So you go to the gym sev­en days a week and yet you have trou­ble main­tain­ing your de­sired weight. What am I do­ing wrong you ask. Sounds fa­mil­iar?

I per­son­al­ly know sev­er­al peo­ple who are cur­rent­ly in this predica­ment but let me put in my dis­claimer, how­ev­er, these peo­ple are not un­der my su­per­vi­sion.

Some folks work out for hours which cause the body to re­lease free rad­i­cals. This can lead to dam­ag­ing of cells which, in turn, can lead to a build up of in­flam­ma­tion in the body. Based on a lot of re­search I have done it is al­most im­pos­si­ble to lose any weight when a body has ex­cess in­flam­ma­tion. Find­ing your bal­ance is cru­cial and what I mean by this is sim­ply un­der­stand­ing your in­take of nu­tri­tion ver­sus your ex­er­cise rou­tine. Ask your­self if you are feed­ing your body with the right amount of “good” foods that would equate the type of work­out that you are cur­rent­ly en­gaged in.

As you move away from these long ar­du­ous work­out rou­tines, it would be ad­vis­able to use your time plan­ning and prepar­ing your meals and snacks at home in­stead of buy­ing all those processed of­fer­ings avail­able out there.

Now you might ask why this is im­por­tant right, well here is why. You might spend hours in the gym try­ing to burn off the “junk” you ate whether con­scious­ly or un­con­scious­ly be­cause you left the prepa­ra­tion of what you con­sumed in the hands of oth­ers there­by leav­ing you ig­no­rant of the true nu­tri­tion­al con­tent or lack there­of of your food in­take.

Now it would prob­a­bly make a whole lot more sense for you to con­trol your de­sired weight via en­sur­ing healthy eat­ing by prepar­ing your own meals.

Too many peo­ple seem to spend more time in the gym than they do in their own kitchens and, in my hum­ble opin­ion, this is a colos­sal er­ror. Good sound nu­tri­tion which in­cludes prop­er sup­ple­ments trumps ex­er­cise all day long.

Let’s be re­al, al­most every­one is ac­tu­al­ly un­der­nour­ished. Now this may sound al­most in­sane right? Well it is ac­tu­al­ly true be­cause hard­ly any­one takes all the es­sen­tial min­er­als, vi­t­a­mins, amino acids and fat­ty acids our bod­ies need (there are about 90 of them by the way) to func­tion at the op­ti­mal God giv­en ca­pa­bil­i­ties, yet for some rea­son we are of the be­lief that our bod­ies can live up to the ex­pec­ta­tions and de­mands we put them through day af­ter day. It is ac­tu­al­ly pure mad­ness.

You can be work­ing out, torch­ing calo­ries, left, right and cen­tre but if you con­tin­ue to con­sume ex­ces­sive fried foods and processed car­bo­hy­drates, your abil­i­ty to ac­cess and burn stored body fats would be se­ri­ous­ly com­pro­mised.

There­fore if you are of the view that you can con­sume “junk” that caus­es in­flam­ma­tion in the body think­ing that you can just burn it all off at the gym, you would have to re­think that po­si­tion be­cause it just won’t work. I can­not im­press up­on you enough just how im­por­tant your di­et is when it comes to health and weight loss. So pay at­ten­tion to this even more than your gym fre­quen­cy.

Please note that all ex­er­cise can cause an in­flam­ma­to­ry re­sponse and slow down your me­tab­o­lism if done in ex­cess which means lit­tle or no weight loss. It would be more prac­ti­cal for you to work out hard­er or more in­tense (not longer), not more fre­quent­ly, get ad­e­quate rest to fa­cil­i­tate hard­er work­outs al­beit short­er ones. This is con­ducive to your me­tab­o­lism and can in­hib­it the pro­duc­tion of in­flam­ma­tion.

Stay alert and keep read­ing the Health Plus Mag­a­zine in the T&T Guardian for more health in­for­ma­tion.