Overview:

It just makes sense to eat healthily. Think about it. How does your body create nutrients and energy? It uses whatever you put into your body. So just put good stuff in your body. Here's a guide that can help you figure out what you should be putting into your body, and to help you better understand how most people's bodies work.

General Tips:

• Don't eat as much on days when you do not have some type of physical activity.
• Concentrate carbohydrates (rice, pasta, bread) around physical exercise. Carbs are best either before or after a workout.
• Don't overeat before doing work, you might get sleepy if you eat too much.
• Try not to eat 2 hours before sleeping.

Watch this Kurzgesagt video on how diet affects your brain (and gut flora): **https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzPD009qTN4**

Here's what you need to know about diet and body composition changes:

• Gaining and losing weight comes down to your diet. Fundamentally, you'll gain weight if you eat more calories than you burn and you'll lose weight if you eat less calories than you burn.
• When you gain weight, you'll want that weight to be muscle weight (preferentially), and exercise is the stimulus that will tell the excess calories to go towards muscle rather than fat. When you lose weight, exercise and macro-nutrient choices will determine whether that weight will be lost from muscle or from fat.
• Overall, it's useful to simplify it like this: food determines the number on the scale, and exercise determines the composition of your body. You can increase your calorie expenditure via exercise to lose weight, but that is very time inefficient and is harder than just foregoing a bit of extra food. Caveat: if you're a small female, it might be better to lose weight with exercise, because caloric restriction can begin to rob you of necessary nutrients because of your lower caloric needs. Women recover better and benefit more from low-intensity exercise, though, so that's a positive.
• Food choice is important because the types of foods you eat will determine your hormonal balance, cravings, energy levels, mental clarity, and micro-nutrient necessities (vitamins and minerals). That said, interestingly, you could actually build an amazing physique eating only candy and beef jerky if you really wanted to (because you could hit your calories, carbs, fats, and protein goals), you'd just feel really really crappy doing it.
• Diets should remain relatively the same whether you want to gain weight or lose weight. The only real difference is the quantity of food you consume.
• For those of you who are looking to make changes to your body , this is literally all your really need to read on the subject: **https://rippedbody.com/complete-diet-nutrition-set-up-guide/**

<aside> 💡 Tips for vegetarians: **https://www.bodybuilding.com/content/vegetarian-bodybuilding.html**

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<aside> 💡 Here is an article that will make you more knowledgeable on dieting and how it pertains to muscle retention and fat loss than 99.99% of the population: **https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/a-calorie-is-sometimes-not-a-calorie**

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Exercise alone won't get you your physical and mental results. You need to eat healthily. Your body can only use what you give it, so it's important you're putting in the best nutrients for it to use.

[Veg] = Vegetarian