Let's break down what observers find when they compare what people are buying in the supermarket to what level their fitness is.
✰Lets look at the first group of High Body Fat shoppers.
Not a lot of surprises here. This person will usually have a cart full of highly processed foods purchased in the larger sizes. They'll also have a large selection of beverages; especially colas or
sweetened "juices". The freezer section will also have a big share of their cart, as side dishes or whole meals are bought premade to be warmed up in the microwave. Very often, at the bottom of the cart will be the dessert aisle, cookies, cakes, and candy bars.These people are consuming double to triple the calories they need every day. The only way this is even possible is through modern food processes which pack an unnaturally high amount of highly refined calories into a small flavorful package. You will also notice that very heavy people often don't have the most food in their carts. This is because a great many calories will be coming not from the store but from fast food and restaurant experiences.
✰Next up is the consumer with an Average Body Fat. Average Body fat for men in the US is 25% and for women 35%. (The recommended body fat for men is 12% and 20% for women. So take the term "average" with a grain of salt.)
Now this group is the largest and the most interesting. In general, they will avoid the obviously unhealthy cheap cookies and snacks. You might see an occasional bottle of soda or bag of chips, but for the most part, these shoppers are making their best effort to eat well. This will often be
expressed in their desire to cook from real ingredients. Unfortunately, these people mistake processed food units for ingredients. So you'll see a lot of things like a pack of spaghetti with a jar of tomato sauce, a pack of ground beef, and a frozen loaf of garlic bread. The shopper will combine all these ingredients into something that looks very much like a homemade Italian dinner, but which in fact is just a bunch of salty processed components interlocking like lego bricks.So there will be a lot of sauce packets, a lot of breads and pastas, and a good helping of "ready to eat" meals that are just one step above the frozen dinners that have fallen out of favor in the 21st century. An attempt will be made to by "healthy" things like orange juice (which has more sugar than a cola) but time and time again the consumer will be trusting the advertisements and labels that promise this stuff isn't as bad for them as it really is. And finally, just as with the first group, you will see less food than you expect, because to have a body fat over 25% will require some committed restaurant and fast food going.
✰Finally we arrive at shoppers with Below Average Body Fat. This group is the first that shows an affection for the fruit and vegetable aisles. Leafy green things will be popping out here and there. There will be fewer boxes and shiny packets, and more earth tones in the cart. When
processed food is bought by these people, it will often be things that are one small component of a meal. For example I saw a fairly fit woman who had fresh tomatoes, basil, mushrooms, and a box of lasagna sheets. The lasagna was clearly the only part of her meal she wasn't going to construct from scratch.You'll also notice that the lower a person's fat percentage, the less beverages they are buying. The cart will also appear fuller, because, one, fresh fruits and vegetables take up a lot of space, and two, because these people tend to stay out of restaurants and prepare most meals at home.
✰Which leads up to the Very Low Body Fat group of people. A lot of people wrote in to tell me they couldn't even find one person like this. That's because having a low body fat in this day and age is very, very challenging. If you partake of almost any modern food you're going to be getting
an unnatural load of calories in one sitting.You can see this in action when you look into a thin persons cart. Almost everything will be fresh from the vegetable and fruit aisles. You'll see a nice mix of colors. But you won't see many food company labels. These people will buy a lot of whatever produce is in season, not because they have their pulse on nature's cycles, but because in season vegetables and fruits are cheapest, and these people eat so many of these things that they have to buy what's inexpensive to stay within their budget.
When one of these people buys something indulgent, it will be a small quantity of good quality, like a dark chocolate, a nice wine, or a rich cheese. And funnily enough, you will never, ever see a diet product in a thin person's cart.
Now you might remember that I asked you to do a sub-classification of "S" or "W" as you tried to figure out what category our shoppers were. "S" was for strong, muscular bodies, and "W" was for weak, underdeveloped physiques.
The food has very little to do with somone's muscle mass. That only comes from what they do. If someone has an active life, they'll be edged into the S category. If they are sedentary they'll be a W. But the main aspect of how they look, they're body fat, will not change with exercise alone.
Which is all to say that what you eat is the determining factor in how you look. You can go to the gym or build houses for a living but if you eat like a fat person you'll be a fat person... with muscles underneath. If you eat like a low fat person and sit on the sofa all day you'll still look like a thin person, just without any muscles underneath. So get your food right first, and then worry about how many reps and sets of what exercise how many times a week later.
Keep observing people in the supermarket and you'll see what I've written here is absolutely true. Eat like the Low Body Fat crowd, and you'll find that you become one of them!
