Thursday 10 December 2009
Update: Steady bodyweight at 135# 
My body is happy at this weight. No longer need to justify tons of garbage eating to gain weight, nor will I starve myself on a severely calorically restricted paleo-type diet or follow strict rules of any diet or mad calorie/macronutrient ratio counting. I will, to the best of my living-in-a-normal-society ability, follow traditional food principles: protein, fat, and some carbs at every meal, using good dairy fats (real butter, real cream, and real cheese) and make my own preserves (salsa, etc) to maximize nutrient availability and absorption, and get my carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables in season as much as possible. Since I’m doing intensive strength training, I’ll need more carbs than the average Joe, so I will have a bowl of oatmeal, some beans & rice, or slice of sprouted grain bread with meals on training days. I’ll post my meals and rationale in hopes of helping others adopt real food principles.
REST DAY.
This week I made:
Oatmeal from steel cut oats, soaked overnight in water with a tablespoon of Astro Plain Balkan Yogurt. Cooks up quickly, add a tablespoon of honey after it’s cooled and serve with Organic Meadows whipping cream. That’s right, all natural 35% fat whipping cream. Mmmmm! Great breakfast with eggs for training days!
Tex Mex Beans & Rice:
Long Grain Brown Rice: Heat up 2 tbsp each butter and olive oil. Sautee 2 cups dry rice for about 5 minutes, until it starts to turn milky. Add 4 cups of water, or substitute some water for chicken broth or coconut milk, and bring to a boil. Let it boil until the water is reduced to the level of the rice, then cover and simmer on the lowest heat for 1.5 hours.
Beans: You could soak beans overnight and cook for 2+ hours the next day. I’ve been buying canned beans by Eden Organics, available at Metro. They have black and kidney beans, take your pick!
Mix the rice with a can of beans, add another tbsp olive oil and some chili flakes, salt, and pepper.
Carrot Salad:
Type 1: Grated carrots, pineapple, yogurt, and raisins
Type 2: Grated carrots, grated apple, raisins
Nachos: ground beef, red pepper, green onions, tex mex cheese, full fat sour cream. Found corn tostadas that seem pretty good at Metro.
Chicken:
Legs for chicken salad with mayo/avocado and veggies
Breasts with coconut oil and pineapple OR butter and lemon juice and veggies
What’s in my fridge?
DAIRY:
Whole fat dairy products are a great source of the fat-soluble vitamins A , D, E, and K. They also facilitate your body’s absorption of other nutrients. Even lactose-intolerant people can handle real butter and real cream pretty well, and its worth it for the flavour and vitamins from these nutritious foods. If you don’t mind paying a little extra for quality, Organic Meadows brand is a local dairy co-op based out of Guelph.
Butter: I buy Organic Meadows cultured butter. A bit more expensive but much better, and even if you put it on everything (like I do), it lasts a long time.
Cream: Organic Meadows makes a great whipping cream. Add to scrambled eggs, coffee, oatmeal…
Kefir or yogurt: a cultured dairy product, great as a snack with berries or in a smoothie.
Get the full fat stuff and from whole milk, not “milk ingredients.”
I get my kefir from Starsky, either the affordable Elite Dairy brand or the Organic stuff from PineHedge Farms in glass bottles.
Whole Milk: If you’re going to drink milk, enjoy as it was made: with fat! Partly skimmed milks (2% etc) contain powdered milk, which has been heated to extreme temperatures and lost nutritional value. The vitamins are in the fat, and have to be re-added synthetically to skim milk. Powdered milk also contains oxidized cholesterol which, unlike naturally occurring cholesterol, causes arterial plaque build-up. No place to get raw milk around here so we won’t get into that.
Cheese: Good in moderation, always full fat.
MEAT:
Meat: Omega-3 Eggs, chicken breast, ground meats (great and cheap for homemade burgers!), canned tuna, fresh fish/seafood…
Starsky has small containers of ready-to-eat salmon pieces, cheaper than any smoked or fresh stuff and great in salads.
Bacon: from Starsky. Superior quality and taste than the standard packaged stuff. Longos deli counter also apparently has decent stuff.
FRUITS & VEGETABLES:
Assorted frozen berries, great for instant shakes.
Bananas: great for after a workout.
Pineapple: goes great with chicken, on its own or in a salad.
Apples: raw or make applesauce to have with chicken.
Avocado: fresh guacamole tastes great on a burger patty or as a dip for fresh veggies! Choose avocados that yield to the touch and have darker skins, but not too squishy. Buy the firmer ones and let them sit on the counter or place in a brown paper bag til they ripen, then keep in the fridge. Throw an avocado and a clove of garlic, maybe some tomatoes or salsa in the Magic Bullet.
Broccoli Slaw: pre-packaged salad from Sobeys or Metro. A $2 bag makes 4 salads, mostly shredded broccoli stalks with a bit of carrot and red cabbage.
Red pepper: relatively expensive but so good! Also use jalapenos liberally!
Salad: Throw whatever you like together – carrots, celery, cucumber, pepper, zucchini, green onions…
If you pre-chop a bunch of veggies and toss with Extra Virgin Olive Oil and vinegar (balsamic, or I also use Eden Foods red wine and apple cider vinegars, from Metro), the salad will stay fresh all week and you can just grab a scoop and go each day!
POST-WORKOUT CARBS: Earn your carbs!
Bread: Ezekiel bread is made from sprouted organic grains, which are nutritionally superior and easier to digest than those in regular processed breads. I found it in the freezer section at Metro, but you can get it and other fresh sprouted grain breads at organic stores everywhere. According to NT, if you put raw honey on the warmed bread and let it sit for 15 minutes, the enzymes in the honey will help digest the bread! I keep it in the warmed toaster oven, then slather with almond butter.
Brown Rice: When soaked overnight in water and cooked for at least 50 min, brown rice is easier to digest and the nutrients absorbed easier. Make 2 cups to last the week. A small serving goes great with vegetables in cold salad or with stir-fry.
Steel-cut Oatmeal: Add a bit of yogurt to a 1/2 cup of water and a 1/2 cup of oatmel and let it sit overnight. This small amount of prep will make the oatmeal cook up easily in 5 minutes, and make it more nutritious. Enjoy with butter or cream, raw honey, and berries.
Sweet Potato: Try mashed or sliced and baked with apple.
Purple Potatoes: Allegedly higher anti-oxidant value, same price as regular potatoes.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Sea Salt: The all-natural stuff. Sea salt has many important minerals that facilitate digestion and nutrient absorption, and makes food tastier. Limit your refined iodized stuff hiding in processed foods and add a bit of good quality sea salt to your meals.
Almond butter, Raw Honey, Thai Kitchen Coconut Milk, Mayo with Olive Oil…
Update!
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what diet I’m on and what training I’m doing. I’ve been eating Zone-Paleo-ish, super low-carb, for a long time now, and have often gone to extremes. Now, I need to just focus on eating good food, even if its not the 100% best super food, and not fear all carbs. I’m trying to put on muscle and do strictly strength training for a couple of months. I saw a lot of great progress with eating clean and CrossFit workouts, I was lean and fast and strong, and I highly recommend the program to anyone looking for fitness improvements. However, after more than a year, I wanted to really see how strong I can get, and that requires a lot more food and carbs than I was eating, and a lot more heavy back squats. There are countless ideas of “the best foods/diet” out there, and my stance has been dynamic on a number of issues. I can’t pretend to know all the answers, so I’ll just tell you what I’m doing and why and you can use my ideas to help you make your own decisions.
I’m certified in CrossFit Nutrition, which is Robb Wolf and Paleo-Zone, for eating super clean, gluten/dairy-free (more than 1/4 of the American population is sensitive to these 2 foods) and dropping weight fast. Mark’s Daily Apple has hundreds of articles and recipes along the same lines. In the near future I’ll be looking in to the Precision Nutrition plan for fueling athletic performance, which lets you “earn your carbs” by eating high quality grains etc after your workout. I’ve also taken an interest in the Weston A Price Foundations’ dietary guidelines, which show that the modernized versions of real food like grains and dairy are not as healthy as they are when prepared traditionally. I’m using the recipe book Nourishing Traditions to help with making more of my own foods and doing things like soaking oatmeal overnight before cooking. I think that a healthy, individualized balance between these theories will lead to happy and nutritious sustainable eating. I’m just going to write down what I’m doing and learning and see what happens. I welcome you to post your own experiences, questions and constructive comments. It’s all one big long experiment so let’s enjoy the ride!
Healthy Living Challenge at Element CrossFit
Coach Greg Glassman has said : “A theoretical hierarchy exists for the development of an athlete. It starts with nutrition and moves to metabolic conditioning, gymnastics, weightlifting, and finally sport. This hierarchy largely reflects foundational dependence, skill, and to some degree, time ordering of development. The logical flow is from molecular foundations, cardiovascular sufficiency, body control, external object control, and ultimately mastery and application. This model has greatest utility in analyzing athletes’ shortcomings or difficulties. We don’t deliberately order these components but nature will. If you have a deficiency at any level of “the pyramid” the components above will suffer.”
In short, your metabolic conditioning and performance in gymnastics, weightlifting, and sport are directly impacted by and dependent on your diet. Even small changes in your eating habits can make a big difference in your health and fitness.
Starting November 1st, we’re doing a Healthy Living Challenge at Element CrossFit. Members of www.elementcrossfit.com can access recipes and other resources in the Member Resources Section to help you. It might seem like a hassle to track and measure your meals, but you get accustomed to eyeballing correct proportions of foods quickly, and it’s worth it in the end. If you don’t want to participate in the challenge, you don’t have to be hardcore about it, but if you’re taking the time and effort to improve your fitness by CrossFitting, you should at least try to incorporate some of the things we have learned from the Zone Diet and the Paleo Diet into your eating habits to improve your health. Many people CrossFit with good results and have terrible eating habits. But they don’t see results as great as those who eat well, and don’t enjoy the mental and physical benefits of good nutrition.
I’ve been reading a lot on the optimal nutrition for peak mental and physical performance as outlined by Dr Barry Sears of the Zone Diet and similar dietary prescriptions such as Protein Power. I plan to write a short summary and review on each book as I go. So far Top 100 Zone Foods by Dr. Barry Sears was the most applicable, as it gives a good introduction to the Zone Diet and interesting facts and recipes for each food. I highly recommend it for those interested in improving their nutrition, especially those concerned about diabetes and heart disease (which we all should be). More to follow, but to start, read my earlier posts on the Zone Diet and the Paleo Diet, check out the links, and read CrossFit Journal #21for the official CrossFit prescription for the Zone Diet.
I like using www.fitday.com to keep track of meals, it’s free and easy to use. Also, http://www.nutritiondata.com/ provides nutrition facts, caloric ratio, estimated glycemic load, and inflammation factor for most foods.
Keith at CrossFit Virtuosity has a great article with more guidance: http://www.crossfitvirtuosity.com/blogs/articles/18-articles/135-how-to-start-your-meal-plan
The Palaeolithic Diet
While CrossFit looks to the Zone Diet for food quantity, quality of food tends to fall under the Palaeolithic Diet: http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html
It can’t be pure coincidence that the foods that humans have developed since the first agricultural revolution (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, corn…) are the same high-glycemic foods that we must now attempt to limit in our diets in order to prevent hormonal imbalance. The first humans weren’t clearing the rainforest to grow Big Macs, they were hunters and gatherers. The Zone Diet reflects this emphasis on simple, whole foods; the Paleo Diet takes it a step further: eliminate everything that a hunter/gatherer would not have access to… anything processed. That leaves you with: lean protein (wild game, fish), vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts, and seeds… sound familiar?! The Paleo Diet is easy to do in conjunction with the Zone Diet: forget about grains, limit or eliminate dairy, and love those vegetables! It’s the easiest way to exponentially improve your health.
Think you’ll be hungry or bored of eating the same food? Try my favourite 4 block Paleo-Zone meal: a giant spinach salad made with 2 cups spinach, 3 oz chicken, 1 hardboiled egg, 6 chopped mushrooms, ½ yellow pepper, ¼ cucumber, ¼ cup carrots, ⅓ cup onion, as much celery and alfafa sprouts as you want, ½ apple/orange, ⅓ cup raspberries, ¼ cup blueberries… (literally any combination of veggies/fruits you find in your fridge!), and a couple olives or a sprinkle of sunflower seeds, with a dressing made from olive oil (3 tsp) and lime juice and garlic (both freebies!) to taste. Yummy!!! You can choose how strict you want to follow the many versions of the Paleo Diet… and you certainly don’t need to measure everything exactly, these are just to give you an idea of the portion sizes provided by the Zone Diet. For example, I often replace 1oz of chicken with 1.5oz of feta cheese in my salad and throw on some balsamic vinegar (also free!), and I love peanut butter, though legumes are dismissed by many Paleo followers. What you eat is up to you, but try to understand what you’re choosing to eat, and why.
The Zone Diet
CrossFitters typically follow the Zone Diet by Dr. Barry Sears (www.zonediet.com) because it has demonstrated measurable, observable, and repeatable results, which is the only reason why CrossFitters do anything. Hormone levels, specifically insulin and glucagon, are balanced by eating lean protein and low-glycemic carbs (choosing vegetables and fruits over grains such as rice, pasta, and bread) and consuming healthy fats with every meal (Think Mediterranean diet!). When carbs and protein are eaten in the right proportions, your body will be hormonally stable, unlike that see-saw effect you feel when you carb-o-load or go more than a few hours without eating. Further, if your body is used to receiving energy from healthy (unsaturated) fats, it will stop storing fat from the energy in carbs. The Zone Diet gives us the prescription for that balance by telling us how much of each protein (30%), carbs (40%), and fat (30%) to consume in each meal, and how many meals to eat each day (5-6). Calculate the number of “blocks” or units of food you personally will need to support your lean body mass: http://www.zonediet.com/BodyFatZoneBlockRequirementCalculator/tabid/159/Default.aspx
The excess weight is not being fed, and will come off… with exercise, of course! Weighing your food isn’t as bad as it sounds, and you only have to do it for 2 weeks before you get a feel for appropriate portion sizes. If you don’t feel up to weighing your food, that’s fine, but you should be aware of food quantity and food quality. In terms of carbs, 2 cups of broccoli is equivalent to ¼ of a bagel… not to mention the obvious nutritional difference. Plus, you do get 3 cheat meals a week, and all it takes is one meal to get back in the Zone! If you do start “blocking” your meals, you’ll soon find that veggies go a lot farther than high-glycemic carbs, and that you probably aren’t eating enough protein or good fats. For example, when you get a multi-grain bagel with cream cheese from Tim Horton’s, you’re getting 4 blocks of carbs, 4-8 blocks of fat depending on how much cream cheese you get, and no protein. The new Starbucks banana chocolate protein smoothie isn’t too bad at 3 blocks of protein, 4 blocks carbs, and 3 blocks fat… I’ll leave the nutritional quality aspect for a separate article. The bottom line is: you will feel an enormous improvement in your health and well-being, mood, even sleeping habits, once you get your body “into the Zone”!
