I’ve been doing CrossFit for a while now. In fact, I completed a Level 1 Certification Seminar this weekend. The only reason I don’t know if I passed the exam is because they had a large (and frankly inexcusable) IT failure, and we have to wait for our results from HQ. Yes, I hope to train others in the future, but I need to feel a little more advanced first.
I do have a serious case of ass envy after this weekend. My god, the female CrossFit Certification staff have such great asses. That’s not a very specific goal, however, so I don’t think that one can be on the list. “Get a Better Ass”….too general. 
Anyway, part of the reason I haven’t said anything about it is because CrossFit’s appeal is a bit hard to explain. Doing kettlebell swings and medicine ball runs in the blazing hot sun for 10 minutes with five pushups done on hot asphalt every 60 seconds does NOT sound like fun to most people. It sounded pretty awful to me before I did it. But afterwards, I felt pretty good that my partner in that madness (KBS and runs alternated, everyone drops what they are doing for the pushups) and I did 178 KBS in the 10 minutes we had for the drill.
When people go in for CF, they tend to go in for it in a Big Way, and I’m no exception there. As a system for achieving over all physical fitness, it’s amazing, but CrossFitters tend to evangelize, and that put me off for a while. In addition to that, I don’t live near a CF box – minimum 45 minutes each way – and it’s a lot to take on doing at home. I did my foundations/elements while I was in St. Louis early this summer and staying near several CrossFit boxes. I did some WODs there, then started up at home.
If you’ve never heard of CrossFit, the gist of it is this: Constantly varied functional movements executed at high-intensity. There’s ample info out there on the web, so I don’t feel like I need to talk about it here. I will be posting my WODs over at BrandX in the daily scaled WOD thread. I’m not going to do that here because I’ve seen that quickly overtake all other material on a blog, and I just don’t want to go there. I might put my WOD in a sidebar here, I haven’t decided, but it will not be part of the posts.
Moving on…
I think systems work best when you work them, so going whole hog into CrossFit means using a 3-day on 1-day off workout schedule. This seemed completely brutal to me before, but after this weekend I now understand programming and scaling for specific goals, and I do understand the “why” of that schedule now. The other thing I wasn’t doing is, drumroll please, The Zone Diet.
It’s hard to believe I’ve never tried it, but frankly, I was put off by the book and the crass commercial products that accompanied it. In particular, Zone bars are junk food and hideous hack. The book pushes hard on cutting fat and there’s even a Soy Zone book, for gosh sakes, and I’m sure it’s pretty obvious why I don’t accept either of those ideas.
The way it’s presented to new, aspiring CF trainers is a bit different and considerably simpler. After people achieve their weight goals, they start upping fat. Most of the extremely-low-body-fat types eat upwards of 4X fat blocks. CrossFit emphasizes that no foods are forbidden, but that quality really matters, and you should only venture into the center aisles at the grocery store for nuts, seeds and olive oil, and then get the hell out. They push working the perimeter, just like Primal, Paleo and any whole foods diet does. You can do the Zone Paleo if you like. Oh, and the CrossFit Zone chart doesn’t push all lean meats, skim milk and low-fat cheese: it’s just “cheese” or “ground beef” or “milk”.
I am loosening up my diet a bit. My prohibited foods list is down to: gluten, legumes, vegetable oils, and refined sugar. I might try a 1/4 cup of pinto beans or a little tempeh at some point, but legumes have failed me in the past, so I might not.
I’m not really trying to lose weight (who wouldn’t like to lose *a few* pounds?), but I’m not into elite levels of body fat either. Still, I think their blocks-per-day recommendations are too low for me. I’ll be fine-tuning that depending on how I feel, but I’m going to be having more blocks instead of 2X fats, at least for now. We’ll see what happens. I am weighing and measuring because the carbs and fats (protein is weighed out) are all in cups and tablespoons, and I used to weigh those. I feel that for me, it’s important to stay the hell off of fitday, and just go by my body fat scale and how I feel. If I need to change it, I’ll drop two blocks and double the fat. I have to say that I’m skeptical about that working for me, however. OH, and five meals a day? Are you kidding? I will not be doing that!
So yeah, The Zone Diet. Who saw that one coming? I sure didn’t!
I’m pretty big on diet shake-ups: if what you’re doing is not working for you then change it. Doing the same thing (or more of it) and expecting better results is just *nuts*, if you think about it.
Just in the last few months I have finally wrapped my brain around the idea that insulin is not the only hormone. I’ve recently gone back and read the actual food suggestions in Neanderthin and The Paleo Diet and found that those diets have 25-35% of calories (maybe 150g in a 2,000 calorie diet) from carbohydrates. For The Primal Blueprint, that’s near the top of the curve, but it’s definitely still on the curve. Certainly, from the point of view of the USDA Dietary Guidelines, that is a low-carb diet, but for people that come from a world of GCBC and Atkins…from the way they react to the idea of eating a banana, you’d think it was SAD-levels of carbohydrate.
I found myself saying on a forum “but I eat a lot more fruit than is currently fashionable in Paleo circles”, and I realized that it is probably more than just fashionable — it’s more like a dogma. In particular, there seems to be a terror of fructose, but the accepted leading authority, Robert Lustig, has no problems with fruit. He thinks fruit juices are a really bad idea, but not whole fruit because it comes with fiber. I’ve seen others (and I’m not sure who, unfortunately) say that juice is OK if it’s fresh squeezed in your own kitchen (something Ray Audette has on his Neanderthin meal plans, BTW) – that what makes fruit bad is *cooking* it. Since virtually all bottled juice is pasteurized, that would eliminate all but that you’ve squeezed yourself. That whole end of the discussion seems to provoke incredulity in people like Jimmy Moore who think all sugar is bad and that’s that. I believed for a long time that any kind of sugar would make me gain weight, but it just doesn’t.
A trip around paleohacks.com will show that there are more than a handful of folks that have stalled out with muscle gains and/or weight loss while eating 50g or less of carbohydrate a day. I see people on the low-carb boards and forums decide that they are eating too many calories, so they take carbs lower or go ZC because more protein and/or more fatty meat allows them to eat fewer calories. They either can’t stick to it or it still doesn’t work, and they just come on and off the threads alternately sounding discouraged or confused. It gets a little sad to read because it gets to the point where, though they diet is failing them ultimately, they think *they* are a failure for not sticking to it properly. If you can’t stick to it, that’s a failure of the diet too. TRY SOMETHING ELSE. Many of these folks have lost a lot of weight already, and they have demonstrated they have will power…but suddenly it’s not working, so it must be their fault!
Here’s how it seems to me:
- If you have an insulin resistance problem, low-carb will work well for you and you probably don’t need to deliberately reduce calories. You may or may not be eating less, but reducing the glucose load on your already burdened liver and pancreas is so helpful that you lose weight no matter what.
- If you don’t have an insulin resistance problem, low-carb will work well for you if it causes a decent-sized spontaneous reduction in calories.
The insulin resistant folks seem to stop losing weight when they have solved their sugar problem. This is often way before they’d *like* to stop losing weight. Eventually, kind friends and internet acquaintances start talking about how health is more important than appearance. Goodness knows, I think that a long-term low-carb diet is quite healthy for people. All their biomarkers are excellent, but if they want to be thin, they need to take a chance on something else!
I’ve made this marinade twice now, and both times it was excellent, but I think I got better results today.
1/4 cup fresh squeeze lime juice
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1/4 cup diced onion
1 t. sea salt
4 garlic cloves
Rooster sauce to taste (I used a goodly squirt)
The lime and pineapple work really well together. I used boneless skinless breasts and thighs, and marinated at least four hours. I chopped and skewered the meat, and grilled over charcoal fairly slowly, dumping on additional marinade and rotating the skewers.
Chicken is not my favorite meat, but these were darn good.
I had these with traditional BBQ fare on the 4th and today I just had slaw and mango. The mango worked really well with this.
After spending the afternoon at the St. Louis City Museum, I’m starting to think fun exercise is something I need fit in every week.
The grind that occurs at the gym is a big reason why I don’t go to one.
I don’t really do any exercise I don’t enjoy. If I don’t like it, I find some other way to work that part of my body, but I haven’t really had so much fun being active for a long time, with the exception of some days backpacking. A lot of backpacking is about immersion in nature and meeting constant challenges, but sometimes, it really just is a long slog up a viewless mountain in 85′ heat. Other times, it’s physically fun, climbing over weird terrain along the side of a cliff or scaling a pile of boulders. I used to actually dread that kind of thing, but the last four bits of complex rock terrain I’ve done[1], I actually recall quite fondly! Anything on the A.T. with a bad weather trail is generally awesome.
The only kind of gym I’d actually consider would be CrossFit, and I’m not doing that because it just means I will spend waaaay too much time commuting to a freakin’ gym. It’s certainly a different kind of workout experience, but it’s still mostly about meeting challenges. CrossFit supports a number of sport activities, but most people don’t seem to make time for those, and instead spend their time at the box. I know people get a big sense of accomplishment, but I also note that CrossFit and the Paleo world generally contain a lot of forceful, Type A personalities who are also free-thinkers or libertarians. CF is kind of an anti-gym already, but I sure haven’t seen anything about it that looks painful.
I’m thinking more along the lines of climbing more trees, and when I get back to Virginia, I’m going to hike a section of the Massanutten Trail that’s a knife-edge for a long way. The map is labeled “experienced hikers only”.  I’ve done it before, so I do know what’s there.
[1] Off the top of my head: Blackstack Cliffs, Laurel Canyon, a big pile of boulders near the Vermont line (with it’s own blue blaze for bad weather) and Albert Mountain.
I don’t really have issues with using salt. When I make all my own food, I generally eat 1,500-2,000 mg per day, which isn’t a lot…but I don’t care. Which is why I’ve always ignored sodium-free salt.
What I do sometimes care about, however, is the fact that my diet is always well under the FDA recommendation for potassium. I eat a lot of vegetables and some fruit, and I almost never hit it. I’m not sure what they are expecting you to eat, exactly, but apparently, not what I’m eating.
Also, when one is losing a lot of water from dieting, heat or exertion, it’s easy to not feel your best from electrolyte issues. Gatorade is either loaded with sugar or contains fake sweeteners, and is generally a pretty jive plastic food anyway.
Magnesium and calcium are easy to supplement, but potassium only comes in 99mg pills. The RDA is around 4.7g, so that’s a lot of pills – generally the whole bottle! Also, when I’ve taken potassium on an empty stomach, I’ve gotten a horrible stomach ache, so I will never do that again.
So, an old answer is to swap out some of your sea salt for salt substitute.
 
With 610mg of potassium per 1/4 teaspoon, it’s the best option in potassium supplementation.
This is a review of Lyle McDonald’s The Ketogenic Diet: A complete guide for the Dieter and Practitioner. I’ve also recently read a couple of his other books, but after thinking about it a while, I learned the most from this one.
I’ve had this sitting around for a while, and I didn’t read it because I figured that 1) I wasn’t interested in a ketogenic diet at the moment and 2) I know what a ketogenic diet is already. The thing is that the book is chock full of biochemistry that I didn’t know and that was very enlightening.
Because of all the information it contains on everything related to metabolism, I’d recommend it for any non-scientist with a stubborn weight problem or really, any weight problem at all. No matter what kind of weight-loss diet you want to do, the processes detailed and explained in this book are really important to understand.
I also have a keen interest in his book The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook, but I’m not going to talk about that until Dr. Mike’s Thin So Fast shows up. It’s my understanding that it’s also a Protein Sparing Modified Fast, which is what the McDonald’s RFL Diet actually is. Anyway, moving on.
In case you don’t know what a ketogenic diet is, here’s a definition:
In the most general terms, a ketogenic diet is any diet that causes ketone bodies to be produced by the liver, shifting the body’s metabolism away from glucose and towards fat utilization. More specifically, a ketogenic diet is one that restricts carbohydrates below a certain level (generally 100 grams per day), inducing a series of adaptations to take place. Protein and fat intake are variable, depending on the goal of the dieter. However, the ultimate determinant of whether a diet is ketogenic or not is the presence (or absence) of carbohydrates.
Atkins is a ketogenic diet, as are most low-carb plans. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what ketosis is, and instead of defending it, I’m just going to say that it IS NOT KETOACIDOSIS. This is well covered by McDonald – most people cannot provoke ketoacidosis since people without diabetes that are not alcoholics have feedback loops that prevent it ever happening. If you could cause this to happen just by not eating carbohydrates, how on earth would our human ancestors have made it through the ice age? Answer: they wouldn’t. Your system will deal, so don’t worry about it.
I now understand exactly how the brain starts using ketones for fuel, why it causes fatty tissue breakdown, and how much is too much protein on a low-carb diet. More importantly, I also understand how dietary fat works, and I see why I didn’t lose weight by shifting to a high-fat, low-carb diet. I’d get into ketosis, but it was mostly from dietary fat, so it never really touched my own stores. You can still eat fat and get your body to break down it’s own fat, but not too much.
Another really important thing: I understand why stalls happen on low-carb diets. The same hormones that caused your weight to drop are only made even MORE fat sparing by cutting carbs more – the usual solution. There are a lot of questions from people on the internet wondering how on earth they could be eating 20 carbs a day and not losing weight. The answer? They need to do a re-feed because their system has freaked out and lowered their metabolism by using hormones that are not insulin. It’s much easier for women to provoke this condition with a long-term very low-carb diet, but it can happen to men too. It’s more complex than this, but I’m not going to quote a whole chapter here.
One of things about protein that I learned that’s easy to explain is that it’s about 58% non-ketogenic. Let’s say I’m eating 125g of protein and 75g of net carbohydrate (we can ignore fiber here). This means that I will have 147g of glucose available for my body as fuel. This will definitely not be ketogenic. If I keep protein the same and lower net carbs to 50g, I should get into ketosis. The other factor is fat: about 10% of fat grams are made available as glucose in your bloodstream. Fat is *not quite* too cheap to meter, and eating more fat will actually lower utilization from your fat stores. If you’re trying to lose fat, that’s not something you want to do.
One of the other stumbling blocks for low-carb eaters is this one:
Individuals who have been on a low-carbohydrate diet (of any type) will show a rapid increase in bodyweight when carbohydrates are added to the diet (2,3). This weight gain…can be anywhere from 5 to 11 pounds (2,3).
For dieters who focus only on the scale, this rapid weight gain can be disheartening, pushing them straight back into a low-carbohydrate eating style. The inability to differentiate between weight gain and fat gain tends to promote the belief in dieters that excess carbohydrates (rather than excess calories) are the cause of their problems. This may make it difficult for these individuals to ever wean themselves away from the ketogenic diet.
For people who read AND FOLLOW the official Atkins Diet, they know to re-introduce carbs slowly. Most people just stop cold and add carbs back, gaining weight and then saying the diet failed them. In reality, they didn’t follow the diet.
The vital bit that McDonald suggests is this one: “for every 2 grams of carbohydrate which are added to the diet, 1 gram of fat must be removed.” This is because calories DO matter. How much you use and how much you waste has to do with your metabolism, but eating too many calories is going to cause you to gain weight over time. When you first stop dieting, your metabolism is often quite keen to put that fat right back on, so maintenance shouldn’t be ignored. McDonald recommends around a 65% fat diet, so it shouldn’t be too painful to remove some of that to add back carbs.
I don’t agree with everything last he says, but the science is understandable and well-referenced.
This book is very much worth reading, especially for Paleo/Primal types that are looking to lose (more) weight or lean out. I’m very well read in terms of diet books of the Paleo and low-carb stripe, and I learned a ton from this book. Yes, it’s expensive, so I’ll leave it to you if it’s worth it, but if you’re really stuck, it’s probably worth the $50.
I’ve been reading chapters of Good Calories, Bad Calories again, and I was finally moved to look for Dr. Yudkin’s books on Amazon. His books Pure White and Deadly and Sweet and Dangerous cost way too much, but I did buy a copy of Eat Well, Slim Well.
Normally, I love diet books that are all about the meal plans, as this one is, but the recipes and meal plans were pretty disappointing. I think, for my taste, the original Atkins book (1972) is better.
Anyway, the introduction *was* interesting, and I’ve put up a PDF of it.
Here is a list of “unrestricted” foods: those, that is, which you don’t have to limit but which limit themselves. They are meat, poultry, fish, eggs, butter, margarine, cream, leafy vegetables. In addition, you should take between half and one pint of milk a day, up to half a pound of fruit, and up to two ounces of cheese.
The margarine is not something anyone recommends now, but in 1982 (the copyright date), people were a lot more warm and fuzzy about it.
Anyway, I’m keeping an eye out for a cheap copy of Pure White and Deadly.
One of the big excuses that I see people make when it comes to eating “clean”, whether that’s paleo or an elimination or rotation diet is that they can’t afford to buy organic food or grass-fed meat. Somehow, they think that if they can’t do that, they can’t do the program.
The first step to getting better meat is cutting antibiotics and hormones. This is not necessarily organic, but it’s one heck of a lot better. Watch for sales on the natural or organic meats. Figure out when your grocery store marks down stuff in the meat case – mine usually does it on Tuesday. Cook it or freeze it immediately, and you’ll save some money.
If you can’t manage naturally produced or organic, buy the lean cuts and add healthy fats yourself. Much of the toxins are accumulated in fat, and in CAFO meat, the fat has a lot of Omega-6, which is not something anyone needs more of in their diet. Buy a crock pot, and learn to use marinades to tenderize and flavor your meat.
In some cases, it’s really not necessary to buy organic at all, and even if you can’t afford *any* organic veggies or fruits, you’re better off with conventional foods than using money as an excuse for eating a lousy diet.
Some foods *are* likely to be contaminated, and you will get a benefit from buying organic. You might find that frozen versions of organic foods are cheaper and will not make much difference in the eating. If you’re throwing berries in a shake or smoothie, why buy fresh at all? If you’re cooking your dark leafy veggies anyway, buy them frozen. Organic carrots are just pennies more than conventional where I shop – literally 1 cent per pound more.
Watch for sales, and try to buy in season. Squash tend to be really expensive when they are out of season, as are fresh tomatoes. Try to buy first and plan your meals based on what you’ve got. I’ve found that farmer’s markets are not always cheaper, but the food is always fresher. Learn when your favorite foods are available and buy them then.
To most of you, I’m sure this seems like common sense, but I think people who are resisting change just don’t think things through.
Speaking of farmer’s markets, they are a great place to buy eggs. Small-scale production of eggs is fairly easy, so you can buy them in many places. What you want are chickens that actually eat what they want – generally referred to as pastured since the free-range term has become a bit poisoned. “Vegetarian fed” is not better. Chickens are omnivores, and they pick over dirt to find bugs. All chickens are supplemented with grain, but whether that grain is organic or not is not that big of a deal. Ask the folks selling their eggs where their chickens live and if they are allowed free access to grass. I typically pay $3 per dozen for non-organic feed, naturally raised chickens that spend their days on pasture. I’ve heard that if you demand organic feed, the eggs cost twice that in the DC area farmer’s markets.
If you can’t find local eggs, get the Omega-3 eggs that are raised without hormones or antibiotics. The color of the shell does not matter – that’s just about the chicken breed – and white is almost always cheaper. White, naturally raised (not organic) Omega-3 eggs go for $2.50 – $3 in my area. In the winter, that’s what I buy. In a temperate climate, chickens just don’t lay much in the dark, cold months.
Processed foods are expensive. Once you give those up, you’ll have more money for foods that don’t even need an ingredients label.
I found an interesting Russ Roberts podcast with Art DeVany. The first 25 minutes is about baseball and steroids, and while I’m not a baseball nut, I still found DeVany’s ideas quite interesting.
The rest of it is about evolutionary diets and fitness. It’s definitely worth hearing, no matter which thing you’re interested in.
Re: cardio vs HIT, I never thought of this (paraphrased from memory and show notes):
For example, most of the early laboratory work on exercise was done with aerobics exercise because that was done in the lab. You can’t do anaerobic or intense exercise very well that way because the body never hits a steady state. Models are far more difficult. There’s bias toward testing aerobic exercise simply because that’s where the light is…
(i.e. Look for your keys under the street light because the light is better there.)
I have switched to sprints/HIT myself – it sure takes a lot less time! That’s not to say that I won’t do walking, hiking or yoga, but for the moment, I’m not taking them seriously as training exercise.
The Whole9 folks are doing another Pure Paleo 30-day challenge. You’ll find an explanation of it here, and if you’re looking to cut the crap out of your diet, there’s a lot of support available.
The “Tough Love” section applies to ANY dietary changes you want to make. The whole article is absolutely worth reading, but this bit is super important:
- It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Giving up heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard. You won’t get any coddling, and you won’t get any sympathy for your “struggles”. Because if we (Dallas and Melissa) can do this while living out of a car on our road trip, relying on a restaurant or a cooler for 90% of our meals, while constantly socializing for business, YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE. It’s only thirty days, and it’s for the most important cause on earth – the only physical body you will ever have in this lifetime. So suck it up and join us.
- Don’t tell us you “slipped”. Unless you physically tripped and your face landed in a box of Krispy Kremes, you DID NOT SLIP. You made a choice to eat something of poor quality. It’s always a choice, so do not phrase it as if you had an accident. Commit here, 100%, for the full 30 days, or go somewhere else.
- You never, ever, ever HAVE to eat anything you don’t want to eat. You’re all big boys and girls. Toughen up. Learn to say no (or make your Mom proud and say, “No, thank you”). Learn to stick up for yourself. Just because it’s your sister’s birthday, or your best friend’s wedding, or your company outing or the Fourth of July does not mean you have to eat anything. It’s always a choice, and we would hope that you stopped succumbing to peer pressure in 10th grade.
- This does require a bit of effort, people. If you’re cutting grains, legumes and dairy for the first time, you have to replace those calories with something. You have to make sure you’re eating enough, that your vitamins and nutrients are balanced, that you’re getting enough protein, fat and carbohydrates. You’ll have to figure out what to eat for lunch, how to order at a restaurant and how often you’ll need to grocery shop. There are a ton of good resources search-able on this site, and Googling “Paleo Recipes” is a great place to start. We’ll give you plenty of resources here, but take responsibility for your own plan. Improved health, fitness and performance doesn’t happen just because you’re now taking a pass on chocolate milk.
I’m a big believer in the whole idea of diving into your changes 100%. Whatever you want to cut, CUT IT. There’s a lot to be said for making a decision and sticking to it. No tapering off. I’m not a smoker, so I’ve never had the experience of quitting smoking, but I’ve certainly seen a lot of people around me quit. I can tell you that the people I’ve seen who quit successfully do it cold turkey.
Step up to the plate and COMMIT to whatever it is you’ve decided to change about your life. It will boost your confidence, and it will make you feel better about everything you do.
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