hard time with this when all carbohydrate , fat and protein needs are already met. But your daily calories are not yet filled. For example, imagine meeting 3500 calories to gain weight, but you already met your macro needs at 2500 calories you have a choice to make. You can either choose to a protein carbs or fats or any combination of these three. In many cases, adding dietary fat is going to be a good option because of the following taste. Feds taste good for most people, adding olive oil avocado to something just makes it taste better. Very few people will complain when you at fats to their diet health effects Mona and Saturated fence for some of the healthiest calories you could take him. This includes olive and canola oils, avocado, natural nut butters and almost all neuron nuts such as peanuts and almonds. It is also possible that healthy sources of particular saturated fats such as coconut oil and grass fed beef products can be consumed, but likely not in the same quantities as Mona unsaturated fats calorie density. While proteins and carbs have four calories, program fact contains nine. This alone makes Fed the top contender to use for a calorie buffer, and to this, the fact that fats tend to packed together tightly and the apparent density goes up even further. A tablespoon of olive oil has more calories than an entire banana, and this density is part of the ease of consumption. All fits as well. If you're already full but still need more calories to meet your daily in tech, extra friend is going to be a lot easier to consume. Cost effectiveness not only are fed super calorie dense, they're usually very cheap. A large container of olive oil is a lot cheaper than quality protein. Taken together, these points highly support the role of fence as a default calorie buffer. Now, in some cases, it can also make sense to consume additional carbs, especially when exercising very intensively. However, then you need to make sure that these extra carbs come from quality sources such as rice, four potatoes and not from candy or junk food never consumed too much simple carbs as they will keep your insulin levels up and can lead to pre diabetes, which is both harmful to your muscle gains and fat losses and your general health. 32. How To Read A Food Label: When it comes to proper dieting, food labels are extremely important. They pretty much tell you everything you need to know and give you a perfect overview off the nutritional value off the food at hand. Unfortunately, many people don't know how to read a nutrition label, which is something we will change now. This lesson is intended to make it easier for you to use nutrition labels to make quick informed food choices that contribute to a healthy diet. So the first thing you always want to check is actually no in the nutrition label, but somewhere else. On the packaging, which are the ingredients ideal year. You want to have as few as possible. If you buy a head of lettuce, for example, the only ingredient will be lettuce. The same goes for most other fruits and vegetables. Being realistic, though, most people purchased package or frozen foods that have more than one ingredient. But then a similar rule applies the short of the green list, the better. I also understand that ingredients are ordered by volume. The higher up on the list of ingredients is the more of it you will find in the product. So for example, if sugar, corn syrup or any other sweetener is the first thing on that ingredient list, then you probably want to avoid this product where it leased. Limit your intake. Okay, now to the actual label. Here's a sample label from the FDA. Always started the top and check the serving size. I always like to compare my foods on 100 grand basis, so one serving is more or less than 100 grams. You will have to do some calculating to just the values on the label. Next, you want to check the total calories. While this will tell us how much energy the food contains, it doesn't say where the energy comes from, so then we go further down the label and check the three main macronutrients, fat carbohydrates and protein First fan. As you know, fed per se isn't bad, but it should come mostly from unsaturated fats, maybe some saturated feds and little to no transfats. Therefore, the high transferred value is an indication to avoid this product. The values for cholesterol and sodium should also be low on quality foods. You can check this by looking at the daily percentage on the right side of the label you're anything below. 5% is low, and anything over 20% is regarded as high onto carbs. Like feds. Carps aren't bad, but you have to make sure that the carps in your food don't just come from sugar. So if you see, for example, that a food has 30 grams of carbs and off those 30 grams, 10 are from sure it's not a good sign. As a rule of thumb, the lower the sugar value, the better. The opposite holds true for dietary fibre, which you want to get quite a bit off. The last macronutrients protein is actually pretty easy to get right. The higher the better, at least when it comes to diets, folks on building muscle and losing weight. The very bottom of the label will tell you the microchip value of food. In general, the more vitamins and minerals, the better. One exception is sodium, of course, but it's usually not found down below, but higher up on the label. And we already discussed this and that's about it. Reading a food labels actually pretty simple, and there isn't much you can do room once you know how to do it 33. Myth #1: Carbs Are Bad For You: telling people carbs are bed is one of the most common advice false fitness gurus will give you while at the same time trying to sell you their special diet. Generalizing about carbs and insulin seems to get more popular by the year. Many people believe that the Glass Simic Index and the insulin index rank foods by how dangerous they are. I already explained the flaws of the glycemic index and an early lesson, but you should also know that insulin itself is not bad. Actually, it is required to store glucose, which is the sugar in your blood, and to use it for energy. So then what is this anti car propaganda all about? While there's some evidence that carps can cause insulin insensitivity, this is pretty much only the case for people with pre diabetes that are at the same time overeating, simple high sugar carbs. So, yes, if you don't exercise and your diet consists mostly of candy bars and chocolate, then such carbs will negatively affect your health. However, if you follow well balanced diet and exercise regularly than quality, carbs will actually be necessary to fuel your workouts. This is also why I usually don't recommend a low carb diet unless you're completely sedentary or your stomach simply doesn't digest them well. Most people, however, will be better off sticking to quality carbs because cutting them from their diet means restricting their energy source and limiting their potential for muscle growth. So if someone tells you that you need to go low carb to lose weight or to be healthy, you know, know that they're probably trying to sell you their alternative superior died that most often is nothing but hype. 34. myth #2 fat is bad for you: Another common dieting minutes is that fat is bad for you. Many people believe that if you eat fed, you gain fat automatically. That's why, for many many decades, the traditional way to lose weight was to follow a low fat diet Today. We know, however, that eating fat doesn't make you gain fat unless you leads to a long term calorie surplus. In fact, cutting all your fed from your diet can be dangerous, since your body needs to consume Fetty assets for home production. Low fat diets can decrease your testosterone production, so make sure to always get some home ago. Three and omega six fatty acids. Also many low fat products actually contain more calories than their normal counterparts, which really defeats the purpose of cutting Fred from your diet to lose weight. Then there's also the idea that saturated fat causes health problems. Now there is some truth to this because based on what we know today, large amounts of saturated fats might be problematic to the heart. However, there is no evidence that they are the direct costs of heart problems for now, and make sense to limit saturated fats to re certain amount. While sticking to quality saturated fats like coconut oil or high quality meat. What you need to know is that at the end of the day, transfats are the only kind of fat that is directly linked to your health problems and that you should avoid. But again, a little won't kill you as long as your overall diet is healthy. 35. myth #3 protein is bad for you: carbs and fats are often blamed for various health issues. But even protein has sometimes been made out to cause a number of health problems, most notably kidney damage. So is this true? Is eating too much protein bad for you? People that propagate the Smith will usually argue that consuming too much protein hurts the kidneys and, well, Leslie to renal failure. Now there are some animal studies where this has been the case. But human studies have always shown that healthy adults who exercise regularly have no problems with consuming high amounts of protein, both in regards to their kidneys and their overall health. Now, if you haven't existing renal disease for existing kidney problems, then I would suggest you limit your protein intake. But you probably already know this and have talked about it with your doctor. This normally doesn't mean that you have to cut out protein entirely from your diet, which isn't even possible, but that you have to be more careful when consuming more protein. Another scary story placed at the feet of a high protein night is the risk of bone density problems and the development of bone diseases such as buster paralysis This is based on the theory that by consuming more protein, our bones will excrete more calcium, which is required to sustain bone density. This idea comes from early studies, which show that the acidity of an individual's urine is greater when consuming a diet high in protein. It was suggested then that calcium is drawn from the bones to buffer the acid load. However, more recent studies show that the predominant source of calcium and urine is not from bone breakdown, but in fact it is from the intestines. Data also now suggests that elderly individuals at risk of bone density and osteoporosis should actually aim to consume more protein than the current recommended daily allowance. Now, what about protein shakes? Surely protein supplements are not as good as the real food right. Admittedly, whole food proteins from animal sources provide the highest quality of protein, which we can consume. Foods such as poultry, meat, fish, eggs and milk should always be component of a balance and nutritionally optimal diet. For those who exercise, these sources provide complete proteins with a dose of the essential amino acids required to boost muscle protein synthesis and counter act degradation. However, there are also issues with these sources. First, not everyone eats meat or other animal products, which significantly reduces their chances of consuming a high quality protein diet. So supplementation is a good way to prevent efficiencies for vegans or vegetarians. Secondly, food is not always the most efficient, easiest or even preferred option to get a high dose of high quality proteins. Often people don't want to or don't have the time to cook. Sometimes you just want a quick and simple solution to boost protein synthesis. And a supplement shake can be the best way to do this. Lastly, whole food sources do come with additional factors, namely saturated fats and cholesterol. Therefore, when following a strict diet, getting the correct amount of protein without elevating fat intake will often require people to get their protein without having to worry about extra fat and calories. This can almost only be done by protein supplements, which are basically pure protein. So all in all, I would agree with nutritional guidelines that suggest whole food sources of protein to be the predominant means of protein consumption. But protein supplements have their place in a well rounded diet and will not lead to health problems when used correctly 36. myth #4 eggs raise cholesterol: eggs have been demonized because they're yokes, which are chock full of nutrients contained high levels of cholesterol. Does that scare you? It should, because eating foods high in cholesterol does not directly translate to increased cholesterol levels in your body. More to the point and clinical tries, no association was found between eggs and cardiovascular disease, except maybe in some people with specific pre existing conditions, such as diabetes for hyperglycemia. Here's a short summary of what studies have shown in healthy people. Eating even six eggs a day doesn't seem to adversely affect blood life. It's some studies, no, no change in HDL, LDL cholesterol and some not only a very small increase also, and healthy people accept never been directly associated with an increase in cardiovascular risks, and such an increase was always merely assumed from the increase in circulating cholesterol in unhealthy or overweight people at conception might negatively affect blood levels of cholesterol and lipoproteins, but we still need more evidence for this. This means eggs are a great source of proteins, fence and other nutrients, and their association with high cholesterol on cardiovascular disease has been severely overblown. 37. myth #5 avoid salt at all cost: Should you really avoid salt at all costs? Here are the facts. Salt or sodium is an essential mineral. Its consumption is critical to our house. The problem is that the average person consumes double the recommended amount, so quite a bit more than the Tora will upper intake. So this myth is rooted in a grain of truth. It is true that people with salt sensitive hypertension should avoid too much salt because it raises their blood pressure. In most people, however, there appears to be little to no association between salt consumption and hypertension. When controlling for other factors, you have to understand that excess sodium may not raise blood pressure, but it is associated with other health issues, such as kidney damage and an increased risk of cognitive decline. So the bottom line salt or sodium isn't strongly associated with high blood pressure except in people with salt sensitive hypertension. Still, anything in excess is harmful, and sodium is no exception. 38. myth #6 Meat causes cancer: Recently, the World Health Organization published a report where certain animal products, including red meat, were labeled as possible causes of cancer. As you can imagine, this led to an outcry in the fitness industry, where many people rely on me as a quality protein source. So is it true? You might ask, Should I really stop eating need? Well, here's what the reason says. First of all, cancer is a particularly difficult disease to discuss in absolutes, after almost everything we eat has the potential to be involved in cancer development. For example, antioxidants can both promote and Hendra cancer growth, but the effect is usually too small to notice. Some compounds found in smoked meats have been found to damage cells, which is the first step to potential cancer. Current evidence suggests that red meat campos cancerous for people with poor diets and lifestyle choices. What this means is that people who are overweight and don't exercise will be under a lot greater risk of getting cancer for meat. Why is that? Various compounds, produce and meats during cooking and processing have possible cancerous effects when consumed by humans. However, the amount of these compounds and their aggressiveness depends on the preparation method of meat. This is because these harmful compounds are not inherent to the meat but our side effects from treating it with fire. Now, is there anything you can do to reduce these harmful compounds? Yes, definitely. First of all, smokers and people following a one sided and generally unhealthy diet where the highest risk group and all studies. So make sure you start with the basics. Stop smoking, set up a balanced diet with more vegetables and start exercising. This alone will reduce the risk of cancer from need and a general be a lot more healthy when it comes to meet preparation. Studies have shown that marinating it before cooking reduces harmful agents in the meat. Also, preparing meat under higher temperatures such as grilling and directly above the fire seems to create more harmful agents than baking or broiling it. With this in mind, what's the bottom line on meat and cancer? Fears of cancer red meat have probably been exaggerated, making healthy lifestyle choices such as staying at a healthy weight exercising and not smoking is a lot more important than micromanaging your meat intake. If you're going to lay of red meat, start with avoiding too much process cured or smoked red meat 39. Common Eating Trends Overview: now that we got the most common nutritional health Miss out of the way. I want to talk about some of the well known diets out there. These air diets that are either currently popular or happened popular over the last few years. As you will see, the dining industry is similar to fashion and that there are always some trends. Everyone seems to fall. Sometimes these Dia trends makes sense, but oftentimes they're just fats that won't stand the test of time. The problem is, of course, that with all these different diets, it's easy to lose track, especially if you are a professional fitness coach. So in the next few lessons, I will explain the concepts and ideas behind each night and also tell you when it makes sense to follow each one. As always, I don't just want to rely on my personal experience, but on scientific studies and objective research, Let's get started 40. Gluten Free Explained: the first diet we will analyzes the gluten free diet. Gluten free is one of the hottest diet trends right now, so it's crucially understand where it comes from and what it has to offer. Many blocks and magazines will tell you that gluten can be extremely dangerous, and getting often has changed their lives completely. As you know, if you read my block, I'm always a little skeptical about such absolute statements, especially when those people are also selling their own products. So let's look for ourselves and see what gluten is really all about. Gluten is a naturally occurring composite of two proteins, glutamine and bleeding, that is found mostly in riot wheat and barley products. It's the substance that makes toe resilient and stretchy, and it's also often used as a thickening agent and other foods. Because gluten makes big products more elastic, it's often found in things like pizza dough, pastas, breads and crackers. Now that doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, it can be problematic for some people because blue molecules aren't broken down by heat or directly digested. They will be absorbed by the small intestines, which can provoke an autoimmune response, and some people. These people would then get headaches, stomach cramps, diarrhea and generally feel bloated. Things could get even worse and result and got inflammation. If these people keep getting glued now, this sounds pretty bad, right? But here's the good news. All these symptoms occur only in the people with celiac disease, which is verifiable by the presence off certain antibodies produced in response to boot. It's estimated that between 0.3 and 1.2% of the population has celiac disease, which means that you probably don't now. What about healthy people without celiac disease? Should they also avoid gluten? Unfortunately, the answer is, it depends according to recent research for every personal s celiac disease there probably six or seven people who have a gluten sensitivity, which means you get symptoms. Similar interests, Elliot. But you don't have the antibodies or intestinal damage. Sounds like a lot, but that's still only between 3 to 7% of all people, so you probably don't have gluten sensitivity, either. What this means is that the vast majority of people don't need to follow a gluten free diet . In fact, the group of free diet itself offers no special health benefits, and most gluten free products tend to be less nutritious, low and protein higher and fed and cost more than double. This is also the reason why many people with celiac disease that are forced to follow a gluten free diet have micronutrient deficiencies simply because it's more difficult for them to follow a well balanced diet. Now I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's more difficult. Another thing that is sometimes mentioned but completely made up is that it looked free. Diet will help you lose weight faster. Even on a gluten free diet. You still have to follow the rules of weight loss that I explained earlier meaning you have to create a calorie deficit. Now. I don't want to completely bash gluten free diets because there are a few studies that indicate that over time, diets high in gluten can cause damage to the intestinal cells and non Celia people. The problem is, researchers still don't know why this is, and the evidence isn't clearly linked to gluten as a trigger. What this means is that if you want to play it safe, limit you gluten intake to a few meals a week. Other than that, however, you don't have to worry about it 41. Paleo Explained: next to the gluten free diet. The paleo diet is another hugely popular diet Right now, many people will tell you that can help you with weight loss, cravings, sleep and even allergies. So again, this seems pretty good, right? Well, let's find out first. What is the paleo diet, anyway? The idea behind the pal your diet is to eat the same foods our hunter gatherer ancestors supposedly ate. So fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood and nuts what you want to avoid our process foods, dairy products, potatoes and grains. If a caveman couldn't eat it, neither can you. Advocates of this diet will argue that the average human back then was tall, muscular, agile, athletic and incredibly versatile, whereas the average human now is overweight, out of shape, stressed out and unhappy. So we should go back to our roots and bring back the caveman diet. The problem with this, though, is that we now know from excavations and bone analysis that people back then where nearly as tall and healthy as paleo advocates make them out to be. They also didn't have all the abundance of food we have today, so it was basically impossible to become overweight for them. But these air details that don't really matter when it comes to dieting, because the paleo diet could still be healthy, even if in theory it doesn't really make sense. And in fact, many of the aspects of paleo dieting are very healthy eating lean needs and the seafood will provide with a lot of protein, which is very important to build muscle and maintain muscle mass. As you know now. It also excludes processed meats, which can pose a health risk when consumed in great quantities. It includes a lot of veggies and fruits, which are high in vitamins and generally nutritious and excludes basically any type of candy and processed sugars, which usually have little nutritious value. And it also excludes transfats, which are generally bad for your heart and overall health. Like I explained before. So in these aspects, paleo is a pretty good diet. There's just one problem and also forbids quite a few foods that offer great health benefits. For example, whole grains are an excellent source of quality carbohydrates that have been shown to reduce inflammation in the body and decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, and dairy products provide calcium protein and vitamin D. Of course, some people are lactose intolerant, but for those that do find with dairy, it's a highly nutritious food. Also, lagoons are a good source of plant based protein and have been shown to degrees total and LDL cholesterol levels. But all of these you couldn't eat as a troop. Aaliyah dieter. Now, often the argument for this is that whole grains damage the intestines, and lagoons contain entry nutrients that interfere with nutrient absorption. My problem with these claims is, however, there's little scientific evidence to back them up and that most of these problems aren't really problems. Anti nutrients and lagoons, for example, aren't dangerous and normal intake levels, and it's part of a properly balanced diet and can also be easily reduced by cooking them. So what's the bottom line on paleo? The foods that are recommended in the diet are pretty healthy as long as you stick to lean and unprocessed meat, so there's nothing wrong with that. The problem comes from foods that should be avoided according to the diet, especially the whole grains, which are one of the best sources of quality carbs trying to get your carbs solely through foods will be difficult and it's not recommended. So if you really want to follow the paleo diet, I suggest you go with a less drastic approach and still include some of the non pal your foods when you need them. 42. Low Carb Explained: while the diets we talked about so far I have seen an increase in popularity Onley in the last few years. Low carb diets have been around for decades. As the name suggests, low carb diets are low in carbohydrates. This means that if you switch to a low carb diet and consume the same amount of calories, you will have to consume more protein and or more effect to make up for the lost calories. Since carbs are the only non essential micronutrient, which means our body doesn't need them to survive, unlike protein and fed. In theory, there's nothing wrong with a low carb diet. But like I said so many times before, there is a difference between simply surviving and feeling great. Advocates of low carb dieting will often tell you that reducing your carb makes sense because eating carbohydrates produces insulin, which in turn triggers rapid fat storage. So the key to a healthy diet, they say, is to eat as few carbohydrates as possible. Now, I already talked about how this could be true for simple carps like high sugar foods and candy. But when it comes to quality complex carbs than these claims are simply falls. In fact, if you regularly exercise than not, consuming complex carbs will hurt your strength level and therefore your muscle gains. Trust me, you'll feel a lot weaker, and your workouts will become very difficult if you don't provide your body with the fuel in the forms of complex carbs. What this means is that if you want to gain muscle than low carb, diets are not optimal, and I don't recommend them. No. What about weight loss? Does a low carb diet makes sense when wanting to lose fat? As so often, the answer is it depends if you're completely sanitary, meaning you almost never exercise. Then, yeah, it makes sense to cut carbs simply because carbohydrates are primarily energetic, so their purpose is to give yourself energy. If you don't do anything with your body, it doesn't need to very much energy, so it doesn't need the carbs. Thus, a relatively low carb diet would make sense for a sanitary person, and somewhere around 100 grams per day would probably be enough. Also, people who consume primarily simple carbs, such as process and junk foods, will benefit from eating less of them simply because anything you eat instead of junk food is probably going to be more nutritious. That being said, to lose weight, you always have to follow a negative calorie balance. Like I said so many times before, no matter if you're eating low or high carb. The problem with low carb diets, though, is that it's easier to overeat. For many people, the absolute worst part of dieting to lose weight is the hunger, which often leads to cravings. Unfortunately, a low carb diet basically guarantees that you're going to struggle with hunger. Carbs, especially the fibre rich types, have a significant impact on your fullness, whereas dietary fats don't. That is, eat a bunch of fibres carbohydrates, and you'll feel very full for quite some time. Eat a bunch of dietary fed and you won't also, if it is a lot more calorie dense, with one gram of fat, having double the calories of one, a ground of carbs. So as you can see, unless you don't exercise at all or have problems with your insulin sensitivity, low carb isn't the best choice. Off course. Different people react differently to more or less carp intake, so it makes sense to try it out at least once. Maybe you're one of those people that actually feel better with less carbs, and that's what matters in the end. 43. Intermittend Fasting Explained: even though the concept of fasting has literally been around for centuries, the idea of intermittent fasting has only become popular over the last few years. But let's not get ahead of ourselves first. What is intermittent fasting anyways? The average person, probably its food from around 8 a.m. to maybe nine PM and form of various meals and snacks . That means you eat for around 13 hours, and then he'd nothing for about 11 hours. Once you stop eating and your body has processed all the food from your last meal, you will go into a fasted state would probably last around 6 to 7 hours. Intermittent fasting doubles this by having you fast for 16 hours and eat for only eight. Some diets go even as far as 20 hours, fasting in four hours eating Now what happens when you do this? Proponents of the intermittent fasting dad will tell you that longer fasting will lower insulin levels increase testosterone help with singular repair in gene expression sounds pretty amazing, right? Not so fast. The problem with this is that all these changes, even if they actually take place and are made up, are so small that they won't make a noticeable difference. At least that's what a matter study off over 40 studies on intermittent fasting found. The scientists concluded that intermittent fasting is not superior to traditional dieting and found no significant benefits related to body composition fellows, insulin sensitivity or Hormel's. This means that much of the marketing done in the name of intermittent fasting is made up or completely exaggerated. That being said, I do believe this dieting approach can make sense for people that fall into one of two categories. First, anyone who doesn't have the time or discipline to eat five or six meals per day and prefers to eat large amounts of food within a small time frame. Like I explained in the lesson on meal frequency, it really isn't that important how often you eat. What matters is how much you eat and calories and what you eat and macros. Intermittent fasting takes this to the extreme and hazard eating large amounts of food within a few hours. If this approach appeals to you, then go ahead and try it. I personally am completely happy with the traditional approach and feel weak when I go several hours without food but that might be different for you. The second category of people who might benefit from intermittent fasting is anyone who has trouble counting calories. Since you will be consuming most of your food and just a few hours, it'll be easier to monitor a calorie intake and stick to a calorie deficit. If you don't allow yourself to eat outside the six hour window, you already eliminated one of the biggest reasons why people don't succeed. A diet high calories next. I personally don't have this problem have died it successfully for years. So again, this approach isn't my favorite. But if it fits your lifestyle and preferences, go ahead and give it a try. And this is basically the bottom line for intermittent fasting. It's not some amazing cure for all your weight loss muscle building problems. In fact, if you still consume the same amount of calories and the same mackerels, you probably won't see any changes. But the stricter approach does help some people to get back on track and simply stick to their diet plan 44. Veganism Explained: Some people believe that vegans cannot build muscle and will inevitably suffer from protein and vitamin deficiencies. Others think that veganism is the best thing since the invention of the Internet, and that they have to convert everyone they see to become a vegan. So who is right? And what is the vegan diet really all about? As you probably know, vegetarians do not eat meat, fish or poultry. Vegans, in addition to being vegetarians, do not consume other animal products and by products such as eggs, dairy products and honey. Now, while some people will choose to go vegan because of environmental or ethical reasons, I will talk about it on Lee from a fitness and health perspective. Since the field of veganism is so broad, we will start with a rather simple question. Can you build muscle as a vegan? And the answer is yes, absolutely. But it's more difficult than on a normal diet. The main reason for this is protein, as I have discussed in detail in the previous lessons on protein and this dozens off studies have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. Ah, high protein diet is very important for building muscle. Our body simply need amino acids derived from protein to repair and grow muscle tissue. Without it, you won't provide your body with the material for muscle growth when we look at vegan diets and compared it to traditional diets from a macro nutritional perspective, the main differences protein intake Most people eating an even halfway healthy diet are already getting a large percentage of their carbs and fats from plant based sources like grains, fruits, veggies and nuts and oils, which doesn't change when you become a vegan. What does change, however, is protein intake because your replies high protein animal foods like meat, eggs and dairy with lower protein foods like beans, grains and nuts. Now don't get me wrong. Beans, grains and nuts are very healthy foods and generally quality sources of protein as part of a balanced diet. You run into problems, though, when you use them as your single source of protein. Why? Because plant based proteins come with the truth. Drawbacks. First, Not all of them are complete proteins, which means that they don't contain all the nine essential amino assets or don't have sufficient quantities of them to meet the body's needs. As you know amino acids are the building blocks of protein and tissues in the body, including muscle tissues. The body needs 21 amino acids to stay alive, and nine of them must be obtained from food. Unfortunately, many nuts seats and lagoons are incomplete. Proteins that don't contain all nine essential immunize its, but fortunately, there is a very simple solution for all this. If you're a vegan, don't rely on these as your protein source. For example, if you combine them with other foods, you can get the right balance of essential meals. Proteins that in combination make a complete amino acid profile are known as complementary proteins. Here, a few good examples. Rice and beans. Spinach salad with almonds, Hamas Withhold grand PGAs, whole grain noodles with peanut sauce. Now the second problem with plant based proteins is that some sources aren't absorbed as well as others. This means eating 100 grams of hemp protein isn't the same as eating 100 grams of rice for pea protein. Heme protein has much less muscle building potential than pea protein. What this means is that as a vegan who wants to build muscle, you have to make sure you're getting enough protein that is well absorbed well and rich in a central amino assets. Doing this isn't impossible, but it's more difficult than simply relying on meat and dairy as your protein source to help you out here. A few protein sources that should make up the majority majority of daily protein are grains like we'd rise and olds vegetables and legumes like peas, beans and potato nuts like almonds, peanuts, walnuts, pistachios and seems like a no and back. We'd also make sure to combine them with one another to get all the essential amino acids. Okay, now that we talked about how to overcome protein efficiencies, what about micronutrient deficiencies? You probably heard that going vegan does increase the risk of various neutral deficiencies , and this is true. The most common ones are deficiencies in vitamin D and B 12 iron, calcium, zinc and omega three fatty acids. Now many vegans will tell you that these common deficiencies can be avoided by simply adding certain foods treated diet. While this is true in theory, things look a lot different in practice. For example, to get the same amount of calcium from vegetables as from dairy products, you would have to consume multiple servings instead of just one the singles for zinc. Unless you want to micromanage who died and always check for your micronutrient intake. This means you will have to supplement. Supplementing for vitamin D. B 12 and omega three fatty acids is actually fairly common among experienced vegans and something I would recommend. So what's my conclusion on the vegan diet, you can build plenty of muscle and strength as a vegan. If you know what you're doing, you will have to closely monitor your foods and protein sources and probably invest more time towards meal planning to avoid deficiencies. If you're willing to invest the time, then the vegan diet can definitely be a healthy alternative and help you gain muscle. 45. Vitamin A: Vitamin A is a fed, salable vitamin that you need to maintain your eyesight and prevent night blindness. It can also improve your immune system and helps with fed storage and protects against colds, flu and some infections. You also need vitamin A to grow new cells, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. On top of all, that vitamin A slows down the aging process. So where can you get your vitamin E? We can get vitamin A from animal livers and from green and yellow vegetables. The type of vitamin A from animal sources is called pre forms and has found in very high levels and fatty liver dishes. However, as you can imagine, those aren't optimal for most fitness oriented diets. This is why fitness experts recommend getting vitamin A primarily from plant sources. This form of vitamin A is called pro forms, and green, yellow and arch vegetables can be great sources of these types of vitamin E. For example, a single serving of sweet potatoes, carrots and even pumpkin pie has more than 100% of your recommended daily value. Bell peppers, broccoli and leafy greens like spinach also contain a significant amount of vitamin A. The recommended daily intake for vitamin A is around 900 micrograms per day in men and 700 micrograms per day in women, and microgram is 11 thousands of a milligram, so very little. Now, signs of vitamin A deficiency include night blindness and Scalea skin. But most likely you're already getting enough through your balanced diet, so supplementation is not necessary. Unless, of course, your doctor told you so. 46. Vitamin B: vitamin B is actually made up off several B vitamins that were together in the body, with each of the B vitamins performing unique and important functions. This group includes the following vitamin B one b two b three b five, b six, B 12 folic acid and by ity. These vitamins are essential for the breakdown of carbohydrates into glucose. This provides energy for the body, the breakdown of fats and protein, which aids in the normal functioning of the nervous system, muscle tone in the stomach and intestinal tranq your skin, hair, eyes, mouth and liver. Vitamin B is available on dark green vegetables, grains and meat, but deficiencies can accord even in general. Population, especially vegans, are at high risk of B 12 deficiencies along with pregnant women. So if you fall into one of these two categories, do a blood test and speak to your doctor about supplementation. Supplementation can be either done by a complex formula that has all the vitamins in it, or you can just get a single B vitamin. If you prefer that for extreme deficiencies, shuts of B 12 may be possible. But for most people, supplementation with capsules will be enough 47. Vitamin C: Vitamin C is a superstar among the vitamins and acts as an antioxidant, which we need for more than 300 metabolic functions, including new tissue growth and repair. Many diseases are caused by low levels off anti stress hormones, which vitamin C helps to produce. It also helps wounds and burns to heal and protects against abnormal blood clotting. So where can you get vitamin C? Literally? Just eat a plan and you get a decent amount of vitamin C. For high levels of vitamin C. Try Berries, Citrus fruits and green vegetables like broccoli, brussel sprouts and green peppers. Really, few vegetables like spinach are also great source. Even some breakfast cereals are fortified with vitamin C as an added benefit. When you eat vitamin C at the same time as aren't it will help to absorb more of the iron. The recommended daily intake is around 90 milligram for men and 75 milligrams per day for women, which will most likely get through a normal diet. So chances are that you don't need to supplement your vitamin C intake, but it can make sense to help people boost their immune system, especially when you're sick or starting to feel sick. 48. Vitamin D: vitamin D is a vitamin. We need to absorb and use phosphorus and calcium, and for the normal growth, development and maintenance of bones and teeth. It's involved in regulating your heartbeat and protects against muscle weakness. We also needed for cellular growth and newer muscular function, and to enhance or immunity Vitamin D is somewhat unique because your body can produce it when your skin is exposed to the sun's ultraviolet rays. Besides that, eggs, dairy products and fish oil contained significant amounts of vitamin D. However, the main source of vitamin D for most people should always be sun exposure. And this can be a problem for people during the winter or those of us that live in colder parts of the world. The recommended daily intake of vitamin D is around 600 i you, which stents were international units, both for men and women. However, this is the bare minimum to prevent efficiency, and the optimal recommendation would probably be around 1000 to 2000 I use per day. That's why vitamin D deficiency is relatively common in adults, particularly older adults, mainly because of limited exposure off bare skin to sunlight. People who typically wear clothing that covers all or most of their skin. And those of us that are homebound haven't increased mist of deficiency. So what should you do again? Do a blood test and check your vitamin D levels if you're deficient. This simple vitamin D supplements can help you out, and it can really work wanders. I've seen people who used to be tired and unmotivated all day become full of energy and motivation just by increasing their vitamin D intake. 49. Vitamin E: Vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamins, which has a number of important functions in the body. The main benefit of vitamin E is that it acts as an antioxidant, which means it protects the body from the damage costs by using oxygen every time your body uses oxygen, this house produce free radicals as a byproduct. These free radicals condemn cause damage to the body. However, anti oxidants prevent and repair the damage caused by free radicals, meaning that vitamin E can provide significant protection toe all your body's cells. Apart from this, vitamin E provides further benefits, which include the effective preservation of foods, prevention of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, promotion of a healthy nervous system, protection against heart disease and protection of the eyes. Men are advised to consume around four milligrams of vitamin D daily, and women should consume around three milligrams, which you probably get through your novel diet. Since vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamin, you will not pee it out if you're getting too much of it. That means there is a risk of overdosing and supplementing it without consulting a doctor and doing a blood test first is not recommended. 50. Vitamin K: vitamin K is needed for a block to clock properly. It's also essential for growing and repairing bones, and it converts glucose into glycogen so our livers construe, or it vitamin K is highly concentrated and leafy greens like kale, collard greens and spinach. It's also broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, liver, egg yolks and old meal. You can also find it in needs and colorful fruits, but in smaller amounts. The recommended daily intake is around 120 micrograms per day for men and 90 micrograms for women. You will usually get enough Benjamin K through your normal diet, and deficiencies were occur only rarely. However, a deficiency in vitamin K may occur when you're taking certain drugs. So check for that. The classic sign of vitamin K deficiencies are excessive hemorrhaging and bleeding. Additionally, vitamin K deficiency is maybe a contributor to osteoporosis. The two groups most at risk for deficiencies are newborn babies and people with mal absorption disorders. Vitamin K doesn't cross the placenta very easily, so that makes it difficult for the fetus to receive it again. Please speak to your doctor before supplementing this vitamin, just to make sure that you really need it. 51. Calcium: now that we have talked about the most important vitamins, let's continue with the so called macro minerals. They're called macro minerals because we need them in fairly large amounts. They're important for a nursing wing, muscular contraction, tissue structure and our bones. For athletes, it's important to maintain optimal levels of macro minerals because of the extra stress that is placed on the muscles, tissue and bones. And because we lose a lot when sweating the first important macro minerals calcium, which we have in our bodies more than any other mineral, it supports muscle function, transmits nerve impulses, help sales to communicate and is involved in the release of certain horror. Holtz. Most of the calcium is stored in our bones and teeth where's used for structural purposes. We get calcium, mostly from yogurt way protein supplements, milk, cottage cheese and dark leafy greens. And if you need those regularly, you most likely don't have to supplement calcium. One problem, however, is that it's difficult to detect a calcium deficiency because in the short term, our bodies will simply use the calcium stored in our bones to maintain normal blood calcium levels. Over time, though, your bone density will suffer and you will feel the consequences. In general, vegetarians and people with lactose intolerance are at the greatest risk for calcium deficiencies because they don't consume enough were no dairy products at all. If you fall into one of these two categories, please check with your doctor and consider supplement. 52. Magnesium: magnesium is involved in many biological processes, including protein synthesis, muscle and nerve function, blood glucose control, blood pressure regulation and energy production. Why calcium? Much of our magnesium is stored in the bullets. This could make it extremely difficult for anyone test to give an accurate account of magnesium levels in the blood. We get magnesium through foods like dairy products, meat, fish and seafood. It can also be found in high amounts and green vegetables, especially leafy greens as well as nuts. The recommended daily intake for magnesium is around 420 milligrams per day for men and 310 milligrams for women. Even though studies have shown that the magnesium intake of the average person is likely to be below the recommended daily intake, I don't feel comfortable recommending to supplemented without knowing your details. So please talk to your doctor first. This is also since acute signs of deficiency are uncommon because much of the bodies magnesium restored in tissue, and there's plenty of it to draw from if you're not consuming enough in the short term. If you have a chronic deficiency, though, this can lead to a weak muscle, contraction, fatigue, disruptions and mineral stability, abnormal heart rhythms and even personality changes. So this is a serious topic 53. Phosphorus: phosphorus is a very abundant mineral in our body and can be found in our bones, cell membranes and energy molecules. Essentially, we used phosphorous and tissue groove, and some has regularly lost through sweat and urine, so you want to replenish the amount you lose every day. You can get phosphorus from protein rich foods such as meat, poultry and fish. But plans such as we'd potatoes and peanuts are also an excellent source, and it's found to some degree and almost all foods. The recommended daily intake of phosphorus is around 700 milligrams per day for men and women, and it's unlikely that you need to supplement it. In fact, getting too much is a more common problem than getting too little. If, however, you have phosphorus deficiency, this can have a drastic effect on bone structure and stability. It can lead to fragile bones, stiffness of joints and general bone pain. Deficiencies can also lead to numbness, reading difficulty and general weakness. But like I said before, you probably don't have to worry about this too much and are getting enough of it through your normal diet. 54. Potassium: potassium is an electrolyte that's necessary for muscle contraction, nerve impulses, protein synthesis, transferring nutrients through cell membranes, breaking down carbs and maintaining a regular heart rhythm. You can lose a lot of potassium through excessive sweating, and this can lead to muscle cramping. So if you regularly have muscle crimes, more protests, um, might be a solution. Some of the best sources of potassium are spinach, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yogurt, meat, poultry, fish, nuts, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, act plant and carrots. The recommended daily intake for potassium as around 4700 milligrams per day for both men and women, signs of deficiency include weakness, muscle cramps, fatigue, constipation and abnormal heart rhythms. I know that people who take laxatives experience prolonged vomiting or diarrhea or have kidney disorders are increased risk of potassium deficiencies. So if you fall into that category, please check with your doctor. 55. Sodium: sodium, makes up half of sodium chloride, which is also known as table salt. Sodium is a electrolyte that plays a role in a nerve signaling muscle contraction, fluid balance and the transferring of nutrients through cell membranes. Our body usually does a good job at maintaining sodium levels in the blood. Excess sodium has peed out, and only when you really taken way too much can you develop high blood pressure. When it comes to sodium sources, Table salt is the most direct one. Our bodies need around 1500 millions per day of sodium to function properly. But because we get so much sodium through our diets, you actually want to watch out for overdosing and not under dozing. Symptoms of overdosing are dehydration, fatigue and confusion and have left untreated for a long time. Brain injury can occur. A good way to prevent this is to simply drink more and, of course, consume less high salt foods. 56. Copper: okay now that we have gone over the most important macro minerals onto the trace minerals, which our bodies only need relatively small amounts. As you will see, the effects of many trace minerals are white, spread throughout the body and, despite their small concentration, have very big impacts. The first trace mineral I want to talk about is copper. Along with iron, copper is essential for the production and functional bread block cells. It also aids in maintaining blood vessels, nerves, the immune system and our bones. You can get copper from foods like oysters and shellfish, potatoes, beans, nuts, liver, kidneys, dark leafy greens and pepper. The recommended daily intake for copper is around 900 micrograms per day for both men and women, and the probability that you have to supplemented is relatively low now. While copper deficiency is rare, it can lead to anemia and osteoporosis, symptoms of a deficiency and who diarrhea, weakness and skins force in amounts greater than the opera Tolerable limit. Copper can also be highly toxic, causing copper deposits to accumulate in the organs, including the brain here, symptoms of over consumption and coo depression, irritability, nausea, vomiting, nervousness and pain in the joints and muscles 57. Iron: iron is another important mineral that is involved in various bodily functions, including the transport of oxygen in the blood. This is essential for providing energy for daily life. Iron is lost from the body through shedding intestinal sales, sweating and blot loss. Good sources of iron include beef and chicken, nuts, vegetables, grains and fortified cereals. The recommended daily intake for iron is around eight milligrams per day for men and 18 milligrams per day for women now, iron deficiencies uncommon and developed parts of the world and the probability that men will need to supplement with iron is low. But the probability is moderate for women because of their higher recommended daily intake . Symptoms of iron deficiency include fatigue, impaired mental capacity, impaired immune function, decreased work performance and, in extreme cases, anemia. 58. Zinc: zinc is found in cells throughout the body, it is needed for the body's defence immune system to properly work. It plays a role in cell division, cell growth, wound healing and the breakdown of carbohydrates. Zynga's also needed in the senses of smell and taste during pregnancy, infancy and childhood. The body needs things to grow and develop properly, and it also enhances the action of insular. Since the body doesn't have a specialized storage system for it, we need to consume zinc every day. The majority of zinc in the average diet comes from beef and poultry, but oysters are actually the most sink potent food. You can also get sing from vegetarian friendly sources such as peas, nuts, beans, old meal and dairy products. However, it's difficult to get enough sink solely from plants because there are compounds and plans called fight aids that reduce our body's ability to absorb it. Because there are compounds in plants called fight aids that stopped our bodies from being able to absorb it. The recommended daily intake for zinc is around 11 milligram per day for men and eight milligram per day for one. Now, even though most people get enough oozing from their diet, supplementing and can make sense. If you have a weak immune system and often suffer from Coles, it could also have with acne and other skin problems and this popular in combination with vitamin C. Make sure, though, that you stay 140 milligrams of date because too much zinc can be toxic in the long term. 59. Water: Okay, So after talking about all these vitamins and minerals, you may have noticed that I left out something very important. Until now, water intake is vitally important for optimizing health and performance. The bottom line is that if you're currently not drinking enough water, you're going to notice several immediate benefits by increasing intake to optimal levels. So in this lesson, I want to teach you how much water you need exactly and what kind of water you should be consuming. As you probably know, water comprises over 60% of your total body weight, and every part of your body requires water. For example, water is a vital part of your body's detoxification systems. It's used to digest foods and shuttle nutrition's to its cells. It's needed to keep your eyes, nose and throat moist. It keeps our joints lubricated and supple, which is vital for preserving joint health and brain cells. Required a delicate balance of water and other chemicals to function properly. So it's obvious that staying hydrated is important and dehydration will slow you down both mentally and physically know how much water should you actually drink them to stay hydrated . Interestingly, the question should really be how much you eat and drink, because many foods, such as fruits and vegetables, contain significant amounts of water. For example, research shows that in the United States, about 20% off our water and take comes from the food we'd with this in mind. How much water should you be drinking every day? You have most likely heard the traditional recommendation off a glass of water per day. But the problem is that optimal water intake will differ depending on your weight and activity level. This is why the institute from medicine actually recommends relate thirst. Be your guide. I know this sounds really big, but our bodies are actually very good at recognizing dehydration, and once this happens, you will feel thirsty. Now you probably still prefer a specific value that you can target just to make things a little more tangible. A good target value is about 2.7 leaders or 3/4 of a gallon of water for women per day and 3.7 leaders or a gallon for men per day. So this should be your baseline to shoot for every day. No, If you're like me and exercise regularly, then off course, you need to add some additional water to the baseline simply because you sweat more than the average person. A good recommendation is to add around one leader per hour of exercise to make up for the additional sweating. Okay, now that you know how much water you need, the next question is, what kind of water should you be drinking? This will heavily depend on where you live in the world. In developed countries, tap water is usually fine, but research has shown that even there it can sometimes be contaminated with all kinds of pollutants, like bacteria and heavy metals. Many people know this and drink bottled water instead. But the problem is that bottled water, especially when it comes from plastic bottles, also contains quite a few chemicals, mostly from the plastic leaking into the water. Also, bottled water can be quite expensive when you drink a lot of it. So what's the solution? Children tap water. Home water filters are getting better and cheaper by the year. The key to judging them is the amount of dissolved solids they leave in the water, which can be measured in terms of parts per millions to use them. You simply put water in the top container of the filter, which then slowly passes through the filtration mechanism and comes up pretty much chemical free. A good water filter will produce clean water for many months before needing a change of filters, so drop about this lesson to make sure you get enough water. Let thirst Beer Guide and shoot for 2.7 leaders if you're women and 3.7 if you're a man. If you exercise regularly, drink around one leader per hour of exercise on top of that. And if you're concerned with chemicals in the water who water filters are a great way to get rid of them without spending too much money.