Key Concept #4: 80 Percent of Your Body Composition Success Is Determined by How You Eat

Hey all.

Did you know?

Food is the single most important factor in body composition.

You can exercise all you want but as long as you’re eating garbage, and too much of it, you won’t get very far.

For that reason, any real attempt to modify your body composition has to begin by addressing what you put in your mouth.

I like to start with the quality of the food you eat. I don’t discount the importance of quantity, mind you, but I do find that honing in on the quality of the food is more crucial and effective.

Case in point: 2000 calories of fast food will have a very different effect on your body composition, satiety, and nutrient intake than 2000 calories of grass-fed meat, wild fish, and produce grown in rich, fertile, nutrient-dense soil.

The fast food won’t be as satiating, nor as nutrient-dense, as the real food, so you’ll likely be compelled to eat more of it. The fast food will primarily include trans- and polyunsaturated fats, sugary sauces, refined grains, and poor quality meat, which will promote insulin resistance and the storage of body fat while inhibiting fat burning.

Eating Primal, gut friendly food, rich in animals, plants, and healthy fat, on the other hand, will normalize insulin sensitivity, thereby allowing fat burning. In effect, quality will determine quantity; you’ll eat less spontaneously when you eat healthy Primal foods. Quality paired with proper quantity will in turn determine your body composition.

Sleep matters, exercise helps, stress has an effect, but how you eat – what you eat and how much you eat – is the prime determinant of your body composition.

Mark Sisson