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With each new year comes an influx of clients, friends, and colleagues with lofty health and nutrition goals. Which is a good thing. But it’s no surprise that by the time the new year confetti settles, those resolutions may have fallen by the wayside. Here are some expert tips to help your friends, clients, and self make 2020 the year of keeping nutrition goals within sight and success within reach.
Finally! Gone are the days where fats were a 4-letter word. Research has dispelled the myth that a diet rich in energy-dense butter, marbled meats, and nuts can make you, well, fat. Informed eaters are now seeking out formerly forbidden coconut oil, fatty fish, and ALL the avocados.
Yes, it’s possible to bulk up on tofu. A joint research study by Canadian and Brazilian scientists, presented at the 2019 American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting, discovered no difference with respect to lean body mass and muscle strength gains between 19 vegan and 19 omnivorous young men enrolled in a 12-week, twice-weekly program of resistance training. During the intervention, each participant consumed 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, either solely from plants or from a mix of plants and animals.
Health organizations have given advice on nutritious eating for decades, and yet a diet “report card” published in JAMA shows that American adults are still consuming too many nutritionally poor carbohydrates and more saturated fat than is recommended. The study, conducted by researchers from Tufts and Harvard universities, examined data on food choices recorded between 1999 and 2016 by almost 44,000 participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
True, some people did not win the genetic lottery with respect to gaining pounds, but that doesn’t mean they can’t tweak their diets to stave off weight creep. A study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition involving more than 14,000 adults over a 20-year period discovered that increasing one’s intake of fruits and vegetables can be protective against a genetic susceptibility to obesity.
Irritable bowel syndrom affects about 10%–15% of the population worldwide, and up to 70% of athletes go through some sort of gastrointestinal disturbance. What fitness professionals can do is educate ourselves about the condition and learn how a low-FODMAP diet can play a role in managing IBS symptoms.
A study in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition suggests that athletes can thrive on a variety of different diets.
Red meat gets all the flack, but in terms of cholesterol, research in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds no advantage to picking white meat like chicken over red meat like beef.
Based on data collected from 1,003 pregnant women between 2001 and 2014, a study in JAMA Network Open suggests that many expectant mothers in the U.S. don’t get enough of some nutrients that are vital for a healthy pregnancy.
People can get caught up in the details of paleo, ketogenic and gluten-free diets, but one of the most buzzworthy eating styles at the moment is also super simple. It’s the plant-based diet—one that places less emphasis on animal-based foods and more on dishes derived from the plant kingdom.
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IDEA Fitness Journal
Current Issue:
December 2019
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