For those of you Strength Faction alum in the group, you will recognize this video, but we feel that it’s realllllly important to keep this one around.  Since filming this video I (Chris) have taken part in a full year of Precision Nutrition Coaching.

Yes, as a client.

You’re welcome for that ridiculous picture on the left…  The middle picture was taken in July of 2015, and it’s the result of slooooowly pushing my own training and nutrition to the back burner, while giving my all to others.  I never woke up one morning and said, “Wow, I’ve fallen off,” but rather, I slowly went backwards for a handful years.  I opened a gym, got really busy, and made all kinds of excuses for why the conditions weren’t right to do the things I knew I needed to do.

The topic of this video has been one of the biggest changes that I’ve made during and after Pn. What is that, you ask?  Check out the video:

Hey , why are you reading this before you watched the video??!

Since this video I have not derailed from a single program, regardless of circumstances…  I may have postponed certain aspects of my training due to life circumstances, but I have not gotten behind schedule on a single program for over three years now.  So what’s happened?  I’ve dropped a little bit of weight (negligible amount, and not my direct goal), but most importantly, I feel amazing, have dropped about 5 inches off of my waist alone, and I don’t feel overwhelmed with all the crazy shit I have going on in my life (most of the time).  Nutrtion is EASY for me now.

But it wasn’t all about nutrition.

We’re not talking about counting macros right off the bat (and outside of individual, as-needed consults, we really never will), or eating every 1.725 hours so that you can maintain your orgasmic pump dragon muscles (science).

So what the hell are we talking about, you ask?

Continuum.

This is something that Precision Nutrition talks about constantly, as well as Dan John’s good friend, Marc Halpern- and it’s the perfect place to start…

So what is a continuum?

Well, continuums are everywhere, and in everything.

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“Okay, so what’s this got to do with my nutrition?”

Well, we can view our nutrition approach on a continuum as well.

Every time that we make the decision to eat, we might guilt trip ourselves, knowing that we are not on the perfect end of the continuum…  Well, we’ve got news for you.  Unless you’re here to compete in bodybuilding (and if you are, you might have joined the wrong group), you don’t need to be!

In order to make progress we simply need to move right on the continuum.  Period.

If breakfast is usually a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, a glass of orange juice, and your kids GoGurt, okay then!

What’s one step to the right?

Go there.

After that’s easy, go again.

And again.

And again.

Perfection is NOT the goal

We don’t need to hit the absolute right side of the continuum.  Just like the speed-strength continuum, it depends on our goals!  The trick is to find what works for us, and our unique goals.

We are going to dig into what the basics of that may look like next week, but with the remainder of this week we are going to collect a little data.

The Food Journal!

For the next three days we ask that you keep a food journal.  You can do this however you’d like, but we recommend following the “when you bite it, write it” approach.  If you wait until the end of the day, you’ll surely forget things.

Here’s what we recommend tracking:

1. What time did you go to bed?  What time did you wake up?
   • How much sleep are you getting? This has nothing to do with nutrition… sure.  But it’s pretty damn important and this is an easy way to track it.
2. What time did you eat each meal?
   • How much time are you taking between meals?  There’s no right or wrong approach here.  Just observe.  How’s that working for you?
3. On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the left side of the continuum, and 10 being the absolute right side of the continuum, how would you rank each meal?
   • This is an easy way to find areas to improve.  What’s your biggest struggle?
4. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rank your hunger before each meal?
   • We’ll hammer this out in a future lesson, but when is the last time you thought about, let alone recorded this?
5. What time did you work out?
   • Did your nutrition support your workout?

We recommend doing two weekdays and one weekend day.  So, Thursday-Saturday seems perfect!

Once you’re done, look over each day and see where you can make some improvements.  Don’t worry, you have an accountability buddy, mentor, and three coaches to help you.

Get to journaling, !