If you frequent the Naked Nutrition Network then you are familiar with the 6 Pillars of Nutrition. In this video I lay out what the 6 Pillars of Nutrition are and why they are important. You can also read my article on the 6 Pillars of Nutrition here.

Picking the Best Diet	Simple Dieting

“Should I eat 30% or 40% of calories from protein?”

“My weight loss has slowed should I start cycling my carbs?”

“If I eat 6% of my fat in the form of coconut oil is that okay?”

These are some  questions that I have been asked over the  past couple weeks regarding nutrition. But in some cases these people don’t have the right to ask these questions because they don’t know what stage they are at in their nutrition. They are trying to tweak the specifics but haven’t mastered the basics.

What am I talking about? See the picture below.

This graph represents what I call the Stages of Nutrition. Your diet (like many things) consists of a progression and you need to master one step before you move to the next. I’m going to steal my buddy Alwyn Cosgrove’s martial arts metaphor to illustrate my point.

If you want to learn Karate you can’t start out training with Jet Li. You need to know how a certain number of basic moves, master those, and progress from there to more advance tactics.

Your diet is no different. If you can’t master certain basic components then you have now business progressing to more complicated nutritional approaches.

The Stages of Nutrition:

• Nutritional Freestyling: You eat whatever you want whenever you want.
• Proper Food Choices Varying Compliance: You try to eat the right stuff but you just don’t do it consistently.
• Proper Food Choices 90% Compliance: You eat the right stuff and you rarely falter (this is the target stage for most people).
• Calorie/Portion Counting, Proper Food Choices 90% Compliance: You need to fine tune your diet more for a specific purpose (weight loss, health, performance) so you start counting calories or portions and you stay on your plan just about all the time.

If you are currently nutritional freestyling then you can’t jump straight to counting calories. That is just a recipe for failure as if you aren’t currently making consistent proper food choices (in line with the 6 Pillars of Nutrition) then what makes you think that you will be able to consistently eat portioned, weighted, and calculated meals?

Making proper food choices and sticking to your plan requires a discipline and behavioral skill  set that will be mastered as you progress through the Stages of Nutrition. Jumping ahead to a more ‘advanced’ stage will not get you better results faster. Instead it will lead to a pattern of brief results, diet relapse, and frustration.

My Question to You

What stage are you in?

What do you need to do to move to the next stage?

Be honest with yourself – do what is needed to move to the next stage and you will be rewarded with consistent and long term weight loss success.

A couple months ago a gave an entire presentation on the Stages of Nutrition, how to move from one stage to the next, and how to identify the best stage for your goals. The entire presentation is free to watch and download for members of the Faster Fat Loss Zone. If you’re not a member you can join today for only $19.95 and you’ll get the Stages of Nutrition presentation plus access to another 100+ fat loss workouts, articles, and videos.

Have a good one,

Mike

P.S. Thanks to all the Warp Speed Fat Loss and Faster Fat Loss Zone members that join Alwyn, Bill, and Myself on the fat loss teleconference last night – I had a great time.

We all want results. Whether it is more muscle, less fat, or both. We want results. You can lift all the weights you want and grind out session after session of interval training but if you aren’t paying attention to what you are eating then all this effort is a waste. The #1 most important part of any fat loss or muscle growth program is nutrition.Nutrition is confusing though right?

There are new “discoveries” being reported by the media almost every day. It is a full time job keeping up with all this information. Fortunately you can get that body you want…. you can achieve that lean, muscular body that you’ve been coveting by consistently applying relatively simple nutritional guidelines.