Last weekend my husband and I returned from a two week road trip across Canada. OK, realistically we only went as far as Red Lake, but after so much time in the car, it looked like we must have covered all of Canada. Not that I found the trip boring – we had a wonderful time visiting friends and family, attending the Battle for Canada festival in Winnipeg with our church, fishing – it’s just a lot of sitting time. And I’m not a babysitter.

For those of you who follow me on social media or belong to my group, you’ve probably seen me post workout videos, seen a few live videos on my way home from the gym, and just general chat on the importance of daily movement. I feel better when I’m more active and I know many of you feel the same way and swear by this daily workout, walking or swimming to stay fit.

Even though I’m that self-proclaimed gym rat, exercise and movement is only one piece of the health puzzle and will only give you results for a season when it’s the only thing you use to achieve your goals. health and weight goals. Real, long-lasting, lasting results you can live with come from within.

What and how you fuel your body, along with having the right mindset, is what will win you with your health even if and when something happens to derail you with these workouts.

There are six components to health: nutrition, exercise, water, stress, sleep and supplements. Think of them as spinning plates. You’ve all seen those performers with the plates spinning high on a stick, adding another and another, keeping them balanced so those plates keep spinning. When it starts to slow down or wobble, a slight change in balance gets it spinning again. If the balance had not been checked, these slight movements had not been made, they would have all collapsed.

Think of each of the six components as a hub. Each that is addressed in the way that serves your body is a successfully spinning plate on top of a stick. And I use plates because nutrition is the most impactful, whether it’s spinning successfully or crashing to the ground.

Food, compared to exercise, determines about 80% of your results when it comes to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight. That doesn’t mean you should stop exercising, not at all. This means that your health and your weight are done in the kitchen, not in the gym.

And even though I’m talking about weight, just because a person is lean or skinny doesn’t mean they’re healthy. This is where the diet industry has sold you lies, telling you that if you just quit eating carbs. . .” “Stop eating fat. . .”, “Just take this pill/dose/drops and the fat will melt away. . .” etc., you will get the results you were looking for. And you may just get results, and by results I mean the number on the scale (for a moment) might be favorable.

But how do you feel? How stressful is it to live like this? The nutrition plate wobbled (gave up carbs) and wobbled (counting calories) and wobbled (crazy workouts) and eventually got so out of balance that the plate fell off the stick and crashed. This is when the weight comes back and the cycle tends to repeat itself. Hope you can’t understand.

It’s not that people are lazy or don’t try hard enough. Clearly they want to see results otherwise they wouldn’t buy the book, take the pills, order the food, count the calories, etc., etc., etc., it’s just that they received bad information. Diets are big business and if you have the information and tools you need to turn those plates, achieve your health and weight goals without dieting and able to sustain those results for the rest of your life, that’s it. would bankrupt.

The fact is, achieving your health goals and achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is simple. It all comes down to balance. Learn to eat the foods you love in a way that serves your body and soul. Did you know that having chicken with pizza is healthier than an apple? An apple is a carb, and eating carbs alone will raise your blood sugar. Pizza is also a high carb food, but adding chicken helps prevent the spike for better balance. Am I saying never eat apples and just eat pizza? Of course not. What I mean is that when you know how food works, you can use it in a way that works for you. And once you learn that, you have it for life and you’ll never have to diet again. Using foods to create hormone balance, stabilize blood sugar, increase circulation, optimize digestion, and support collagen resiliency is one thing. It can be done. When your food is balanced and on track and your nutrition plate is spinning, it’s just easier to adjust the swings of the other plates and keep them up in the air as well.

If you want to learn more about balancing and how to keep those plates in the air, join the 8 Weeks is All it Takes Facebook group.

Tania Gustafson is a nutritionist and physical trainer.

On the web: fuelignitethrive.com.

Email: [email protected]

Facebook: 8 weeks is enough.