Nourishment tips from an Army National Guard Holistic Health and Fitness officer

By MAJ Benjamin Seims

Nutrition is like your body: It can be as complex as you want it to be (depending on how much you want to know), or it can be very simple. In my role as a coach, educator, and Holistic Health and Fitness officer, I get questions about nourishment topics at least once a day, including how to lose weight, gain muscle, perform better, or reach any number of related goals.

It would be easy for me to answer with, “Eat XYZ a certain number of times a day for a certain number of weeks,” and think, “Boom. Problem solved.” The true answer to these questions is more complicated, though. I say this because each one of us is unique with different circumstances and needs. I’d argue that everyone has a general idea of what’s usually perceived as “good” or “bad” food—and maybe that’s where our problem lies.

Food is fuel. It isn’t necessarily good or bad—it just is what it is: fuel. Some fuels are better than others. You could put unleaded gas in your diesel truck, for example, but it wouldn’t perform very well. Likewise, anytime you eat, you invest in your body’s energy for the next 36–44 hours. Whatever you fuel with is what your body has to perform the basic biological functions of life, do any extra physical work, and use the available energy to fight off illness. That means it’s crucial to eat quality, healthy foods and be able to digest the food you consume.

Digestion

The Standard American Diet (SAD) and normal American eating environment don’t provide the nourishment that tactical athletes need to be mentally, physically, and socially resilient. Food isn’t just a pile of nutrients. It has physiological, psychological, socio-cultural, and environmental dimensions. While we’re not going into the science of nutrition here, it’s important for tactical athletes to understand how the body is set up to receive the fuel they eat, and how it uses that fuel once it’s in their body. There are key steps to digestion that tactical athletes often miss.

• The mechanical and chemical breakdown of foods into smaller pieces and molecules
• The movement of those molecules from inside the gastrointestinal (GI) tract to where it needs to go in your body
• Excreting whatever your body doesn’t need

Food is a 36–44 hour investment. So, sit down. CHEW your food. Enjoy your food.

Hunger tells our brain when we need to eat, so we go find food. When we smell, see, or even think about food, our body starts to prepare to eat. The GI tract doesn’t like to deal with food if it’s not ready. Our brain needs to tell our mouth to salivate and our stomach to secrete digestive enzymes. So, we need to be calm and prepare for the food that we’re about to eat. Our body is super smart, but also super reliant. Our sympathetic nervous system is set up for fight or flight, and our parasympathetic system is set up for rest and digest. Your body automatically knows how to respond to your perceived state. If you’re anxious, in a hurry to eat, not chewing your food, rushing through your meal, or eating on the go or while working, your body senses that you’re stressed and can activate the sympathetic nervous system. This dries up your mucus membranes and slows down movement of food through your GI tract by decreasing your gastric and intestinal movement. Your body in turn decides to get rid of the food as best it can, limiting the amount of nutrients you get from that meal, storing much of it, and excreting the rest instead of using it for a readily available fuel source for activity and bodily functions.

So what do we do? There are many nutritional sources available to use for education and understanding, and HPRC’s Warfighter Nutrition Guide and Get into Fighting Weight: A Total Force Fitness Guide are a great start. There’s no quick fix. Everyone is different, and individual nourishment needs vary widely. Tactical athletes add another dimension to the matrix, depending on occupation, operational tempo, environment, and available nutritional sources. What we recommend here are basic actions that improve your food hygiene—or those behaviors and habits you’ve formed around nourishment—with the understanding that as tactical athletes, this scenario might not always present itself.

Food hygiene skills

One simple tool is to eat Recently Alive Well/Whole (RAWW) foods. RAWW foods are ones that we know when they were last “alive,” if they were grown, raised, or processed “well,” and that they’re being consumed “whole” or in their most original form. This is important in order to provide your body with the best opportunity to get as much of the nutrients, minerals, and vitamins you can out of the fuel you eat for better longevity. It’s key to keep things simple.

• Replace processed carbs with non-processed ones. Swap fast-burning carbs such as bread, chips, and cookies with slow-burning carbs (that contain complex starches and fiber) such as fruits and root vegetables, whole grains, beans, and legumes. Don’t know how much to eat? Use HPRC’s handy guide to portion sizes to estimate your portions of veggies (about the size of your fist) and carbs (cupped palm). Try to eat a portion of each with meals or 2–3 times daily.
• Balance out your fats.People love balance, and the fats we consume are no different. When you add fats to your snacks and meals, choose from a wide selection throughout your day: avocados, olives and extra-virgin olive oil, nuts, and seeds. Fats in balance are good for you, and remember a portion of fat is about the size of your thumb (1–2 tablespoons.)
• Protein is vital. Your body needs a large range of essential amino acids to sustain cellular function, work, and stave off death. The best practice is to provide yourself with a wide selection of whole, less-processed protein sources such as animal protein (beef, pork, lamb, fatty fish, poultry, wild game), dairy, eggs, lentils, beans, nuts, and seeds (remember RAWW). A good average is 1.2–2.2 g of protein per kilogram of body mass daily. Think of it this way: If you eat a whole-sourced protein that’s about the size of your palm 3–4 times daily, you’ll typically hit the amount of protein you need.

It’s important to practice good food hygiene too.

• Chew your food 20–30 times. Doing so breaks down food appropriately, coats it in saliva, and prepares it for travel through the esophagus to the stomach to be further broken down.
• Sit down and eat your food in a calm environment, disconnected from electronics. And if you’re with company, make sure they’re the company you enjoy.
• Savor healthy eating. Prepare your body to receive food by smelling it and enjoying how it’s been prepped.
• Slow down. Stay calm prior to, during, and after your meal to allow your body to digest the fuel you just consumed.

About the Author

MAJ Benjamin Seims has served in the U.S. Army National Guard since 1999 as an 11B and 66H. He’s currently the Holistic Health and Fitness Officer for WAARNG, Warrior Performance and Resiliency Officer for WNG, Master Fitness Trainer Course Lead Instructor for 205^th RTI, and Chief Nurse for WAARNG MED DET. MAJ Seims received a BSN from WGU and recently completed a Certificate in Tactical Performance and Resiliency from The Citadel military academy. His credentials include CSCS and TSAC-F (NSCA), CCP (OPEX,) MFTC-I (US Army Physical Fitness School), and PN-1 (Precision Nutrition). He’s currently pursuing an MS in Sports and Health Sciences with a concentration in Human Performance at the American Military University.

* The opinions and assertions expressed herein are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University or DoD. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the author and do not reflect the views, opinions, or policies of The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc. Mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. The author has no financial interests or relationships to disclose.

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