At risk of titling this article in a misleading fashion, what you’re about to read is not necessarily for individuals who are looking to maximize building muscle on their bodies.
Rather, I wanted to write something about strength in general and how food can help.
Look everywhere around you, and if you had to judge a book by its cover (which is often foolish), you could jump to conclusions about how food is affecting a given body.
Some people eat too much.
Some people eat too little.
Some people look fit.
Some people look frail.
And for any of those examples, nutrition plays a crucial role.
We eat in times of happiness and sadness, when we’re bored and when we’re celebrating, we eat to fuel a marathon, and we eat to lose fat.
The last couple of months have reminded me of a bitter side to life which is what happens when people stop eating.
We see how people eat when they feel weak and when they feel sick. When food is neither comfort nor pleasure.
We see people near the end of their lives where their appetite has all but left them.
I spend so much of my professional life coaching people to eat for better health, how to eat to achieve their physique goals, and how to simply treat food as if it is an ally and not an enemy.
I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: look everywhere around you, in every aspect of your life.
We are not afforded the luxury of weakness.
And because we’re not afforded that luxury, the alternative, the most viable alternative, is to be strong.
But strength is not created from nothing.
It requires energy.
And the food we consume is energy.
Strength is mental.
Strength is physical.
Strength is emotional.
Young people strive to attain it and older people fight like hell to keep from losing it.
If I impress nothing else on you, I’d only wish that you read this article and ask yourself:
Am I nourishing my body in a way that supports my strength?
I ask you not to overanalyze it, I ask you not to focus solely on calories or macronutrients.
I want you to take the decades of understanding that you indisputably know about nutrition, because you have fed your body countless times:
Do my choices make me stronger so I can conquer all that life throws my way?
(Photo courtesy of Ben White)
