Over the next few days you're going to see an emphasis on nutrition with respect to the content you receive. Why nutrition? Well because it has such a HUGE impact on the results you achieve. I mean we can put emphasis in our workouts. We can do more resistance-based workouts. And we can also put more efforts on our recovery by doing more stretching, foam rolling, immediate post workout shakes and get adequate sleep at night. But if you want the absolute best bang for your buck and return on investment than nutrition is the best place to start. With that in mind here are The Top 5 Reasons Nutrition Should be Your Emphasis for 2011 Health, Fitness & Performance Goals. Reason #1 - We may eat up to 20 times more than we train It's not uncommon these days for people to have their three squares a day, a post workout shake and a snack or two. This works out to 6 meals a day times 7 days and you have 42 meals a week. The average gym goer visits their gym less than 3 days per week. This is the average of people who have gym memberships! Many others get a lot less exercise than this. So if someone were eating 40 plus meals a week and training two times a week it's easy to see where there is huge opportunity to make substantial gains and improvement by modifying their nutritional plan. Reason #2 - We always consume Even if you're the most serious, dedicated athlete out there, there will still be times when you'll take a day of rest. But most of us aren't professional. Or that serious. Or that motivated. And there will be times when we are sick. Or injured. Or travelling. And therefore not able to train at all. So while the outputs may slow, or stop altogether for brief periods, the inputs do not. We still eat. There is therefore that much more reason to be aware of the quality and quantity of the foods we eat. Reason #3 - Calories go in a LOT faster than they go out If you own a caloric tracking device you know how hard it is to burn 400-500 calories. It doesn't matter if you do sprints at the track, lift weights or do intervals on the rowing machine this is a lot of energy to burn and it can be quite uncomfortable. Compare this to a Cold Stone PB&J milk shake which has, get ready for it...2100 calories! But don't despair...go run a marathon and you can burn this off in about 4 hours or so. Any takers? Didn't think so. So just to summarize...one is uncomfortable and burns a relatively small amount of calories in 60 minutes or longer. The other is a treat, tastes good, is bad for your health and can be consumed in 15-30 minutes. Reason #4 - Reducing sugar intake spikes fat burning Do you remember the article I sent you a while back on the relationship between blood sugar and fat burning? Basically as you decrease the amount of sugar in the blood your fat burning potential goes up. Way up! So while all different types of exercise are important for stimulating your metabolism, building lean body mass and burning fat, reducing your sugar intake will have the most impact. Here's the link to how this allowed someone just like you lose 22 lbs in 7 weeks with no diet or exercise intervention! http://okanaganpeakperformance.com/134/ Reason #5 - The research sides with nutrition When we look at the impact of exercise and nutrition on fat loss/weight gain studies, nutrition exerts a stronger influence. Consider the following. Researchers at Loyola University compared African women in the United States and rural Nigeria. The North American women weighed 184 lbs on average and the African counterparts 127 lbs. The North American relatives weighed 45% more! Initially they speculated the difference to be to activity levels. When they measured daily caloric output there was no significant difference. Nutrition accounted for a 45% difference in the mass of the two groups of women. So what does this all mean? It means that if you are serious about your health, fitness and performance than you should be making nutrition a priority in your plan. In the coming days I'll send you more tips, strategies and resources all related to nutrition. And if you like deals and saving $$$ then you'll want to watch your email closely in the next week or so for an incredible offer that pays for itself many times over. Plus you'll get incredible results. Now go look to see how you can incorporate these 5 rules into your daily plan to fast track your results for 2011. Chris okanganpeakperformance.com 'always moving forward'