Built to Last

Once upon a time a long, long time ago, before smart phones and Instagram feeds, there lived a community of pigs. These weren’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill pigs, though. These pigs could walk and talk. They held down steady jobs and had families. This story is about three of these little pigs and what happened when trouble came howling at their doors.

This, of course, is the beginning (with a bit of modification) of the familiar children’s story “The Three Little Pigs.” Consider how this childhood fable links to your story. Is your foundation built to last? The Big Bad Wolf can manifest in many forms throughout life. In 2020, it arrived in the form of Covid-19. Resiliency often comes down to our core, or what we are made of and the sense of self we’ve built. There are many inputs that make up this core: physical, mental, spiritual, etc. For this brief post I’d like to discuss the role of nutritional intake as it lends to our physical bodies.

Nutrition can make or break a goal of improved aesthetics and/or performance. There is no amount of effort in the gym that will make up for a consistently poor diet. So yes, in my experience, “you cannot outwork a poor diet.” If only teenage Erik had adhered to this advice when eating chips and soda for most of my lunches. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have wondered why I couldn’t gain any appreciable size or strength. As they say, “Hindsight is 20/20.”

Like the chosen building materials of the three pigs, our nutritional decisions (building materials) impact the structure and overall quality / resilience of our physical body. Are you building with bricks, sticks, or straw? Don’t let your efforts in the gym be all for nothing by missing the vital aspect that nutrition plays in your foundation.