Nutrition Archives - 12 Minute Athlete

Food is Fuel: Learning to Treat Your Body Right

There’s no question that what you eat has a huge impact on your day to day life, your energy levels, and how ready you feel to crush your workouts.

While diet and fitness magazines often portray food as the enemy—i.e. the less you eat, the leaner, sexier, smarter, etc. you will be—I 100% believe that this is the wrong way to think of food.

Instead, I want you to think of food in a different way: as fuel for your body.

If you eat high quality, nutrient-packed foods, you’re going to feel your best and be able to get through your day to day activities and workouts feeling like a rockstar.

If you eat highly processed foods loaded with sugar, unhealthy fats, and few nutrients, you’re most likely feel sluggish, unmotivated, fuzzy headed, and at some point during the day, just plain crash.

The more you learn to listen to your body and treat it right with healthy foods, the more you’ll actually crave eating healthy most of the time.

How to Keep Holiday Eating from Stressing You Out

Somehow, we’re nearly at the end of October, which at least in the U.S. means that the holiday season is right around the corner. So how can you stay stress-free around all the good food and treats we’re about to constantly be surrounded by?

With all the Halloween candy and Thanksgiving dinners coming up, this time of the year can be challenging in terms of eating well and exercising regularly. Many people throw in the towel and stop doing the things that have already helped them get closer to their health and fitness goals, following the 80/20 rule and working out consistently.

But just because it’s the holiday season doesn’t mean that you should throw all your good eating and movement habits out of the window. For really healthy people—those who don’t do crash diets or exercise immense number of hours every day to burn more calories—holiday season actually isn’t that much different from the rest of the year. They still eat good food (most of the time!) and stay active.

And it’s not as hard as you might think. Here are some tips for staying stress-free while still enjoying this upcoming holiday season:

How Mindful Snacking Can Help Your Workouts

Snacking often gets a bad rap.

While most of us know we should be filling our plates with veggies, protein, and healthy carbs during mealtime, it’s not always easy to know what to do during those in between times when we’re feeling seriously hungry but our next meal isn’t for a while.

Rather than feeling guilty when reaching for a snack, it’s nice to know that most active people can actually benefit from mindful snacking throughout the day. Not only can the right snack help you crush your workouts, but it can also help you stay more alert and focused throughout the day, keep you from experiencing brain fog, recover from faster from your workouts, and much more.

Personally, I’m a huge proponent of mindful snacking throughout the day and tend to eat every three hours or so to make sure I’m always prepared to go after my goals.

Here’s how mindful snacking can actually help boost your workout performance:

Trouble Sleeping? You Might Not Be Eating Enough

Did you know that what—and how much—you eat can have a huge impact on how well you sleep?

Well, it does. And more than you think.

Because while you might never have thought about how your nutrition may affect your sleep, it has a bigger impact than most of us realize.

While society may constantly push the idea that eating less is better (and that we should constantly try to lose weight), sometimes eating more is the right answer—not only for your athletic performance, but also for your quality of sleep.

Don’t Fear Fats! Your Best Dietary Fat Sources

Despite the low fat diet trend of the 90’s, including fat in your diet is extremely important to keep your body strong, healthy, and kicking serious ass.

To stay healthy, we should never try to leave fat completely out of our diets.

All three macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates and fat are important for us and should all be present in a well rounded diet. Depending on a person’s individual needs and goals, the ratios of those macronutrients may vary, but in general, it’s never a good idea to leave out or extremely limit any of them. And fat is no different.

April Smoothie Challenge Week 4: Dessert Smoothies

We’re about to start Week 4 of the April Smoothie Challenge and round the challenge up with… dessert smoothies!

If you missed our first post where introduced our April Smoothie Challenge, check it out here. Then, go ahead and join our Facebook group where we’ll be sharing all our recipes and fun ideas to make tasty and healthy smoothies throughout the month of April.

We have a special theme for each week of the April Smoothie Challenge. The theme for the Week 1 was Perfect Recovery Smoothies. The theme for the Week 2 of the April Smoothie Challenge was Veggie-Based Smoothies, and in Week 3 we made some delicious Breakfast Smoothies.

The theme for Week 4 of the April Smoothie Challenge is Dessert Smoothies.