Quality First PART 1 OF 3:
BY CHRISTY BARONI • PHOTO BY ROB KAUFMAN
Welcome to 2015! I hope you have had a great start to this new year. What’s on your goal list for the year? Have you thought about what you can accomplish in the course of just 12 short months? I thought long and hard about what I wanted to accomplish and you, my friend, kept coming to mind. If you caught the article in the Winter edition you read all about the pieces to the fat loss puzzle. But perhaps it left you wondering how to apply them to your daily life. You are in luck! This is the first in a three part series on taking each piece of the puzzle and breaking down the nuts and bolts. If getting healthy, losing fat, and building a body you are proud of is on your goal list for 2015 you came to the right place. Quick recap: fat loss requires that both your workouts and your nutrition be dialed in and aligned to your goals. The three areas you can control about your nutrition are quality, quantity, and timing. We are going to drill down to what quality means and how you can 48
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ensure that the quality of your food is supporting your goals. When you walk around the grocery store, you might be overwhelmed with how to make healthy choices. Here’s a tip: the “real” food is primarily located on the perimeter of the store. Think vegetables and fruits, lean meats and dairy, nuts and seeds. If you can make a habit to fill 80% of your cart with food from the perimeter you are well on your way to making healthy choices. Maybe you’ve heard the buzzword ‘superfood’. So what is a superfood and how do you find it? Well, I hate to bust the bubble on this one, but ‘superfood’ is a term that is popular now because so much of what we can buy at the grocery store is not really food. There are products that looks and act like food, they probably taste amazing, but what you can buy in a box or a bag isn’t really what your body needs to thrive. So the term ‘superfood’ emerged to highlight what is actually just real food. Blueberries and avocados top popular lists of
superfoods, and they are so good for you! But the only thing that makes them super is that they are real food. The last step to ensuring that you are choosing the highest quality food is to take your cues from mother nature. Take a trip out to any of the local farmers markets and notice what is in season. Buying locally for seasonal foods is a great way to get the most nutritional bang for your bite. You are getting as close to the source as possible, which is always a good idea. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series which focuses on Quantity. That’s right, we’ll be talking calories! Christy Baroni is the Nutrition Specialist at Conviction Training Facility, home of the original CrossFit Hilton Head. She is an island resident, a military spouse, a mother of 2, and a competitive athlete. To get more recipes and healthy living ideas, visit ConvictionTraining.com/Wellness Blog, or contact her directly at Christy@ConvictionTraining.com.