The King And Queen Of Your Health And Body
“Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together, and you’ve got a kingdom.”―Jack LaLanne.
While nutrition comes first, exercise should not be discounted. You must invest in both.
I’m going to challenge the legendary LaLanne on this one. By asserting that he is wrong, he still ends up being right.
::Still… what a badass::
He is right about exercise and nutrition being the rulers of the kingdom that is your body, but he is wrong about their order.
You see, nutrition is king, and exercise is queen.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “You can’t out-exercise a crappy diet”?
It’s true.
There are many ways I could explain this to you. Here’s one: When food enters your body, it causes a hormonal response like any doctor-prescribed drug. This happens as soon as the food enters your bloodstream.
So, when food enters your body, it causes an effect inside you instantly. The food you eat is healing your body, or it is hurting your body. This is just human biology 101.
Based on this understanding, what could going to the gym a few hours later possibly do to help correct this average effect that has already come and gone?
This is what it does: nothing.
The damage, or healing, that happened as you ate the food has already been done.
Exercise is exercise, and nutrition is nutrition. People equate weight and body fat percentage to health and nutrition. But that is flawed thinking.
Here’s why: Skinny and fit people get cancer, heart disease, and other degenerative diseases the same way obese people do.
If every lean, ripped, fit, or skinny person in the world was perfectly healthy and free of sickness, you could make a correlation between weight, body fat %, and health. But such is not the case.
And this is why food always comes first.
Mark Sisson (and plenty of other intelligent authors and nutrition gurus) say that nutrition makes up as much as 80% (or more) of your long-term health and body composition (that’s how your body looks).
Consider that the next time you think you can “out-exercise” your crappy diet.
You can’t, so don’t try.
Plus, it’s dumb because you sabotage all the hard work you put in when you exercise.
Keep exercising, and do more when you can (especially more walking). Just start adding more Real Food to the mix.
Then… watch as your results skyrocket.
Then… send me to thank you emails.
Founder/CEO, Wild Foods
