Nutrition: Overview

Last Updated on Monday, 03 January 2011 01:11

Nutrition is the single most significant factor in the pursuit of Physical Fitness/Wellbeing. This one single fact cannot be overemphasised.

Inadequate or poor nutrition, however arrived at, will always have the single most detrimental impact in trying to live a healthy active life.

The saying that “you are what you eat” is literally, absolutely, 100% true.  Again, this cannot be overemphasised.


Think about it, from the moment you are born – up to which time, you were in effect what your mother ate! - every cell in you body that makes you what you are is produced directly from the metabolism of what you are fed or consume of your own volition. It's that simple.

What you consume simply put, is utlised in one of two ways. It is metabolised to produce energy and provide the building blocks of all the things (cells) you are made of, skin, hair, blood, bones and the myriad other things that make you tick such as hormones, enzymes, vitamins etc.

The main impact of nutrition within the context of health and fitness at the forefront of peoples minds is that of weight. So, with this in mind lets get technical for just a brief moment.

Ok now for a bit of science:

“Food energy is the amount of energy obtained from food that is available through cellular respiration.

Like other forms of energy, food energy is expressed in calories or joules”

I'm not going to go into the details of it all. There are many sources where the specifics of calories can be researched so I'll leave that to you – if interested. The basic thing is that your body will try to convert as much of what you consume into energy – this includes liquids! Depending on your level of activity, you will require a minimum amount of energy to just stay alive. If your caloric intake exceeds your bodies requirements, some of that excess will be stored as fat. Generally speaking, our bodies are not wasteful and will not simply expel the excess. Fuel is precious and our bodies have no idea when the next meal will come – if at all. Converting excess energy into fat and storing it for latter use is how your bodies mitigate against lean times. It is a basic survival mechanism.

I have a little analogy I use to explain this which involves something most of us can familiarise with.

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