Supportive Nutrition 

Supportive nutrition is essential for your wellness and performance.

To perform at your best mentally and physically at work, home, leisure, and in training, you need to support your body with the proper nutrients in the right quantities at the correct times. The same is true for your children's academic performance and development. 

You have to provide your brain, muscles, connective tissues, organs and every other type of tissue inside your body energy to function properly.

You don't build a house from cardboard or straws. You need timber, concrete and other materials that are going to create a durable structure.

Eating the correct amount of calories, protein, carbohydrates and fats for your goals is akin to providing the construction workers (your immune system) with the appropriate materials. The immune system can then take the materials and build muscle tissue, connective tissues, hormones, or neurotransmitters.

You must also eat a diverse enough diet to provide your body with its micronutrient and cofactor needs.

For example, magnesium is a cofactor in more than 300 enzyme systems that regulate various biochemical reactions in the body, including protein synthesis, energy production, muscle and nerve function, blood glucose control, and blood pressure regulation. Furthermore, magnesium is depleted at high rates by physical and emotional stress. Eating an unbalanced diet and failing to support your body with enough magnesium could lead to problems with your performance and wellbeing. Of course, magnesium is just one example of many essential nutrients the body needs to operate at its best.

Beyond that, I would like to extend the common wisdom of "You are what you eat" to include the following.

You are what you eat, assimilate and absorb.

This means that it matters extraordinarily how you eat your food and what state you are in when you eat it. A steak will have a completely different impact on the body of someone who swallows it in large cubes without chewing while they are stressed out of their mind compared to someone who chews the steak properly while they are relaxed.

Suppose you eat while the arousal levels of your nervous system are elevated. In that case, your digestion is very likely to be disturbed, simply because the body does not prioritise digestion at times of stress. If your digestion is disturbed, your ability to assimilate and absorb the critical nutrients and energy from your food will be impaired.

The same goes for chewing. The more you chew, the more surface area you expose that your gastric juices can work their wonders on. Further, the more time the food spends in your mouth, the more you lather the food in salivary enzymes that prepare the food for the stomach.

To conclude, nutrition is essential. It doesn't help that the area of nutrition is the most saturated with different camps, zealots and charlatans.

There is the keto camp, the carnivore camp, the vegan camp, the high carb camp, the Mediterranean camp, the zone camp, and a million more camps. Each of these camps has very vocal representatives who are all convinced that their way of eating and fueling their body is "how humans are supposed to do it" and that everyone else is a complete moron.

Coach Pyry recommends a balanced approach based on the established scientific principles, tailored to suit each individual depending on their goals, preferences, and other circumstances.

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