Being an athlete and competitive soccer player, most would assume that I have always been in shape and have been happy with my overall body composition, but for the longest time I actually struggled with being able to achieve peak performance, and also lose stubborn body fat. However, after understanding the reasons and science as to why even though I live a very active lifestyle, I would always maintain a rather high body fat percentage and not feel the best during game time, I am now in a position where I am in the best form and health of my life!

The main, huge change I made was drastically lowering the amount of carbs I eat. Many athletes use carb loading as a term used to refer to eating a crap ton of carbs before training sessions or games, and this is very prominent in the sport I play, soccer, as we are wrongly taught that carbs are the primary source of fuel and energy for our body. Sure, carbs can have a moderate to minimal place in our diet, but nowadays carbs make up the majority of our daily calories, which in short can cause more detriment to our body than good. Therefore, after shifting away from carbs being my main source of energy, and making quality fats my main source of energy, I have been able to shed off the stubborn fat and perform at a much more consistent, and high level.

The physiology of why this works comes down to understanding insulin resistance and how we operate better being fat adapted than carb dependent. I can honestly talk hours about this rabbit hole, but I will instead link a few videos that really made me understand the why and then the how to tackle the issues of say losing body weight effectively, and in a more low time preference manner instead of the yo yo diets of the fiat world.

(Just click the links and watch on YouTube since they're blocked on here)

What Is Insulin Resistance? (Diet Is Very Important!)

What If You Stop Eating Sugar For 30 Days?

I've been binge watching Dr. Ekberg's videos for a few months now, as he is very nuanced, and in my opinion is a great teacher on the topic of optimizing health.

For me, once I could understand and enhance my knowledge on the exact physiology and science of health, it became much simpler to work towards improving it, and as my health got better because of the knowledge I acquired, staying motivated and consistent became much easier. All the best!