Don't Settle For a Quick Fix: Why Clean Eating and Working Out are the Best Answer

I wanted to share with you an essay I wrote four years ago in college. I was just embarking on my interest in fitness. I had fallen in love with it after meeting a friend at college in an English class who introduced me to the idea of kinesiology. She is one of the most pivotal people in my life, she honestly changed my course forever. I thank God for her!

I wrote this essay to show why clean eating and working out were the answer and that there were NO shortcuts. Little did I know a few years later I would be working every day to inspire people to follow in that path.

22 April 2013

Fitness Is Simple, Really!

The idea of being fit does not have a date or era to which we could pinpoint its beginning. It could have started with the Greek Olympics, Roman Gladiators, Chinese warriors, the Egyptian warriors or maybe the Vikings. One thing we can know for sure is man has tried everything under the sun to achieve that muscular physique. People have tried fasting, eating all meat, eating no meat, swimming across oceans, and drugs. In all honesty, the idea of fitness must have been around forever. The Greek Olympics seemed to portray the desire for the muscular physique extremely well, considering they were completely naked. Michelangelo’s David portrayed him in a muscular and attractive way. As time has past and the way in which we do things has completely changed, we have lost every natural healthy component in living. In ancient times, everyone ate natural food and everything they did included movement and exercise. In present times, we rarely eat healthy or exercise without trying. We acquired an attitude of I want to pay people to do things for me. With that attitude we will not be doing work and therefore will not be moving as much as we should. But which one of those aspects gives a person a muscular physique, Healthy food or exercise? The answer is a balance between both.

Many people are famous for achieving muscular physiques such as Savannah Rose Neveux. She is commonly known through her blog as Muffin-Topless and is praised for turning her life around. She claims to eat clean and exercise regularly. She blogs, tweets, and video blogs quite regularly and in following her she tells her readers about her amazing transformation.

One day, she woke up with a horrible hangover. She describes it as, “My skin was tingling from dehydration, my head throbbed, the light from my window seared my eyes, and the rolls of my beer gut squished together.” She realized in that moment that she could not let her life continue on in this manner. She got up and threw away junk food and alcohol. She joined a local gym. Then, she started researching bodybuilding, nutrition, supplementation and fitness topics. It took her many months of clean eating and weight training to bring about her amazing transformation and impressive weight loss. She worked long and hard to become fit. Then, the next year of college she stopped working out and eating clean. She then, gained back the weight, because of her lack of healthy living and her large amount of partying (Neveux).

During her senior year of college she “got real” (Neveux). She stopped drinking and began eating clean again and doing a bodybuilding workout plan (Neveux). She quickly saw changes in her physique and her parents were shocked when she returned home (Neveux). Shortly after that she had her first fitness shoot (Neveux). Now she is a popular blogger and an Instagram inspiration to many people.

Savannah Neveux’s experiences have changed many people’s lives. Everywhere we look, we can find proof that fitness is a balance between eating clean and exercising. Such as Weight Watchers, they recently changed their program to diet and exercise instead of dieting alone. It is called Weight Watchers 360. Yet, it is quite common to run into someone who only does one or the other and expects grand results. No big industries have conducted a poll on this topic of what people think, but a small website called Gamespot has. It proposed the question, “Diet vs Exercise, which is better and more satisfying.” Twenty-four percent said dieting is better and seventy-six said exercise is better (Gamespot). Very few of the comments said both. It is true that a very small amount of people were surveyed. Most people who answered this survey are people who seek them out, and who in turn live on the internet. With that in mind, if very few of them know a combination of diet and exercise is needed; what does the rest of the world think?

Ever since the fitness frenzy started, diets have been the number one answer. Popular diets include, but are not limited to: The Chew-Chew Diet, Tapeworms, Weight Gain Tablets, Smoking, The Master Cleanse, Relax-A-Cizor, and The Cookie Diet. The Chew-Chew Diet made the dieter chew every bite thirty-two times. Nancy Redd in her book Diet Drama describes this as “torture” (172). The tapeworm diet called the dieter to take the tapeworm as a pill and then expel it by the mouth (Redd 172). Any logical person knows that is crazy. The smoking diet came out in the 20s, which is no surprise. The roaring twenties were a time of heavy smoking, so why not tell consumers it will help them lose weight? Freedman and Barnouin give readers their two cents on smoking in their book Skinny Bitch.  They say, “You cannot keep eating the same…[unhealthy food] and expect to get skinny. Or smoke. So don’t even try some pathetic excuse like, ‘But if I quit smoking, I’ll gain weight.’ No one wants to hear it. Cigarettes are for losers… Not only do they screw up your whole body chemistry, but they also kill your taste buds” (11-12). Then, the cookie diet no logical person would believe that eating cookies all day would help anyone lose weight. But the diet is still very popular; someone needs to tell them the little secret that fitness is a balance between eating clean and exercise.

For example, Sandra Woodruff is a low-carb enthusiast and dietitian; she believes that a diet will fix everyone’s weight problems. She wrote the book Secrets of Good-Carb Living. In her book, she gives the origins of the Low-Carb Diet. She starts her theory by stating that 40,000 years ago no one ate carbohydrates (Woodruff 4). The Bible disproves the fact that the world is 40,000 years old and very early on in the Bible they start eating bread. In Genesis chapter fourteen, at the beginning of the Bible they mention bread for the first time. Then, she lists all the possible side effects if the dieter misunderstands the diet and does it the wrong way. She holds a very tight leash, which proves that it is easier to simply live a healthy lifestyle and not have to worry about carbohydrates. On the other hand, Tosca Reno, who used to participate in physique competitions, makes losing weight exciting in her book The Eat-Clean Diet Stripped. She builds her plan on how physique athletes stay in shape and healthy. She gives recipes, meals plans, and workout plans to help her readers. Everything about her book screams that a life change needs to take place.

Reno calls her diet a “live it” rather than an actual diet (33). Her plan includes vigorous workouts and clean eating. Clean eating may seem extremely bland, but in reality it is not. Reno provides recipes like: Fish tacos, Take me on Vacation Oatmeal, Skinny Soy Mocha, Salmon with Sweet ‘n’ Tangy Pineapple Chutney, Clean Chocolate Cupcakes, Strawberry Dreamboat Bars, and Kombucha Pina Colada (Mocktail) (210-297).  Reno’s lifestyle plan is fun and enjoyable.

Diets rather than a lifestyle change, focus on excluding or limiting a certain food groups. The low-carb diet does just that. This diet has been disproven by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, Marlene Wallach, Jessica Smith who quoted Rania Batayneh, and students at West Virginia University. Freedman and Barnouin point out that restaurants and soda companies offer options that cater to this diet (22). Restaurants only change their menu for something big therefore the low-carb diet must be popular. Oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon make up a carbohydrate and a carbohydrate is “vital” for giving our bodies energy (Freedman 22-23) Simple carbohydrates are the only semi-bad carbohydrates and they are only bad when consumed often. It is fine to eat fruit and bread. It is easy to see that the low-carb diet is “utter nonsense” (Freedman 22).

Marlene Wallach proves that carbohydrates are good. Carbohydrates are sugars which create energy. Simple carbohydrates are things like soda, candy and cake (Wallach 62). This group of carbohydrates can be bad. Complex carbohydrates include food like whole grains, broccoli, beans, and pasta are good (Wallach 62). Simple carbohydrates give the body quick energy where as complex carbohydrates give the body long lasting energy (Wallach 62). The only concept we should grasp about carbohydrates is when to use them. There is no need to ward them off.

Jessica Smith wrote an article in Shape magazine, in which she quoted nutritionist Rania Batayneh. In the article Batayneh says, "Eliminating carbohydrates not only reduces whole grains, B vitamins, and a good source of fiber, but it also reduces the body’s feel-good capacity (it is no wonder that most comfort foods are carbohydrate based)” (Batayneh qtd. in Smith). If someone cannot believe this, consider chocolate covered strawberries or pineapple dipped in Greek yogurt. How could we dream of removing carbohydrates when they make us happy? Another fact that is pointed out is that cutting a food group will make you crave it even more (Smith). Batayneh easily makes her readers rethink about the low-carb diet.

Lastly, the students at West Virginia University say that cutting any food is bad. They also say that this myth is based on only a small group in the family of carbohydrates (West Virginia University). The rest of the family of carbohydrates includes great fiber. All humans need fiber. There is no reason to give up a food group because one piece of it can be bad. The low-carb diet is fake and a complete myth. Go tell the good news! Everyone can eat carbohydrates again!
            On the other side of the argument of Feder and Woodruff, writers of low-carb diets, might say, “It is easier to cut something bad out of your diet rather than limiting it.” Yes, that might seem true at first, but as mentioned earlier cutting foods makes the human body crave them even more. Diet advocates might also argue that taking food away from the body is faster than burning it off with exercise. Cutting hundreds of calories rather than burning 200 seems easy. On the contrary, Reno says, “When you build lean muscle you increase your metabolic rate and your fat-burning speed” (196). In other words, exercise will increase fat burning. Everyone can agree that eating is more enjoyable than working out. So what if working out more meant eating more? Isn’t that kind of a win-win? Diets might work in special cases, but there are easier, more enjoyable ways to change your life.

Some days, it is hard to eat clean and workout. Some may say why not just be unhealthy it is easy? Tosca Reno puts it like this, “When you feed your body Clean, nutrient-rich food and create new cells from superior building materials, you will notice improvements in every area of your body” (23). Reno focuses on the eating side of living healthy in that quote. Hobbs shows us how important exercise is by saying, “Exercise is as important as brushing your teeth… We are all made to move.” (143).  Leila Fazel, a former ballet dancer, gives us all an encouraging tip, “Find something you enjoy doing, something that challenges you and keeps you growing and that you never get bored with” (Wallach 43). Even Feder, a low-carb fanatic, gives the top ten excuses why people won’t start a diet (40-41). He realizes that people do not want to live fit because it is hard, but a life change is a whole lot better than a short term diet.
            It comes down to two choices. Do you want to diet for a short time and look okay for a while and then get fatter than before? Or do you want to eat clean and exercise and experience life like never before? We can all agree college kids are less likely than anyone to eat healthy, but the students at University of New Mexico understand the idea of living fit. Christina J. Paez and Len Kravitz wrote an entire argument on exercise vs. diet, only to conclude it is a combination of both that is best. The truth is, there is no easy fix. Eating clean and exercising is hard. Yet, we hear amazing things about the people who seek a lifestyle change. Some finally get friends, some get modeling jobs, some get off horrible medications, some get relief from joint pain, and some even find that their eye color becomes more vibrant all because of a healthy lifestyle. Life is short. Do not settle for the quick fix like a diet. Achieve greatness and change your life by eating clean and exercising.

I am so thankful that Beachbody has given us such a great solution. Every program focuses on both good nutrition and working out. It is the perfect combination for results! If you would like to learn more about the monthly accountability groups I host, comment below with your email and I will reach out to you with more info!