by Coach Shawn
You’ve worked out a few days this week.
You’ve asked a lot of your body.
Challenged it in ways and put forth great effort.
You’re feeling sore in certain areas of your body.
You want to recover faster.
You equally want to look and feel good.
You want to continue making progress within the gym.
Keep achieving new bests.
Progressing in strength as well as what you are capable of.
An area to truly excel in that aids in helping all of those areas is what you consume food wise.
Specifically, let’s look at days you don’t train.
Also known as your rest day eating.
What you eat on your off days
-how it affects your current day,
-the role it plays in your ability to recovery (faster) and repair your tissue for your next few training days,
-the subtle role it plays in the way you feel and over time how your body looks.
3 Mistakes About Rest Day Eating
- Under eating
- Lack of nutrients
- Not hitting enough Protein
To prevent these 3 mistakes honor these 2 simple principles when eating (especially on rest days
PRINCIPLE #1 – Aim for 1g of Protein per pound of bodyweight
LEAN Protein is your friend. Helps repair, rebuild your muscle tissue and helps keep you lean.
When those muscles recover through adequate protein they in return get stronger and by consistently hitting your protein count you maintain LEAN muscle tissue.
ie: If i weigh 175lb I will shoot for 175g of protein in total throughout my day.
starting out most people realize they SEVERELY under eat protein.
I like to tell these people start at 80% and slowly work up.
ie: 175lb x.8 = 140 so I would shoot for 140g for a few weeks working my way up to 175g consistently.
*this principle is not limited to your rest days but everyday. It is paramount within rest days in many ways to include your bodies recovery and repair of muscle tissue, keeping your stomach full and helping you from over eating other macro nutrients like tasty carbohydrates.
PRINCIPLE #2 – Eat UNLIMITED amount of Fruits and Vegetables.
Yup. You read that right. Fruits and vegetables (while are carbohydrates) carry with them fiber and are digested differently in the body no need to to freak out.
They pack VITAL nutrients in your overall health and not to mention your bodies ability to recover and repair what you broken down in training.
Most people severely under eat or don’t consume vegetables at all. Simple seasoning can improve flavoring and experimenting with which vegetables you like.
Fruits are delicious and can help curb any sweet cravings you have.
(Lately I’m on a bowl of pineapple and strawberry kick with my last meal of the day on training days!)
Unlimited you say?
Yup.
No fruit or vegetable consumption is going to cause you weight (or fat) gain.
Read that one more time.
It’s the empty calories, excess calories, excess starch and excess in fat that are usually the culprits for many.
And eating as much fruit and vegetables as you want helps you eat MORE of the RIGHT things and LESS of the things that don’t align with your goals.
These two in combination will greatly help keep your insulin regular opposed to spikes, mid day fatigue and crashes and in general, under performance day to day (in and out of the gym!)
Check out some pictures of my rest day eating from last Thursday.
Take these 2 simple principles and run with them.
Not only on rest days but everyday.
And don’t expect shocking change in a week or 2 weeks.
Get good at these things as part of a healthy lifestyle and you’ll see your interest will compound over time.
You’ll feel better, look better, recover faster and perform better.
Regularly.
I promise you.
