How to Eat for All-Day Energy and Athletic Performance

What we put into our bodies will determine what we get out of them, so if physical performance is important to you — and for that matter, mental performance too — then you should be careful about what you chose to eat. Unfortunately there are numerous ways to get taken off track today, cheap fast food, those tasty snacks at the isles in supermarkets. Then there’s the fact that if you don’t make the effort to learn about what’s good and what’s bad, the information you find on labels or from “experts” is likely to confuse and mislead you.

Eating right can be a confusing endeavor, one with plenty of frustration and consumption of willpower. But there’s no reason to feel you need to go it alone. Plenty of other people have gotten fed up with this mine-laden nutritional landscape, and set about finding out what’s what. One such example comes from this article on Breaking Muscle, which will help us chose the right food for a full days worth of energy:

Nutrient Timing: By eating light throughout the first part of the day, your sympathetic nervous system stays active. This allows you to stay in fight-or-flight mode (or work-rapidly-on-your-spreadsheet mode). Even though this evolutionary mechanism was intended to help humans stay alert while hunting, you can harness the power of this hunger and apply it when you need to focus and be productive. In contrast, getting really full from a big meal switches on your parasympathetic nervous system, which is designed for rest and relaxation so your energy can aid in digestion. So, if you want to be productive during the day, leverage your evolution and stay hungry.

The way our bodies evolved in regards to food and energy is an interesting topic, and one that includes the unfortunate grip that sugar has over us. Check out the full post for all the details.