Even if you don’t care about golf or understand it at all, hear me out for a second as there’s a reason I’m bringing it up that I think will help you, I promise.
I’ve spent 1000’s of hours of my life golfing. I grew up across the street from the Didsbury golf course and as a kid spent my summers doing at least three rounds/day.
I retired from the game, selling my clubs and all, 5 years ago due to a severe back injury (also caused by golfing when I was 19 or 20).
Now I’m being lured back into the game due to my two young boys taking an interest and being in golf lessons.
Recently I found a used book titled, “How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time” written by Tommy Armour, a famous professional, in 1953.
I was intrigued and decided to pick it up to see if I could learn any helpful tips that I could give my boys.
What followed was a rather mind blowing discovery.
I quickly learned that, having spent countless hours of my life golfing, I actually knew next to nothing about how to play the game correctly.
I learned after reading the first chapter that I didn’t even know something as basic as how to hold the club properly. It explained why the few balls I would hit when out with my boys were going to the right (not good, you want them to go straight).
I decided to follow Tommy’s instructions on proper gripping of the club to a “T” next time we were out. The results were dramatic.
It wasn’t immediate as at first the grip felt completely unnatural. My mind was like, “this can’t be right”. Until my third try that is. I hit a perfectly crisp and smooth shot. It was straight, a perfect distance, and felt effortless. It had me re-thinking my retirement right then and there. Maybe the PGA Tour dream wasn’t out of reach yet!
I hit seven more balls in a row just like that one. Literally learning how to grip the club properly completely changed and dramatically improved my results.
Reflecting on the experience later I was hit with an epiphany.
It felt a tad ludicrous to have spent all those hours golfing, all the practice, frustration, drowning in mediocrity…and I never once thought to seek out how to actually grip the club properly.
It made me think that this is a great analogy for what many people’s relation with nutrition is.
Where they’ve been alive for thousands of days and yet, if they were honest with themselves, they literally have no clue what proper nutrition is or how to adequately fuel their bodies. They know nothing about protein and the other macro nutrients, how much food is adequate for their needs to maintain a high level of energy and healthy bodyweight. Nothing. Nada.
With nutrition being such a key part of staying alive (second only behind oxygen) isn’t it a tad ludicrous that so many have absolutely no idea what they’re actually putting in their bodies each day? And they wonder why they’re frustrated and feel like they’ve tried everything and don’t know what to do.
Here’s a tip: You don’t need to do any South Keto Fasted Wonkiness diet. You simply need to gain a basic understanding of food so that you can have a healthy relationship with it for the rest of your life.
Here are the three main things you need to figure out so you can take steps towards doing so:
- you need to eat 0.7-1 gram of protein/lb of bodyweight every day. Figure out what that looks like for you by doing some basic weighing/measuring/googling. (Example: I weigh about 180lbs, 180 x 0.7 = 126 grams of protein/day minimum, 180 grams of protein/day maximum)
- We know vegetables are good for us, start every meal with a heaping pile of them
- Drink 2-3L of water everyday
That’s it.
If people just did this, I’m convinced it would be an entirely different world as far as general health.
It’s like my grip change in golf. The longer I went without having a clue how to grip the club, the longer my frustration and lack of positive results. The longer you wait to “feel ready” or “have time” to figure out the keys of nutrition, the longer your frustration around food and your weight will last.
Get a grip on your eating habits and make a change today. It may feel unnatural at first, but if you stick with it your life will never be the same.
My experience as a fitness coach has showed me that most will never do the simple protein calculation above and figure out what it looks like in terms of food they need to eat each day.
That’s not you though is it?
Be an action taker and do it right now. I dare you.
Keep Swinging,
Matt
ps. Though you definitely can’t believe everything you read on the internet, here’s what I found in two seconds in regards to people’s main question of “What are some good protein sources?” (A little secret: steak isn’t the only protein source on earth).
Here you go:
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/high-protein-foods
pps. For anyone who also wants to improve their golf game, here’s a page from the book showing how to properly grip the club 🙂
