Nutrition and working out are big areas of interest and passion in my life. I spend a good portion of my time reading about various exercises, workouts, food plans and as you know I crossfit so that gives me tons of different things to want to get better at. I am constantly inundated with information on nutrition and fitness. My lesson recently has been around learning to reign in my work out and nutrition plan attention deficits.
Because of the constant nutrition and workout information flow, I am always discovering tons of exciting workout ideas and think I often think "Oh! I totally need to be doing that!!" So then I switch things up. Same with food. I have been mainly eating paleo style for the past 7 months (and then paleo plus sugar and wine over the holidays (oops!)). I see articles about intermittent fasting and meal timing and macro nutrient ratios and my head starts to spin. Mid-January I made a commitment to myself to go back to a plan I received from Jillfit.com which brought me some great results previously. One week into it and I find myself talking to a friend who is troubleshooting some issues with coritsol/adrenal fatigue which I am also working on. She has been advised to just eat 2 larger meals a day and she is loving it and feels better. So my head starts in "Oh!! I should try that too!!!"
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa! Hang on a second!!
What do I want to be accomplishing?
What am I working on?
Where am I headed?
How do I know what I am doing now is not working?
I do not believe that there is one plan that fits every one. You need to find out what works best for you personally. One way to do this is to run little experiments and then check in how you look, feel and perform. However, you need to give workout programs and diet plans a chance to work and show results (or not!) before you can evaluate them. If you are changing every Monday or every other week it is going to make it hard to really assess how things are working. Typically I advise giving changes a month to see how they are working out.. From here you can decide if you need to proceed forward with the same plan, make some tweaks or try something completely different. It is important to note here that expectations on change need to be reasonable too. If you are looking to drop 30lbs of fat or add 15 lbs of muscle in 1 month that is not going to happen for many people on ANY plan.
For myself, I have set some fitness goals around increasing my max for deadlifts, backsquat and shoulder press as well as working on handstands.
For food, I need to find balance again and be comfortable with my body. I am committed to sticking on my current plan for a month - checking in with pictures and measurements and then assess if I need to make any changes.
Focus is helpful. I am liking having it again. It helps me know that I am heading in the direction that I want to be going.
There are a ton of great workout programs and nutrition plans out there. Pick something and try it. Give it some time and see how you look, feel and perform. Focus.
Some great starting points:
http://www.metaboliceffect.com/
http://whole9life.com/
http://www.crossfit.com/
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