Ultimate Day Step 5: Set Your Nutrition
“Quality food is critical to achieve optimal brain function. To perform at your absolute best mentally – and to be uber healthy so that you can go after your passion and purpose – you need to eat as well as you can.”
Because food has a tremendous impact on your brain and how it functions, it also has an impact on how you live your days and thus your life. Crafting the ultimate day means ensuring you have the right fuel for the mental, emotional, and physical work required to meet your goals and achieve your larger vision.
So on the list of items required for your ultimate day is nutrient-dense food. Your body needs it, but so does your brain. Here’s a primer on why.
We have about 80-100 billion neurons in our brains. Each neuron has about 2,000 connections with other neurons, which creates trillions of links (called synapses) between brain cells. These connections are what enable us to think, learn, create, solve problems and build memories.
Those synapses is where the action in your brain takes place. When the neurons of a particular part of the brain are activated, a given synapse can fire up to 200 times per second! That’s a whole lot of energy getting consumed.
With all that activity, quality food is critical to achieve optimal brain function. To perform at your absolute best mentally – and to be uber healthy so that you can go after your passion and purpose – you need to eat as well as you can.
Here are some basic tips to follow.
1. Choose slow-digesting complex carbohydrates to provide a steady source of energy. Avoid refined and highly-processed carbs like white flour, white bread, white rice, pastries, sodas, pasta, sweets, breakfast cereals, fruit juice and anything with added sugar. Instead, take in carbohydrates in more whole or natural forms: whole oats, brown rice, beans, legumes, whole fruits and vegetables.
2. Eat high-quality fats. Fats are used to build the structures in your nerves like cell membranes and the myelin sheath that protects the nerve and speeds communication between neurons. Fat is not the enemy, though it can come in an unhealthy form, like trans fats. Focus on less processed fats like butter, olive oil, avocado oil, cheese and other dairy, nuts, seeds, fatty fish and whole avocados.
3. You need healthy proteins to provide the amino acids that are the precursors for the neurotransmitters used to communicate between nerve cells. For protein, just stick close to natural, whole forms: meats, fish, eggs, beans, lentils, and so on.
4. You need vitamins and minerals from fruits and vegetables for the intracellular processes that enable the nerves to function and even prolong the survival of individual nerve fibres. Try and mix up which fruits and vegetables you’re eating as much as possible to give you a variety of vitamins and minerals and for optimal health.
5. Hydrate well. Every single cell in your body relies on water. Water helps transport the carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that your cells need to make energy. Clear liquids without any sugar or other additives, such as herbal tea, can count towards your water consumption if you like.
Today’s Exercise: Set your Nutrition
Fill in Step 5: Set Your Nutrition on pages 13-19 in the Ultimate Day Workbook to help you make a fuel plan for each day and week. You may need to do some pantry inspection and planning to improve your nutrition. But it’s worth it. Basically, anything that matters in life takes some thought and planning, including food. And you won’t achieve your ultimate day – and therefore your ultimate life – with poor nutrition.
Today’s Bonus Podcast
Check out this podcast Here with coach, consultant, speaker, and author Alan Stein where he and Greg discuss coaching and how to be a world-class performer.
The information and advice provided in this program is intended to assist you with improving your performance, as well as your general health. It is not intended and should not be used in place of advice from your own physician or for treatment or diagnosis of any specific health issue. By participating in this program you acknowledge that undertaking any new health, diet and/or exercise regime involves certain inherent risks, that you assume such risks, and that you release Wells Performance Inc. from any responsibility or claim relating to such participation.