Monthly Archives: January 2009
January 30, 2009
“Randy”
Complete for time
75 Power Snatches, 75/45
In honor of Randy Simmons, 51, a 27 year LAPD veteran and SWAT team member who was killed February 6, 2008 in the line of duty.
The Athlete Zone
Many of the top CrossFitters have adopted a variation of The Zone Diet. What I am calling The Athlete Zone (TAZ) is really a reconfiguration of the regular Zone blocks with, usually, a substantial increase in the fat blocks.
A very common TAZ block configuration (for the entire day) for an average guy is Carbs blocks of 10-15, Protein at 19blocks and Fats in the 75-95 range. Yes that’s 75 to 95 blocks of fat. Some go even higher. Get used to the idea that “fat doesn’t make you fat.” If you maintain a low carb diet, with the bulk of your carbs in a post workout meal/snack, and fuel your body with healthy fats you will see wonderful changes in body composition and have the energy you need to get through the whole day, even with 5-6 CrossFit WODs per week.
Just like the regular Zone, TAZ will stretch your brain and closely held assumptions about the quantity of food you consume. The amount of food you need to fuel life versus what you are used to and think you need are completely different. If you decide to try a version of the Zone expect for your greedy stomach to yell for a week or two; if it gets too bad, grab a handful of nuts to quite the hunger. You will adjust to your new portion sizes and eventually be shocked at how much you used to eat. Personally, I simply CANNOT eat as much as I used too; the massive volume just doesn’t fit anymore. Check out last nights dinner (in the post from yesterday) as an example. I actaully felt a little too full after I ate.
January 29, 2009
Complete for time
Row 1000m
15 Back Squats, 135/95
Run 200m
15 Overhead Squats, 95/65
10 Burpees
15 Front Squats, 95/65
The “The Natural State Diet”
This is pretty easy. Avoid eating grains and sugar, eat healthy animals, eat things that come from healthy animals and eat fruits and vegetables. If something tastes good and makes you feel happy but it isn’t a good nutritional choice, eat it sparingly and in social situations.
The truth is that you will sometimes be hosted by someone who eats a high carb, low fat diet and they will be pleased to fix a meal for you. Only a rude cretin would reject this hospitality and turn dinner into a lecture on proper nutrition. If you need to be a Food Nazi do it in the privacy of your own home. In these situations have an extra helping of salad, take a smaller portion of the “carby” foods.
If I know that I am in for a heavy carb meal I plan a preemptive strike at home with a high protein high fat snack (or mini-meal) so I don’t get loaded up exclusively on insulin jacking foods. That may sound rude, but I feel better and am better prepared to deal with the carbs if I do that.
Some simple guidelines for eating natural:
1. Follow the Primal Nutrition Plan
2. The more colorful plants on your plate the better
3. Make sure the animals you eat have had a healthy diet
4. If it’s wrapped in plastic or in a box, be skeptical
5. Try new things, you might like them
6. Not all organic is healthy (I know, heresy!)
7. Learn to grill
Alot of you ask me what I eat. I am trying to take pictures of my meals but when it’s time to eat I tend to be rather focused on eating and forget. I remembered today.
Tonight was “fend” night which means I was on my own and nothing was planned for me. I like fend night because it gives me an excuse to make something up or just go with an old faithful. I went faithful this evening.
From a Zone perspective:
3 blocks carb (carrots = 1, tomatoes = 1, raw whole milk = 1)
5 blocks protein (egg = 1, turkey slice = 2, cheese in the rolled turkey = 1, milk = 1)
13 blocks fat (hazelnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts and brazil nuts)
January 28, 2009
3 Rounds for time
25 Box Jumps
50 Walking Lunges
25 Push-ups
The Primal Diet
I believe in being up front with biases. We all have them but only some of us admit to them. I recommend what is called the Primal Diet, I eat this way and think you should too.
Any diet that encourages eating cheese and bacon is probably both correct and morally pure. Mark Sisson is the best source for what he calls the “Primal Blueprint“. The Blueprint is as concise an explanation as you will find of this eating/living strategy and it’s done in a humorous way to boot. You will find many similarities between The Paleo Diet and the Primal Blueprint but the most noticeable differences in my mind are:
Lean meat: Primal encourages you to eat any kind of meat you like as long as the animal has been raised properly. As an example, eat whatever cut of beef you like if it was raised eating grass not raised on grain and corn feed mixed with all sorts of other stuff you don’t even want to know about. If the animals you consume eat garbage (or worse) what do you think you are really eating?
Dairy: Go ahead and pour yourself a glass of milk, have some cheese and spread that butter. In fact, Primal encourages you to drink the good stuff, not the watered down, non-fat cloudy water. If you can find unpasteurized (raw), grass fed, hormone free sources of dairy (cow, goat, sheep, yak, whatever…) so much the better.
Paleo and Primal agree that grains (even whole grains), beans and refined sugars are best left out of your nutrition plan. Yes, that means no pasta, bread, potatoes, rice or soy. (Yeah! No tofu!!!) While they find a place for fermented or sprouted grains and beans, it’s not something you will build your nutrition plan on.
From Mark’s Daily Apple comes the Definitive Guide on The Primal Blueprint:
The essence of the Primal Blueprint is this:
Most of life is really much simpler than modern medicine and science would like to have you believe. You can have a tremendous impact on how your genes express themselves, simply by providing your cells the right environments. All you need is a basic understanding of how your body works and a simple philosophical roadmap you can use to find answers to just about any questions of health and fitness – whether it involves personal choices or lifestyle adjustments or whether medical intervention might be appropriate. With this simple strategy, you will forever be able to examine or evaluate any food choice, any form of exercise or any other behavior in the context of how it impacts your genes! Even if you decide to opt for a “bad choice”, at least you’ll know why it’s bad…
and…
The Definitive Guide to the Primal Eating Plan
Not only is it nearly impossible to accurately gauge your exact meal-to-meal calorie and macronutrient requirements, doing so will drive you crazy. In fact, to accurately figure your true structural and functional fuel needs (and hence to achieve your goals) it’s far more effective to look at a much larger span of time, like a few weeks, and aim for an “average” consumption. Then you can review that average daily intake over weeks or months and adjust accordingly. Below, I’ll give you a way to figure a “jumping off” point to start with, but remember, our genes are accustomed to the way our ancestors ate: intermittently, sporadically, sometimes in large quantities, and sometimes not at all for days. Their bodies figured out a way to maintain homeostasis and preserve lean tissue and good health through all this and so can we. Our genes want us to be lean and fit. It’s actually quite easy as long as we eat from the long list of Primal Blueprint healthy foods and try to avoid that other list of grain-laden, sugary, processed and otherwise unhealthy foods.
I really like that last line. If you are going to eat something that isn’t healthy at least know why what it does to you system. An occasional dessert is not going to instantly make you sick and weak. Over exposing yourself to sugar and other refined products will adversely affect your body.
I find so much freedom and adventure in the Primal mindset. That’s what attracted me to Primal and Mark Sisson. Look for his book coming out this spring.
January 26, 2009
“Samson”
Complete for time
30 Deadlift
30 Hang Squat Cleans
30 Jerks
The Zone: http://www.zonediet.com/
I decided to start with the Zone because it is probably the most recognized of the nutrition plans we will talk about. To boil The Zone Down and over simplify it drastically, The Zone is about the quantity of food you ingest.
Without getting too far into the minutiae, The Zone has you measure “blocks” of foods that fall into 3 categories: Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats. Based on your size and activity level you choose a number of blocks to eat each day and break that up between 3 meals and 2 snacks. When I am seriously paying attention my Zone portions this is what my day looks like:
Breakfast: 4 blocks
Lunch: 4 blocks
Snack 1: 2 blocks
Dinner: 4 blocks
Snack 2: 2 blocks
On occasion I will boost dinner to a 5 block meal because that is when the best meat gets cooked at our house.
How do you get started on The Zone?
First things first. Go buy a small kitchen scale. Measuring is easy to do and you only have to do it until you get a good idea of your portion size. We paid $10-$15 at Target and keep it right on the counter so it’s always easily available.
We use this block chart to when we measure for our meals.
January 25, 2009
REST DAY
As promised, a summary of the various nutrition plans you can use to better your health.
The Zone
Think of The Zone as properly apportioning the ‘amount’ of food you eat. The Zone tries to balance the amount of carbohydrate, protein and fat you eat with the goal of maintaining consistent hormone (especially insulin) levels throughout the day. A typical Zone plan for your day will include 3 meals and a couple snacks, each being balanced between carbs, protein and fat.
The Zone looks at food quantities in terms of “blocks” and while it takes some time to get used to the measurements of a block, once you have a the general idea it is quite easy to eyeball the food on your plate and estimate your blocks.
The Athlete Zone
CrossFit athletes across the world have been using the Zone as the basis for nutrition management and testing how changes in the block combinations affect performance. It’s been found that extra fat is a benefit to those that are asking as much from their bodies as the consistent CrossFitter does. When I am focused on Zone proportions I eat AT LEAST 5 times the fat blocks that the “normal” Zone diet calls for. I bet that last statement freaks you out a bit.
The Paleolithic Diet
Also called the caveman diet. The Paleo Diet focuses on the quality of the food you eat. The basic idea behind this nutrition plan is that people living before the agricultural revolution ate an extremely low carb diet and were free from many of the food related problems (diabetes, hypertension, obesity…) that we see so much of today. Meals for those on the Paleo Diet revolve around lean meats, lots of colorful vegetables, nuts and seeds. What did the caveman eat? Whatever he could kill and grill.
Primal Diet
Primal also focuses on the quality of the food we eat. The “Primal Blueprint” is best described by Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple. I find myself drawn to the Primal Plan. Like the Paleo diet, Primal Eating embraces meats, veggies and nuts. It also adds dairy to the mix. I’m not a huge milk lover but I enjoy a cold glass of moo from time to time and I eat lots of cheese.
The Natural State Diet
I made the name up, though you can find plenty of writers advocating the principle. The idea here is to eat food in its natural state. This would include consideration of how that food was grown. A cow that is fed grain and pumped full of growth hormones isn’t a normal cow, it’s a domesticated, mass produced meat source. Plants that have to be processed in order to be eaten aren’t as natural as something you pick and eat straight from your garden. Focus on eating things that rot or spoil quickly and avoid food ‘products’ as much as possible. Don’t worry too much about the quantity of food you eat. Be reasonable, eat lean or grass fed meats, colorful veggies and nuts; cook with a little olive oil or grass fed butter. This system is self regulating. Eating lots of vegetables fills you up and the fat will help regulate the return of hunger.
So what to do? I recommend trying it all at some point and experimenting with how you feel during the day, how you perform in your workouts and mostly, find a plan that you can enjoy. Eating well isn’t just about quality and quantity, it’s about enjoying your food. Healthy, natural food is full of tastes (not just HFCS or excessive salt) has great variety (not just marginal cuts of meat cooked in too much garlic) and looks beautiful on your plate. Why not try it for a week or two and see what you can do with it?
January 27, 2009
5 x 5 Bench Press
21-15-9
MedBall Squat Cleans, 20/10
One Arm Snatch – Right, 40/20
Kettlebell Swing, 2 pood
One Arm Snatch – Left, 40/20
The Paleolithic Diet
There are a bunch of “diets” that have an early man focused. Neanderthal Diet, Caveman Diet… Depending on your views on creation, evolution and such you will find these site more or less annoying in their proselytizing. However the human race got here at this point in time, the nutrition principles apply, we are who we are and there is a best way to feed ourselves for maximum performance and health.
The caveman didn’t eat waffles or a bowl of cereal for breakfast. The truth is, unless he had something hanging in his cave or left in a bowl from the night before he had to leave the cave, kill something and drag it home. He ate what he could kill, pick or steal. Caveman probably didn’t eat as regularly as you do either. Since he didn’t have domesticated animals he wouldn’t have had milk. Paleo man ate animals and fish, found eggs and ate seasonal fruits and vegetables. The Paleo Diet asks you to do likewise.
From the invaluable Paleo site The Paleo Diet, here is the best summary of the Paleo Diet. I have it linked on the right in the nutrition links section.
Describe how The Paleo Diet works
With readily available modern foods, The Paleo Diet mimics the types of foods every single person on the planet ate prior to the Agricultural Revolution (a mere 500 generations ago). These foods (fresh fruits, vegetables, lean meats, and seafood) are high in the beneficial nutrients (soluble fiber, antioxidant vitamins, phytochemicals, omega-3 and monounsaturated fats, and low-glycemic carbohydrates) that promote good health and are low in the foods and nutrients (refined sugars and grains, saturated and trans fats, salt, high-glycemic carbohydrates, and processed foods) that frequently may cause weight gain, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and numerous other health problems. The Paleo Diet encourages dieters to replace dairy and grain products with fresh fruits and vegetables — foods that are more nutritious than whole grains or dairy products.How does The Paleo Diet differ from the glut of diet books constantly bombarding the public?
The Paleo Diet is the unique diet to which our species is genetically adapted. This program of eating was not designed by diet doctors, faddists, or nutritionists, but rather by Mother Nature’s wisdom acting through evolution and natural selection. The Paleo Diet is based upon extensive scientific research examining the types and quantities of foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate. This nutritional plan is totally unlike those irresponsible, low-carbohydrate, high-fat, fad diets that allow unlimited consumption of artery-clogging cheeses, bacon, butter, and fatty meats. Rather, the foundation of The Paleo Diet is lean meat, seafood, and unlimited consumption of fresh fruits and veggies.
I personally find some of that offensive. Any diet that excludes bacon and cheese is probably wrong and likely immoral. Tomorrow we will loosen the bounds of the Paleo diet a little for you… I will probably also explain why Paleo restricts these things while other plans don’t.
Grass fed beef and veggies sauted in olive oil - yum
