Many people are frustrated with their situation and do not make any progress. What they have in common is – from my perspective – that they all share several misconceptions.

To progress in training as well as in life, the attitude is the most important factor. The attitude is the underlying stream of thought carrying your every effort – if the attitude is flawed, either the input (what and how you do it) or the output (the effects of your doing) or both will be below optimum as well. This four-part series of articles is dedicated to help you augment your attitude in all of the following areas. Concerning training, a constructive attitude consists of four pillars:

Nutrition

Training

Regeneration

Mind Set

Each of the four is equally important. Most people have at least once experienced the collapse of one of the pillars, endangering the stability of the remaining three. A solid foundation for athletic success always requires all four pillars intact.

This approach towards a healthy attitude is not aimed at being scientific – it merely represents the principles of a path I have chosen to walk down and recommend to follow to converge towards mental and physical health. The manifest itself is therefore constantly under construction – new revelations render the path different.

Part 1: Nutrition

Keep your nutritional efforts as simple as possible. Nutrition should – above all – be something you truly enjoy, be uncomplicated and not be a burden. It should nourish and energize you.
Eat as much living food as you can – fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds. Use dairy, if you can tolerate it. Meat and (some) grains have their place, if you decide on using them. Answer some key questions for yourself:

Q: Do I like eating breakfast?
A: If you feel good after eating breakfast, then do so. Choose foods that are of great taste and do you good. Chew your food thoroughly and stop at the point of satiety. If you like eating breakfast but do not find the time to do so, either rise earlier or skip it. Never eat in a hurry – it equals treating someone else in a hurry and without proper care and love – in this case you treat yourself without the love and care you deserve. Consuming food should always be a conscious act – an act of showing love to your body. Take your time to eat – your time is yours, anyway!

If you are amongst the people who do not like to eat something early in the morning, then consciously skip eating breakfast. There is nothing wrong in doing so. If you are in between those two extremes and like to eat something but not too much, one or two pieces of fruit, supplemented with a good cup of tea or water will be enough to get you going.

Regardless of your opinion, keep aware of the word breakfast’s etymology – it means breaking the fast of the night. Breaking the fast consequently means breaking the cleansing, detoxifying and regeneration process of the fast. Raw fruit is more an accelerator of detoxification than an inhibitor, especially when low in sugar content, it is therefore the ideal means to prolong the detoxification even when breaking the fast.

Q: What about sensations of hunger?
A: Eat only when you feel hungry. Most people like to eat at midday, hence they should do so. Here, the rule of consciously consuming your food applies as well. Eat what you like only and do not be dependent on the choices other people propose (e.g. when eating out). Most often, it is easier to take care for your food yourself than to find out, whether or not the offered food does you good. You are not in control of what is offered.
Do not eat anything that gives you the feeling that it does not do you good. Eat to satiety on which does you good.

Make it a habit to drink a glass of water prior to consuming food. Often, the feeling of hunger is thirst in disguise and hence misleading you – consuming food cannot satisfy your thirst and eating when your body is not in need is unnecessary ballast. Do not, however, drink with and directly after eating – it diminishes your ability to digest the foods you consumed by diluting digestive secretions. Wait at least half an hour before consuming any more liquids.

If you are hungry in the evening, then feel free to consume whatever does you good – in whichever quantity that does you good. Most people that eat a good portion for lunch prefer light dishes like salads in the evening hours.

Some people do not have the sensation of hunger throughout midday and afternoon or have the impression that the foods offered during this time period do not do them good. Pack up yourself a lunchbox: Some raw vegetables and fruits, maybe a handful of nuts. Try adding a cup of yoghurt. Develop a feeling for satiety and eat until satisfied.

If your hunger appears mostly in the evening hours, you are closest to your human nature. After you have finished your duty as human being and call a close to the day, you are invited to enjoy an abundant meal. Prepare it with love and enjoy it. Chew every bite consciously and savor its taste and texture. Eat to satiety, but no further.

Q: Do I like to drink?
A: If you like to drink, you are doing something good to your body. Pick crystal clear still (mineral) water or (cold) unsweetened teas and cleanse your body with these fluids. As they are devoid of nutrients, they tax the body effortlessly – everything of nutritional value consequently requires metabolic work – digesting and resorbing the nutrients.

Make sure to drink enough. If you drink only when feeling thirsty and have a dry feeling in your mouth, odds are that you have already missed the first appearance of thirst. Make 40 ml per kg body weight the lower bound for clear fluid consumption (water and unsweetened tea). Remember, that hot temperatures and intense physical drills increase the amount of water you sweat out.

Fruit juices are very sweet in taste and need plenty of water to become comfortable for sensible taste buds. Vegetable juices are less sweet and often bitter. Drinking vegetable juices feels more refreshing than (diluted) fruit juices and does not lead to a sharp rise in blood sugar.

Treat caffeinated beverages as tools. Caffeine manipulates your hormonal balance by increasing the secretion of adrenaline and thus manipulates natural regulatory systems. The consumption of more than the equivalent of two cups of coffee daily is regarded as a state of addiction. Caffeine is utilized best when used sparingly.

Carbonated sodas are devoid of nutrients but dense in calories. They are no viable fluid for human nutrition, not even in forms without caloric value. Artificial sweeteners trigger the secretion of insulin and thereby cause unnecessary hunger.

Alcoholic beverages share the attribute of all toxins: The dosage is of vital importance. Very small amounts of alcohol enhance the resorption of nutrients while higher dosages are entirely toxic to the body. Some alcoholic beverages (good wine and beer) are nutrient-rich and are beneficial if used wisely.

Q: What about sweets, fast food and other vices of modern nutrition?
A: Recalibrate your perception of these foods. Keep in mind the fact that they are heavily advertised in order to be sold. Imagine milk or grains being advertised in the same intensity as fast food is. Products of good quality sell well over long periods of time without advertising. Word of mouth is their driving force.

Experiment with fast food. Keep away from all kinds of fast food for a month of clean eating and retry them afterwards. Consciously experience the taste of these foods and update your opinion on these foods. Most people become sensible enough to be unable to bear the artificially enhanced taste intensity of these products.

The more conscious you experience the foods, the closer you get to their true nutritional nature. Continue to enjoy their taste if they do you good. Let yourself be wisely led by your senses.

Q: Is going out with friends even possible like this?
A: Grant yourself days out with friends where everything is allowed – but do keep conscious in acting. It is your time, your life, and it is your body. Let your senses be your guide, what to consume and how much of it. Eat conscious and enjoy the taste, if you do. Choose dishes that do you good – either physical or mental or both.

Do not coerce yourself to do something. Give yourself all the freedom of choice you can.

Q: What exactly should I eat then?
A: Try out everything and experience the taste and the feeling that the food arouses in your body. Try to combine every food choice at least once and experience the taste and feeling as well. There are combinations that do not do you good – find out, what they are.

These combinations are proved not to work out well:

Grains and fruits high in acid

Grains and sugar

Raw nuts and salt

It will be a substantial time investment to try out all products. Do not urge yourself to test foods and combinations pro forma. Take the chance whenever it appears. Do only combine natural foods, not the processed choices.

To pre-limit the range of foods that are worth testing both mono and in combination, stick to foods of these groups first:

Vegetables of all types

Fruits not too sweet for your taste

Nuts and seeds

Pseudo grains (oats, quinoa, and amaranth)

Legumes (soaked, cooked well)

(Raw) dairy

Meat and fish of the best available quality

Add different choices thereafter.

Be aware that you are unique. No one else reacts to food choices like you do. Therefore test everything for yourself instead of relying on generalizations. There is no guideline that can know better what is good for you than your own body does. Be willing to spend more money on best quality food – your body is the wrong place to start cutting costs.

Q: Can I trust the language of my body?
A: Whether or not you can trust the language of your body depends on your attitude towards nutrition prior to your decision to listen closely to your body. In the modern world, many food choices, if eaten regularly can alter the experience of taste and hunger and therefore influence the correctness of your internal compass. The body is keen on providing correct feedback, and like any other instrument it requires regular maintenance in order to work properly.

Cleanse your body from extrinsic alterations by doing a one-week water fast prior to changing your diet. Fasting on nothing but water and minimal amounts of lemon juice changes your perception of how food affects your overall well-being and resets the settings of your internal compass, again rendering it a suitable tool to judge the subjective quality of food choices.

Inform yourself thoroughly about the process of fasting and make use of the innate healing power of the body throughout this period. It is normal to experience sensations of hunger during the first two to four days. Hunger ceases thereafter, when the body becomes adapt to the circumstance that it is fed no food to digest. The body starts to live off its reserves in fat and protein entirely. Hormonal homeostasis is restored and stored toxins are released and excreted in this process.

Following the fast, have deep confidence in the language of your body. Your readjusted compass will now safely guide you.

Q: Do I want to lower my body fat percentage (drastically)?
A: Healthy, conscious living will normalize your body fat percentage. It will naturally lower itself to a point that is regarded healthy by your internal bodily regulatory mechanisms. Becoming obese is virtually impossible when deciding consciously. If you insist on cutting the percentage further, use methods that drive your body towards losing its fat storage. Cleanse it, challenge it and let it rest. Read through the next parts and focus.

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Nutrition has the purpose of nourishing the body. The body has the ability to express itself. Listen to your body closely and cleanse it so that it is able to communicate to you, what nourishes him and what deals him harm. The questions as to what and how much you should eat answer themselves thereby.

Growing your own vegetables is a truly worthwhile task to do. While creating your own garden is surely some effort, the harvest you will reap will make up for everything you have invested into it. While gardening itself has numerous advantages, I will stick to the advantages of homegrown vegetables in this posting as the question of what differentiates homegrown vegetables from those purchased from a grocery store (or a supermarket) is likely to arise often.

Naturality

Every vegetable and fruit you have once sown will grow naturally and therefore yield an all-natural harvest. This is as close as you can get to the natural state of every plant – a difference you will not only taste but also see – a vegetable from your garden looks different than one out of the piles at the supermarket. I will admit that they will not always look better but there are various attributes that make up for that.

Genetical modification of foods is also a topic of today’s world. With homegrown plant foods, you are on the safe side – if you do not plant genetically modified seeds, you won’t reap those either. And even if you did – there are reports of gardeners that plants tend to return to their natural state as generations of homegrown plants go by.

Security

You get what you see. A plant from your garden is always what you have sown and how you have grown it – nothing more and nothing less. Everything you buy is beyond your control – you cannot possibly say – with 100% certainty – that a plant from the supermarket pile has this or that quality or has undergone certain (chemical) treatment. It simply is not possible. So you have to rely on the goodwill on manufacturers, that will most probably not focus on providing the best crop but rather on maximizing their profits, although this matter cannot be generalized. If you ever find a chance to purchase vegetables and fruits that are of great quality, stick to that reseller – he most probably is amonst the few that focus on product quality. Homegrown foods always underlie your own quality guidelines – you determine how good or bad your plant food will be by taking measures – or letting them be (just as watering the plants, applying chemicals, etc…)

Taste

Homegrown vegetables and fruits have a taste incomparable with those purchased at virtually any place. While purchased vegetables and fruits tend to look great and are big (in comparison), the taste oftenly is shallow and a far cry of what would be possible with proper care. Homegrown vegetables and fruits normally taste great – they sucked up the minerals from the soil below and transformed them (along with sunlight and water) into the marvellous plant they are. The better taste can be traced back to the aforementioned naturality of homegrown foods – for commerical use, foods have to have the maximum size and weight, not the maximum taste – hence the focus of the food industry.

Freshness

Probably the most striking argument pro homegrown foods is the sheer freshness of the foods. Vegetables and fruits tend to lose vitamins and minerals very quickly after harvesting, as they are cut off their own nutrition sources – they increasingly lack the power to sustain homeostasis, which is necessary to keep their mineral and vitamin circulation intact. While the plant is still alive, it gradually loses its integrity – and becomes foul, because of chronic undernourishment of the foul areas – damage cannot be undone anymore. Compare the plant with a human body – we need to be perfectly alive in order to repair damage done to tissue. Tissue cut off the stream of nutrients will become dysfunctional and starts to die. Taking this into consideration, numerous plants need to be eaten as fresh as possible in order to transfer their maximum nutritional value.

Those plants, which need to become ripe before consumption (like bananas or avocados, harvested far from being ripe and riping by lying around), also show differencies in quality between homegrown and purchased. Purchased plants are much more likely to become foul in the process (instead of ripe), as they are weak. Most purchased plant foods need to be treated with chemicals to assure survival – they would not stand a chance in real nature. This is why homegrown foods are a lot sturdier. You can test this out by growing a specific plant and purchase the same plant. Put it on a table and leave it be for a few days. The purchased plant will most probably become foul at a time when the homegrown one still looks perfectly fine.

This point of criticism is only partially true for organically grown vegetables and fruits. Organic foods tend to be a lot more sturdy, as they have to grow without the support of chemicals.

Price

A major block to eating healthy is the horrendous price for vegetables and fruits in good quality. The customer nowadays normally has two options

• go with the mainstream plant foods, devoid of nutritional value and treated with chemicals, priced average
• invest substantially more money and go for better quality

Vegetables and fruits are amongst the most expensive foods hands down. Creating a meal using mostly starchy foods like potatoes or flour is a lot cheaper than serving a staple of colourful vegetables, albeit them being a lot healthier. Therefore, money is a hindrance to enhance the nutritional value of the average diet.

Growing your own vegetables and fruits promises to be a solution to this problem – at least partial. Seeds are a very cheap good and good soil is also not too expensive. Unless you are living in the center of metropolian area, there might also be some green space you can cheaply rent and use for growing your own food. Even in cities there are little gardening spaces which you can rent and use – the rent will pay off by the amount of vegetables you will be able to grow. Even if you do not manage to cover your complete palette of need, you will have saved yourself a lot of money, which you can in turn invest in better quality for the rest of the plants you have to purchase.

In winter months, glass houses are a tremendous solution – there are countless plants which will grow in every season of the year.

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In conclusion, homegrown vegetables and fruits beat their colleagues from the supermarket hands down. Even if they cost you an investment in time (and money), even if you may not manage to save even a penny while growing at home, even if you – at the end – even pay more than before – it will all be worth the quality foods you reap.

I live in a very rural area, which gives me the tremendous opportunity to use a lot of space for gardening and growing my own plants but growing plants is possible virtually anywhere. Go purchase a good book about gardening and give it a go – or even better ask contemporaries, friends and familiy members if they are – by chance – passionate gardeners. Odds are, that you will find someone.

Eat healthy, eat fresh, eat your own.

Warm regards,

Simon