Many athletes do not realize the impact their diets have on performance.  Athletes generally require more nutrients, vitamins, and minerals than a sedentary person, and ultimately, athletic performance is a direct reflection of the quality of one's nutritional intake.  

   Certain body changes that are brought on by training - such as the loss of nutrients in sweat and urine during and after strenuous exercise - require complete nutrients, vitamins, and mineral replacement.  In some instances, excess nutrients above the recommended daily allowances are crucial for performance enhancement.  Nutritional deficiencies often show up as weakness, fatigue, muscle strains, cramping, injuries, and the most frightening symptom of all, diminishing returns.  

   Optimal athletic performance and body composition will only be possible with intense exercise and a diet abundant in whole foods that are closest to their natural state.  Unfortunately, our busy lifestyles challenge us to consume highly-processed and chemically-altered convenience foods that are far removed from their natural food counterparts.  

   The typical processing techniques of drying, milling, coloring, freezing, baking, heating, and prolonging storage depletes foods of life-supporting, essential nutrients, virtually destroying the food and causing them to be void of crucial nutrients.

   It is a commonly accepted fact among nutrition experts that many human beings are moderately-to-severely deficient in terms of overall nutrition.  Too little of a specific nutrient leads to nutritional deficiencies and thus biochemical imbalances, and ultimately, this means more nutrition-related diseases, malnutrition, and obesity.  

   It's truly ironic that we are eating so much food, yet our bodies are starving for essential nutrients - thus keeping us hungry and provoking us to eat more and more "crap" to try and make up for the deficiencies.  Hence the obesity epidemic we witness today.

   By no means is this breaking news.  Dr. Weston A. Price (otherwise known as "The Darwin of Nutrition") researched this theory and published his findings in his book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, almost 70 years ago.  In his book, Dr. Price demonstrates that humans achieve perfect physical form and perfect health only when they consumed nutrient-dense whole foods and animal fats.  

   Dr. Price arrived at this conclusion after living with the natives of Africa and the Pacific Islands, traditional Eskimos, North and South American Indians, Amazonian Indians, and Australian Aborigines, and studied generational differences as the natives shifted from their traditional diets to a modernized diet of processed and refined foods from the Western world.

   What he observed was alarming.  Upon arrival, Price found robust health, straight teeth with little decay, strong bodies, broad and well-formed faces, resistance to disease, and positive personalitities indicative of people eating traditional diets native to their land.  But children whose parents adopted processed foods such as sugar, white flour, pasteurized milk, and convenience foods had pronounced narrowing of the faces, rampant tooth decay and crowding, illness, disease, and degenerative conditions.

   Upon analyzing the natives' whole-food diets, Price found that these diets contained at least ten times more of the Vitamins A and D than the American diet of his day.  These vitamins are found only in animal fats - butter, lard, egg yolks, fish oils, liver and other organ meats, and shell fish.

   These fat-soluble vitamins are essential, and without them our bodies can not assimilate and use other nutrients such as protein, minerals, and vitamins found within foods.  In other words, without these animals fats, the other nutrients simply go right through us as waste.  

   Whole foods are highly-complex structures that combine a variety of enzymes, co-enzymes, antioxidant compounds, trace elements, activators, and other co-factors (some known and some undiscovered) all working together synergistically to enable the vitamins and minerals to do their job.  Vitamins are not an energy source, nevertheless they play a vital role in releasing energy of the foods we eat.  They also serve to regulate fat, carbohydrates, and protein metabolism within the body.  In addition, our enzyme, nervous, hormonal, and immune systems are all dependent on vitamins for regulation and control.  
   
   One can not rely of supplementation alone and expect to get the results that nature renders with whole foods.  Isolated compounds and synthetic nutrients are never found in nature; they are produced in pharmaceutical laboratories and do a poor job of mimicking the function of their natural counterparts because they are missing the complete complex, rendering them inadequate.  

   Nutritionist Judith DeCava puts it best: "Separating the group of compounds (in a vitamin complex) converts it from a physiological, biochemical, active micronutrient into a disabled, debilitated chemical of little or no value to living cells.  The synergy is gone."

   Good nutrition is like good training.  Learn the basics and practice them consistently, dig for knowledge, and maintain discipline.  Always apply yourself diligently, and, most importantly, don't look for an "easy way."  There is no substitute for knowledge and hard work.  In other words, don't let the temptation for shortcuts lead you down dead ends.