How Important Is Nutrition In Your Fitness Program?

So you want to look good, feel good, be healthy and perform well?

At Railroad, we know that fitness goes beyond just lifting weights and completing workouts; your nutrition not only matters – it plays a VITAL role in your overall success. 

Yet, our members, fitness enthusiasts and the public at large still grapple with nutrition as a whole and misconceptions around eating. 

Today, you’ll learn about three common challenges: under-eating, over-eating, and poor eating habits, while also highlighting the importance of intentional eating to support not only your health and body composition but your fitness journey.

Under Eating: A Silent Saboteur

One of the most prevalent issues when it comes to people and nutrition is under-eating. 

Many people, especially those focused on weight loss, think that eating little to nothing will help them shed pounds faster. They’ll eat one meal a day, skip meals, be inconsistent with the thought – it will lead to me losing weight.

However, here’s what really occurs when this is done:

1. Loss of Lean Muscle Tissue: When you severely under-eat, your body starts breaking down muscle for energy. This not only slows your metabolism but also diminishes your bodies strength, your progress in the gym and hinders your ability to recover.
   

2. Nutrient Deficiencies: Skimping on meals often leads to missing out on essential vitamins and minerals. This results in fatigue, weakened immunity, and poor recovery, ultimately hindering your fitness progress despite your best efforts.
   

3. Increased Cravings: Ironically, under-eating can trigger intense cravings for high-calorie foods. This can lead to binge eating or worse eating disorders. All of which derail your efforts and create a poor relationship with eating and repeated cycles of frustration.

Over Eating: The Hidden Trap

Conversely, over eating is even more detrimental. 

Many people struggle here including…

• Eating out of Food Balance – carb and fat heavy meals / snacks often lead to overeating (calorie surplus).

• Portion control – eating carb or fat heavy and light on protein usually leads to struggling with the amount one eats over an extended period of time. The discipline muscle gets weak.  

• Lack of Nutritional Understanding: Many people “think” they eat good – and simpy don’t. Unaware of what constitutes balanced nutrition or how to properly fuel their bodies, leading to poor food choices, out of balance and overeating without realizing the impact on their health.

• Emotional Eating: Turning to food for comfort during stress, boredom, or sadness as a coping mechanism, leading to overeating and a tough pattern to break.

• Mindless Eating: Eating while distracted (e.g., watching TV, scrolling on a phone) often results in losing track of how much is being consumed. It all adds up.

• Social Influences: Eating in social settings often encourages overindulgence, as people may feel pressured to keep up with others or struggle to say no or decline food / drinks from their peers.

These often result in:

1. Unwanted Weight Gain: The most obvious consequence of over eating is unwanted weight gain. Even over eating healthy foods in excessive patterns can contribute to excess calories if consumed in large quantities. And what’s unfair is it’s really easy to gain weight – and much harder to lose.
   

2. Disregulated & Discomfort: Overeating can lead to not feeling great – fatigue, lethargic/tired, not thinking clearly, irritability,  bloating, indigestion, and discomfort, all making that much harder to do anything – let alone perform or feel good during workouts.
   

3. Mental Guilt: Many people feel guilty after over indulging, which can lead to a negative relationship with food and exercise. This cycle of guilt can has been shown to either hinder your motivation and progress in the gym or create a “punishing” sort of cycle with what the gym becomes. Not to mention building a poor relationship with food all together.

Overeating can lead to feelings of guilt and shame, which can diminish self-esteem and create a negative self-image. 
This emotional turmoil may drive people to engage in further unhealthy eating habits as a form of comfort, creating a self-sabotage cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to break. 
Especially with how food companies WORK to make these foods addictive, not for your health but for your $.
Ultimately, this pattern undermines both physical and mental well-being, making it harder to achieve health or fitness goals.

Poor Eating Choices: A Recipe for Failure

Lastly, poor eating habits—such as relying on processed foods, lacking balanced meals, sugary drinks, excessive snacking all can sabotage your fitness goals and wreak havoc on your body and health.

Some common issues include:

1. Lack of Energy: Poor nutrition results in low energy levels, which can affect your performance in the gym and daily life. Plain and simple – you just feel like crap. This affects your work, your relationships, your mood. Everything is adversely affected.
   

2. Health Decline: Most poor eating choices are heavy on UNHEALTHY fats, EXCESSIVE carbs and overall lower in lean proteins. Add alcohol in here – just a recipe for a health nightmare. Without a proper balance of lean quality proteins, healthy fats, and fruits and veggies as MOST of your carbohydrates, you may not be fueling your body adequately, or healthily, leading to health declines, holding on to excess weight and if you train – subpar performance and recovery.
   

3. Emotional Eating: Many will resort to unhealthy foods for comfort, which can create a dangerous cycle of emotional dependency on food. This creates a very slippery and addictive slope – one that people feel they can “control” and are “certain” they can get a response or certainty from. Eating habits can be layered with past experiences, upbringing, conditioning and many other factors. In my experience – it’s a 2 pronged approach to change and improve this – taking personal responsibility for the choices (not blame) + then loving the parts of you who need it. And getting the help and support you need – whether that be a therapist, nutritional coach – someone to help guide you towards where you want to go.
   

Intentional Eating: A Path to Success

When it comes to nutrition, I encourage you to think about eating & your current goals within three categories:

• A Cut (weight and fat loss) – deliberately & intentionally eating less  

• A Gain (size and weight gain)-  deliberately & intentionally eating more 

• Maintenance (staying relatively the same)– deliberately & intentionally similar day to day.

Most people – just eat by feel, by pattern, on a whim. Which is okay – you just must accept if that’s how you choose to eat – you’ll get the results of that.

Interestingly, when we asked 15 regular gym-goers “who tracks their protein intake daily?”

Only half raised their hands. This indicates a significant opportunity for improvement even for those who are consistent with fitness 3-5x a week.

Easiest Room for Improvement: For the next 2-4 weeks, diligently track your protein intake using MyFitnessPal. 

TARGET PROTEIN: Aim for your current body weight in grams of protein, or your ideal body weight, for optimal results.

Build up to to over time if you’re really far away in your current intake.

Brit – regularly consumes 145-155g protein daily

Benefits You’ll Experience

1. Satiety: Protein can help you feel fuller, reducing the likelihood of eating unnecessary surplus calories.
2. Better Recovery: Adequate protein helps in muscle repair, allowing you to recover faster and feel better.

3. Life Skills: Tracking your intake will teach you valuable life lessons about nutrition, intake, reading food labels creating massive food awareness and understanding which is HUGE.

Remember, healthy eating and consistent exercise are a lifestyle, not a shortcut. It’s about progress, not perfection.

Last nugget I’ll add I think people often don’t have clear vision on…

Cuts (weight loss) are hard. 

Gains can be too.

They aren’t meant to be forever though either.

They are temporary “cycles” or phases that last 4-12+ weeks then you NEED to learn how to shift and maintain for either a time period or on going.

Maintenance phases and lifestyle is much easier.

You learn how to eat and build a semblance of what eating looks like to stay relatively where you’re at.

People have this illusion and give up on “dieting” or a “cut” because they don’t get the results they want in 2-4 weeks. Failing to realize – shortcuts don’t last. And you just spent 20-30-40- or 50+ years eating a certain way, with your patterns, poor choices in there, and possibly being inactive for a portion of it – it’s going to take TIME to dig out of that.

That’s why to me true cuts are about COMMITMENT.

The journey to get to the place you’re satisfied, happy and healthy takes personal commitment. 
You won’t get there doing what you did. It won’t be easy and it will come with challenges to get to a healthier version of yourself.

Think about it like a car in motion driving – to get from A to B – once the car gets to B and is parked that’s the maintenance phase. Driving is a cut or gain.

Mindset wise – remember: “Dieting” or “cutting” isn’t a forever thing – it’s specific, targeted and intentional phase to get to a IMPROVED destination.

Learning how to maintain your new weight, habits is a different skill and becomes much easier than a cut or gain. 

And honestly, most cannot get there alone. They need support guidance and accountability. Please get help if you’re struggling, aren’t where you want to be and have goals you haven’t achieved or don’t feel good.

It will be the best investment you make.

The Power of Accountability

Where most people truly excel is through accountability with a coach. If you’re looking for guidance, education and support on your journey, schedule a FREE 20-30 min consultation with one of our coaches.

Success Story: 

Take Laurie, for example. 

She struggled with her weight her entire life. 

At the beginning of 2024, she finally sought help and, just ten months later with dedicated nutrition coaching and accountability she’s down 50 lbs! 

Before we began working together – we spoke on personal commitment. Not to me, or the program, but to her future self. To the habits.

Recently, Laurie proudly donated her old clothes and danced at her daughter’s wedding, unafraid to be in photo’s and around hundreds of people – 

And is inspiring her family and friends to pursue healthier lifestyles.

At Railroad, we believe that with the right nutrition and support, you can build life long habits, achieve your goals and improve your health and relationship with food.

Book a FREE consultation today – get support navigating through the holidays.