Your Molecular Foundation: Nutrition

By Ben Tyler, 925 Owner and Head Coach

Our bodies are amazing machines. We can process almost anything we ingest and turn it into something useful, or adapt to unexpected ingredients and continue to focus on what we need to function optimally. The fact that people can survive (albeit poorly) on doughnuts every morning, fast food cheeseburgers and fries for lunch, and ramen and hot dogs for dinner for months or even years on end is truly amazing when you think about it.

The human body can filter a multitude of toxins from our food, expel them, and still find a way to create what our bodies need to function. It can also, when fed with quality ingredients, function at an incredible level of performance and operate for 100+ years. There is a stark contrast between the quality of life of a well-fed human body and one fed processed and poor quality food. While it can survive, the statistical risk for disease and other illnesses vastly increases in a body fueled by poor nutrition.

While our genetics can play a large role in many areas of how our body functions and predispositions to certain positives and negatives, the fuel, what we consume or put into our bodies on a daily basis, has the largest effect on our health, wellness, and overall quality and length of our lives in almost every circumstance.

I’ve overheard quite a few people blame poor genetics for their health woes or credit superior genetics for their long lives. Sadly, I usually hear about genetics when people are discussing health issues. Over many years of working with people, I have found that when I push to find out what people are eating, there tends to be a far larger problem in the quality of their food intake than in their genetics. However tough that may be to hear, the truth is you have all the tools to eat well at your fingertips. All you need to change is your habits, at whatever pace is manageable for you.

At 925, we have been helping people with their Nutrition for nearly a decade. Now, we have a full-blown Nutrition Program and couldn’t be happier to see the results of focused Challenges (our way of helping people have a few weeks or months of focus to build some new baseline habits, or conquer the poor habits they fell into), and the positive results from those working 1-on-1 in our Nutrition Program to take a positive step forward in their food choices.

As we refined our vision, we realized that working out, especially CrossFit (covered in detail here), is incredibly effective for helping your body achieve optimal fitness and overall wellness.

However, the foundation for everything you do is massively changed when you fuel your body and all its molecular processes with the right fuel. Hormonal processes are optimized. The building blocks for muscle repair and growth are provided. Optimal brain function, disease prevention and immunity strength all rely on the proper fuel. Because of this, we have been heavily focusing on Nutrition, and offering as much information and encouragement as possible to our clients and those of you who follow our blogs and other content.

We know it is a tough journey, but we also know that you can change (or replace - read The Power Of Habit if you have a chance, phenomenal book!) habits one small step at a time.

We help people who are current clients at 925 as well as remote clients. We even have some who attend other gyms that we help with nutrition, or those whom we have guided to start only with nutrition before trying to add another habit, like working out, into the mix.

If you’re having a hard time making a change to your body composition or overall health, take a look at your nutrition. You’ll likely find some simple things you can improve. Like many areas of life, if your foundation is cracked (nutrition in this case), you’re going to have a very hard time building on top of it. The best part about nutrition, and every other area of your life, is that you aren’t stuck doing what is unhealthy. You have a choice. You can change!