What You Need to Know About Reaching Your Fitness Goals – Part 5
Nova Health Club • July 5, 2018
Nutrition is Paramount.
Your choice of food affects everything! Hands down, if you are not consistently following healthy nutritional habits you will struggle to reach your health and fitness goals.
In the previous four parts of this series, we learned that to reach your goals you need to first be healthy and to be healthy you need to limit stress, improve sleep and recovery, functional move better and most important, put as much effort as possible into nutrition. The food you choose to eat has a direct impact on these areas of health - stress, recovery and movement. Food can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. If you want to fight stress, improve recovery, move better and reach fitness goals then improving your eating habits is probably the best change you can make for your present body and future self.
Choose Food to Combat Stress. When you are under acute stress, your body releases specific hormones such as cortisol that help you combat the stress by regulating the amount of glucose in your blood (increased blood sugar levels). Because many people suffer from chronic stress, cortisol levels are always elevated and this leads to hunger response signals from the brain that often leads to overeating high carbohydrate or sugary foods. Stressed individuals have worse eating habits compared to those under less stress. As a result these overly stressed people put on unwanted body fat and because of the low nutrients levels from the low quality foods, they do not nourish the body the way it needs and along with becoming fatter, they can end up getting sick too. Being fat and sick is not what anyone wants! But we do it all the time to ourselves whether from ignorance, negligence or socioeconomic pressures.
If you suffer from chronic stress, be aware and take action by choosing super healthy, immune boosting foods! These foods will not only prevent weight gain but strengthen the very cells of your body that are being beaten up by your stress and poor food choices. Food is meant to nourish your body with nutrients, vitamins and minerals. When you are stressed, your body needs more of certain nutrients, vitamins and minerals and the food you eat will either provide this or it will not.
Stress busting foods rebuild and strengthen the body by providing nutrients such as B Vitamins, Omega 3 Fatty Acids and Magnesium. For example, B Vitamins can be found in dark leafy greens, eggs and whole grains. Omega 3 Fatty Acid rich foods include fish, flaxseeds and walnuts. Magnesium can be found in foods such as dark green leafy vegetables, cashews/almonds and legumes. These essentials are not found in the fast processed foods most of us choose to eat when looking for a quick meal to then get back to work with.
Furthermore, fortifying your already healthy diet with supplements to provide the above nutrients and vitamins should also be considered. Note that vitamin supplements in itself will not solve your nutrition deficiencies and should not be used to replace a bad diet. Supplements are just that - supplements - they are made to supplement what you are already doing well.
Improve recovery and move better with food. Exercise training is a stress on the body that breaks down muscle fibers and depletes energy reserves. Great training coaches and athletes know their workouts are not over until after their post-workout meal. After a workout, the average person does not consider their recovery meal and often neglects it entirely or can be seen at the coffee shop with a cappuccino and croissant. Working out serves a purpose beyond the 30-60 minutes of the workout so if you invest your time, money and hard effort into a workout why would you not serve the greater purpose by replenishing your body with a healthy post-workout recovery meal?
Neglecting to eat properly after and between workouts will not allow you to perform your best or get the most out of your future workouts. One of the main goals of working out is to put on muscle mass. Muscles that were exhausted from working out need the right amount of protein and carbohydrates in order for protein synthesis and muscle recovery to occur. Without these nutrients you risk losing muscle and increasing your body fat percentage - exactly what you are trying to avoid! A poor diet in between workouts will also zap your energy levels, affecting both for your daily activities and your next workout. When you recover from a workout with the right foods, your muscles and joints feel better, remain sore for less time and able you to move at their best during the day and at your next workout.
Food should also be used to help you recover from other stresses in your life outside of workouts. For example, when your immune system is weak with a physical illness, after experiencing even emotional stress or after a physical injury food can work in amazing ways that will help you to recover faster! All of these stressors require proper nutrition in order to aid recovery and get you back to feeling like yourself again. Lastly, sleep can also be improved with sound food choices. When you eat a diet high in vitamins and minerals, all the living cells in your body work better, the way they were designed to thereby allowing you to rest and sleep better at the end of your day.
As you can see, changing your nutritional habits is very important to reach your health and fitness goals but it can be one of the most challenging things to change because it takes more than just showing up to the workout or going to bed on time. Even when you know what you should be eating, doing so is much easier said than done. As humans, the food we eat is determined by our emotions, social interactions, media and financial status. To change your nutrition 180 degrees requires addressing all of these areas and doing this is very difficult as it sometimes will require a complete lifestyle overhaul. The good news is that it is possible and can be done over time. Just as it took years to become unhealthy or put on 25lbs, it can take years for massive lifestyle changes to occur. One step leads to the next…
That is why starting an exercise program is sometimes the best first step. Working out an extra three hours a week starts the healthy lifestyle change process and will lead to other positive changes in nutrition over time. Just don’t expect many performance and body fat reduction improvements from your exercise program if you are unaware of how to eat well or have been adapted to many years of a fast/processed food lifestyle. Furthermore, no matter how hard or how much you workout you can never out-train a bad diet.
Great lifestyle training coaches support people by educating, motivating and challenging people to make small progressive changes over time. By focusing on one positive nutritional change at a time, you can master it and then be ready for the next change. Some people attempt to make many changes all at once (all or nothing mentality) and sometimes succeed, however failure is more often the case for these people because they were not able to properly adapt the rest of their life and mindset with the changes all at once. If you are far in the deep end do not worry, it can be easy with one focal point at a time. For example, it could start by changing breakfast first. Then it could be packing your own healthy lunch, then it could be veggies at every meal then it could be changing to organic. Slowly but surely, you will adapt to a new eating plan that will make you healthier, less stressed, stronger, recover faster, move and perform better and get the results you deserve from your exercise program.
Since joining Nova, Nicole has put in real effort and brought a lot of positive energy to our community. At 55, stepping into weightlifting to keep up with her kids was a brand-new challenge, and she’s tackled it head-on.
Tanya’s journey is a wonderful reminder that fitness isn’t about chasing quick results, it's about building a life you genuinely enjoy.
Think your peak fitness years are behind you once you hit your 50s? Think again.
Meet Kris, a Nova member who recently compared his current fitness stats
A consistent member for years, Rosalind shows up twice a week and makes her health a priority next to work and family.
Matt proves that when you add commitment to a structured plan, success is inevitable.
Joy joined Nova with the goal to rebuild strength and push herself physically again. Over the past few months, she has proved her commitment to this goal despite a very demanding schedule.
See how Joe transformed his body, mindset and consistency to take his results the next level!
In this interview, Beth shares how she stayed motivated, how her mindset and nutrition changes contributed to her results, and how she plans to keep the momentum going into 2026.
Over the past year Dino has trained consistently, built mobility and strength across every major lift, and hit daily activity goals like 7-8k steps - even while navigating the difficult loss of his wife this past year.
