What is it?
Something we hate. Something we dread. Something limiting. Something painful.
No, it is simply the process of obtaining nutrients from food in order to support the activities of life. It is the stoking of your inner fire. It is functional. It is goal oriented. It is supportive. And sure it can be indulgent, but it is never mindless.
Eating, on the other hand, is literally defined as putting food in one’s mouth.
Why do I want it?
You can perhaps go far, especially when young, with just eating, but if you really have certain health, fitness and/or life goals, then some focus on nutrition is going to have to be part of the program. And I would argue that the greater the focus on nutrition, the more progress you will make.
As an example, your muscles are literally made out of amino acids (derived from proteins). If you want to grow bigger muscles, then you must consume sufficient excess amino acids to provide the building blocks for more muscle. Your body, which has evolved over millennia to survive, will not do something evolutionarily suicidal like drain amino acids out of your bones and liver to just build new muscle. So while the source of protein, the timing of protein and even the amount has plenty of flexibility, how can anyone design a hypertrophy (i.e., muscle building) program for you without focusing on your amino acid nutrition!
Much the same applies to things like weight management. Sure you can just work out longer in the gym to burn more calories as an effective way to lose weight, but 9 people out of 10 will go home and just consume those burned calories in the form of extra food (often without even realizing it). So how can you design an effective weight management program if you don’t have any insight into the intake?
How do I train it?
This is going to depend on the program goals and the person, but we start with the basics in the form of nutrition education, nutrition profiles for different goals, recipe books and the reasons why some government dietary guidelines are outright stupid, while others are just semi-suicidal. All of this is targeted to the parts of nutrition that matter for your goals.
After the basics we start to implement improvements in nutrition to drive goals. This can include meal timing, calorie and macro counts, optimization techniques to drive enhancements in fuel partitioning and advanced tracking tools.
Nutrition isn’t scary and it doesn’t mean daily acts of heroic self denial. It is additive. It is about what we can put in our body to help achieve our goals. You can pull that lever as hard or as soft as you want depending on how fast you want to get to your goals.
In other words, to hit your goals you don’t have to stop eating, but you may have to start focusing more on nutrition.