6. For Those About to Rock or Do Heavy Manual Labor or Extreme Sports or Serious Professional Exercise

Exercise Check

If you're not sure whether you fit into this category, do the following check:

(Score 2 points for each 'yes' answer in this category)

• [ ] Do you take exercise that noticeably raises your heartbeat for at least 20 minutes, more than three times a week?
• [ ] Does your work involve lots of walking, lifting, manual labor or any other vigorous activity?
• [ ] Do you regularly play a sport or physical practice (football, squash, martial arts etc.)?
• [ ] Do you have any physically tiring hobbies (heavy duty gardening, rock climbing, building etc.)?
• [ ] Are you in serious training for an athletic event?
• [ ] Do you consider yourself fit and work out regularly?
• [ ] Are you about to have a baby?
• [ ] Are you taking care of small children or about to do so?

[ ] Total score

If you ticked even one of these, you need to adjust your diet in order to keep it optimal for you.

Maximum physical and mental performance depends on giving the body the right fuel and nutrients. Low GI carbs are the premier fuel for high performance.

Increasing protein intake will make more muscle, but it won't improve your performance. High protein diets without sufficient carbs will build you a body that is the performance equivalent of a Ferrari with the engine of a lawn mower. It's no use having great looking tools without enough energy to use them.

Starting with diet 1 above, you'll need to add ingredients such as wholemeal pasta and wholemeal long grain rice. These however form only a small part of your overall meal. We are used to seeing dishes that are mainly rice or pasta with a bit of meat & veg in sauce on top –you need to REVERSE THE PROPORTIONS. For example in meals including these ingredients you want:

2 portions meat : 3 portions veg : 1 portion rice or pasta.

Chicken or fish sushi [rolled thin] also achieves the balance very nicely.

The most important nutrient you'll need for high performance

Is water. Special forces troops and professional athletes know this -A loss of only 3% of your body's water causes a 10% drop in strength and an 8% loss of speed! Your mental acuity suffers similarly; reaction time, short term memory, tracking ability and psychomotor skills are significantly compromised.

During heavy work or athletics there is an increase in temperature, and energy is diverted away from the muscles to cool the body down. In advance of heavy work you should drink a small glass of water every fifteen minutes for at least an hour before whatever it is you are doing, and rehydrate as often as you can throughout. Don't drink pints and pints at once, that's very dangerous and will do you more harm than good –drink small amounts relatively often.

It's no good drinking often and peeing it straight out again either, so eating carbs is essential too [because carbs absorb water and keep it in your body]. So some hours before hard work you need to eat wholemeal bread, rice, oats or pasta along with your protein –up to twice as much as you would normally eat- so we are talking 'two fists' worth of protein and four 'fists' worth of carbs [3 veg and 1 pasta, or whatever]. Athletes use powdered whey as a source of high protein without much bulk, and oats [as porridge or muesli]. Oats are renowned for their energy-providing ability, even to horses.

Nuts, seeds and their oils also form part of a high-performance diet, so increase these if you are pregnant or doing heavy physical work.

If you do regular heavy work or endurance exercise it is important to make sure of your intake of vitamins A, C and E. These help the body to use oxygen optimally and detoxify the waste products of making energy, keeping your body a clean machine and maintaining high immunity. See the table in section 3 above for where to get more of these vitamins.

For a quick energy hit during heavy work, eat honey or drink pure fruit juice. You'll get just as much energy as you would from sucrose tablets, but less chance of burn-out.

Cardiovascular Check

You should also regularly do the cardiovascular check below:

(Score 1 point for each 'yes' answer in this category)

• [ ] Is your blood pressure higher than 140/90 ?
• [ ] Is your pulse rate after 15 minutes rest above 75?
• [ ] Are you more than 7kg (14 lbs) over your ideal weight?
• [ ] Do you smoke more than 5 cigarettes a day?
• [ ] Do you do less than 2 hours of vigorous exercise (one hour if you are over 50) a week?
• [ ] Do you eat more than 1 Tablespoon of sugar per day?
• [ ] Do you eat meat more than 5 times a week?
• [ ] Do you usually add salt to your food?
• [ ] Do you have more than 2 alcoholic drinks a day?
• [ ] Is there a history of heart disease or diabetes in your family?

[ ] Total score

If you score more than two you should be aware that your potential will be limited and you should try to address these issues.