I've said many times again and again that what you put in your body is actually much more important than what sort of workout you do. Aside from elite athletes and power-lifters, the stuff you put into your body is significantly more important than what sort of work you do as far as exercise is concerned afterwards. There is no way to out-exercise a bad diet is the way that saying goes, and every trainer worth talking to will say exactly this. If you were running marathons every day you could eat whatever you wanted, but then again, if you were filling your body up with garbage food you wouldn't be capable of running a marathon. It's a dreadful Catch-22.
The issue that a lot of countries, and very noticeably in the United States, is that the food that is the worst for you is the least expensive. I remember 10 years ago or so that McDonalds had a special going on where you could order up to 5 Big Macs and they were $1 each. I have no idea how MCD turned this into profit but honestly, what else can you get for a dollar.
I recently ran into this picture while doing, well i don't remember what I was doing and it was probably sent to me by a friend who is also interested in staying fit.
I think that everyone knows that the stuff on the left of that picture is terrible for you for the most part, except for maybe whatever that bread thing is. Processed food is something that is made in massive batches with very low quality ingredients and a ton of chemicals to make it palatable. I enjoy potato chips as much as the next guy but I know when I look on the package and it says 150 calories, they are referring to an absurdly small serving size that nobody actually adheres to. For example, on the bag of Doritos that I am looking at right now it says one serving is 150 calories. That isn't so bad right? Well the serving size is 8 chips. Have you EVER eaten just 8 Doritos? The serving size should be the entire bag because that's how much of it people are going to eat. They use this same trick on 300ml to half liter bottles of drinks commonly found in minimarts. It will say 80 calories and you think "well that isn't so bad" but then in teeny tiny print it says "per 100ml." So now your half liter of drink is actually 400 calories and this is way too much. I don't think anyone buys a drink from a minimart and then goes and pours it into glasses to share with 5 friends.
We need to be mindful of these devious advertising tactics that somehow the manufacturers get away with. However, this is not really the point of what I am writing right now. The point is that eating healthy can actually be very expensive. This comment was selected as the top comment for the original post.
I don't know "Jad" but I do know that he has a very good point. In most places in the world, unless that natural fruit item is actually grown in that area, it is going to cost a massive amount of money. When I look at the prices of produce in my own grocery store it is very easy to tear through a couple hundred dollars for healthy options whereas I can eat fast food for 5 bucks a go. This is just the way that life is and that is why I encourage people to investigate the healthier options that are available at cheap fast-food places. Not everything that they sell is terrible for you but you are going to have to do the homework for yourself.
Life is about balance. Unless you are super wealthy you simply cannot afford to eat the natural foods that it seems every health-minded person is pushing on you. This is one tragic aspect of attempting to live in a healthy manner. I eat a lot of what personal trainers would consider to be garbage food, but I always balance it out with some exercise. Would I lose more weight if I was eating fresh meat and vegetables for every meal? Of course, but if I tried to do that I would be losing weight in my wallet at the same time.
For the most part I just tell people that a good starting point is to stop drinking sodas or fizzy drinks. Those are basically just sugar or worse, high-fructose corn syrup, and I believe that these are the worst possible things that you can put into your body.
I have no educational background to back up my stories. I know what I know from living life and from doing a lot of things wrong that lead to me being obese in my 30's. I am not in my 40's and am happy with my body and the strongest I have ever been in my life. I hope you can learn from my mistakes