Nutrition Manifesto

Wow. This Nutrition Manifesto might be one of the most important articles I ever write for you.

Time for some tough love. It’s tough because it’s true, but it’s still love because I care so much about helping you overcome the obstacles in the way.

First, a damaging admission...I like chocolate. I also like eating snack food for meals (like almonds and cashews…mixed with chocolate).

While, technically, these food choices are still healthy (the nuts are packed with fiber, healthy fats, and a decent amount of protein), I rely on these foods too much. Those and protein bars. Time for me to man-up and get serious about my nutrition – just like you are.

So how do you eat better?

What’s the #1 change you could make to your nutrition to get better results?

The answer is so plain and simple, but not anything we want to hear. Why? Because we want a magical answer that will allow us to eat whatever we want and still get fitness cover model results. But it doesn’t work that way.

So here’s the deal. The #1 secret to eating better is…

By keeping things out of the house.

I know that’s not the answer you want, but it is the answer that will change your life. We need to pull together, to stay strong, to lean on each other for social support, and to make the right decisions at the store to make all other decisions much easier.

But I know, we’re human. (At least I am!) And we all too often let the junk start to creep back into our lives. (Although I blame my dog. I don’t know how it’s his fault, but it is! He always looks guilty of something.)

My mistakes are clear. I’ll go a month on a perfect diet, and then I’ll end up unnecessarily ordering boxes of Quest protein bars. While these bars are “okay” (gluten-free protein bars, and better than 99% of other protein bars), they simply aren’t REAL food. And that’s what I – and we – should eat.
So I’ve resolved to stop that.

I’m also going to cut back on my other vices – macadamia nuts and chocolate covered almonds. I don’t need to buy huge bags of macadamias – that only leads to five handfuls over the course of the day. And I don’t need to treat myself to chocolate covered almonds more than once a month.

I’m going to follow my own advice. And if I can do it, so can you.

Whatever your nutritional vice, let’s make a pact to make April our best month of Real Food Nutrition in years.
Shall we?

Let me know if you’re in by posting an “I’m in for Real Food April” on my Facebook page here: www.TurbulenceTrainingFanpage.com But it’s one thing to be better at the grocery store…but what in REAL LIFE?

Well, this weekend I’ve been down at Joel Marion’s in Tampa, Florida, to celebrate his birthday and the Easter weekend. Dinner each night has been fantastic. His Father-In-Law Frank is a great cook, and has been making us meals like steak, salad, broccoli and sweet potatoes.

Unfortunately, Joel has been researching dark chocolate…and has over a dozen different bars sitting in the kitchen. Plus, there was Easter chocolate sitting around for Saturday’s party and kid’s Easter Egg hunt…

Yes, I had some. But not a lot, because I knew I would be reporting back to you.

That’s the power of Accountability. It is one of the Four Pillars of Transformation Success, along with Social Support, Incentives, and a Deadline.

That is the second secret to eating better.

If you knew that you had to honestly report your daily diet to the rest of the world, would you eat that candy bar? That fried chicken? That extra piece of pizza? The extra value meal from McDonald’s? The pint of Haagen-Dazs?

97 times out of 100, the answer should be NO WAY.

That’s the power of Accountability. Remember that with every nutrition decision – and heck, important life decision – that you make.

Would you do ___ if the world was watching?  Use those two secrets to eat better.
But wait, there’s more…

Let’s say that even then, despite knowing you have to be accountable to the world that you are still struggling to stop overeating or simply eating some junk food.

Here are three more secrets to eating better:

1) Have a trigger to end any overeating.

This could be as simple as brushing your teeth.

Maybe it means getting up from the table to go for a walk (this is really great to help reduce your blood sugar and the amount of fat in your bloodstream after a big meal).

Or perhaps instead of endless snacking and picking at treats in your house, you could eat an apple (better to have a bloated belly from a big apple than one from a giant bowl of ice cream).

These are all great options to help you overcome the night eating monster. Use these to stay strong, even if you zapped all of your willpower at work during the day.

2) Have a checklist of good foods you must eat before any junk food.

My daily nutrition checklist includes an apple, 1oz raw almonds, 1 cup broccoli, 1 cup Green tea at each meal, 2 cups spinach in a blender drink, 2 servings Athletic Greens, plus a minimum 12 hour space between dinner and first meal the next day.

With a checklist like this, it eliminates the number of bad choices you can make. In most cases, you’ll be too full from good food to eat much junk.

If you make this checklist a habit, it will make so many of your choices ‘automatic’, and it will be easier to avoid dietary disaster.

3) Drink Green Tea at each meal (including natural decaffeinated versions)

Research – and experience – suggests people stay full longer when they do have a cup of Green Tea with their meals. That’s a pretty darn simple way to make a massive improvement in your diet. There are so many health benefits to Green Tea already, and this just moves it to the top of your nutrition checklist.

These are all perfectly practical tips for eating better.

They really could change your life. They can pull you out of a rut and get you back on track. They could help you go from lean to ripped. They could help you reverse diabetes.

That’s the power of proper nutrition. Let me know if this helped you because it’s really, really important to me that the information we share here at Turbulence Training is reaching our readers.

We have tens of thousands of people that open and read my emails, however it must be the shy-est group of people in the world, because we don’t hear from you enough.

But when I do hear from you, it gives me more ideas on what to write about…like today’s great tips.

Drop me a note on FB here – www.TurbulenceTrainingFanpage.com

And the more useful information I can give you, the more lives we change…and selfishly, the closer I get to my mission of helping 10 MILLION men and women – just like you – change their lives for the better. Looking forward to your feedback.

Sorry I can’t give you a magic pill…or secret ingredient to fix all of your nutrition.

Instead, just a steady diet of tough love and truth.

But those always work so much better, don’t you think?

Let me know how it goes,

Craig Ballantyne

PS – I’ll be right here…

…working on my own nutrition alongside you.

Keep me up to date on your progress at:

www.TurbulenceTrainingFanpage.com

We can do this!

PPS – I’m overwhelmed…

I posted this on the ETR FB page and wanted to share with you…turns out I have a lot to say when I don’t know what to say…LOL!

***
I am overwhelmed with gratitude. Twice this week people contacted the ETR support team to say that our articles and contest contributed (albeit in a minor way) to their decision to get out of a bad situation and to not commit suicide.

I don’t even know what to say.

I never imagined that our content and contest would have such an impact.

I think the big lesson in this:

Live by Example.

Do great things. Show the world that there are indeed POSITIVE people out there…that you care…that SOMEONE cares…that there is hope…that if you persist and never give up on what is important to you, that you CAN make progress…that there will be better days…that after the darkness there comes a dawn.

If you do all of this, and open your heart and care for others and even support perfect strangers, your world will open up to enormous opportunity and gratitude.

You can’t change all that is wrong in this great big world, but YOU can have an impact, even if it is just a tiny, positive impact on a stranger that receives a smile from you on the street today.

There’s so much we can do for others, and in the end, what we do for others ends up benefiting us 10-fold.

So let’s do this.

Let’s make our little worlds a little more amazing today.

Who knows what impact you might have!

Imagine the possibilities, for they are enormous!

Have an awesome day. – Craig