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!
Write it down
You should be keeping a log book to track your performance. It may not seem important, especially at the beginning, but you will likely regret it later on. CrossFit uses a black-box methodology: stuff goes into the box, something happens, and the result comes out. If you don’t know what you put in to the box, it’s much harder to gauge and interpret the results. One of the fundamental aspects of CrossFit is that our results are measurable, observable, and repeatable. We do benchmark workouts so that you can repeat a workout a month or two later and see empirical results and specific progress. By writing down every workout, you will have a great record of your progress, especially if you are scaling workouts. You will also have a better idea of what weights or progressions to use when doing similar workouts, such as a one-rep max. A couple months from now, you can look back fondly and compare what you were doing when you first started to what you are capable of now. That’s how we measure results. You’ll never forget the feeling of getting your first kipping pull-up or doing a benchmark workout as prescribed, but it’s great to be able to look back and see what you did to get to that point. Write it down.
Check out this article by Jon from Again Faster for more details:
http://www.againfaster.com/articles/tracking-school.html
Also, the website www.logsitall.com has all the CrossFit benchmark workouts, weightlifting exercises, and the main site WODs. You can put in your scores and, if you choose, make your logbook public to compare your standings with other CrossFitters around the world.
Element CrossFit is up and running!
Now that week 3 at Element CrossFit is underway, I figure it’s about time I get back into this! I’m still new at this, so a lot of my blog posts will be links to articles by other people who have already done a good job of explaining CrossFit fundamentals and other interesting topics. I love browsing other CrossFit websites, they provide a wealth of information, and I encourage you to do the same.
I’d like to thank everyone who has helped get Element CrossFit started up, including all those who have come by for a workout so far! For those who haven’t yet, I can see how it may seem intimidating to see pictures of people doing intense gymnastics and weightlifting. You might say to yourself “I can’t do that!” Not too surprising if you haven’t had any training, so why would you be expected to be able to?! CrossFit is scalable to all levels of fitness, and your trainers will be able to help you learn and achieve many things you never thought yourself capable of. If you check out our pictures (www.elementcrossfit.com then link to the facebook page) and say “I want to be able to do that!” then come in and try a free workout! Check www.elementcrossfit.com for more details.
If you are female and concerned that doing CrossFit will make you “big” and “gross” and “manly”, stop worrying. It won’t, because we don’t do bodybuilding exercises. We do functional movements that build lean muscle. If you don’t believe me, if you don’t want to be healthy and strong, that’s fine. If you do, spread the word and be beautiful.
Here is a great article, by Jon at Again Faster in Boston, about women and training.
http://www.againfaster.com/articles/you-are-beautiful.html
www.stumptuous.com is also a good site with lots of articles about women and training.
See you at the gym.
Some thoughts…
After 6 months of CrossFitting regularly, I feel that I can objectively comment on the changes I’ve experienced. It took a few months, but I feel like I have finally found what’s right for me, and want to share my insight with you. In a word: balance. Everything in moderation. Don’t jump into something all out without considering the effects it may have. You shouldn’t just wake up one day and say “I’m never eating grains or a meal that is not perfectly 30/40/30 again.” You shouldn’t demand immediate and continuous maximum intensity and massive results from your body after asking relatively little of it for so long before. There will be positive and negative feedbacks from these actions, and while the positive results will seem great at first, the negative responses can be minimized or negated with some patience, respect, and understanding for your body, and the results will still come. You don’t need to lose 5-10 pounds in a single week. That is not healthy. You don’t want to pack on 2-5 pounds of muscle in a single week. That is also not healthy. I recommend easing your way into CrossFit and the Zone Diet over the course of a month. Your body will find the immediate carb cutting shocking, especially if you chose to eliminate grains. Cut back slowly, be conscious of the Zone prescription, and change your grocery shopping list to be Paleo-friendly. Start planning meals, include healthy fats, and eat when you first wake up and before you go to bed. You will feel the difference. Start training every other day, then 2 days on 1 off, and as your body gets used to the demands you place on it during a CrossFit workout, your recovery time will improve, and so will your strength and cardiovascular endurance. Work your weaknesses, and remember that routine and specialization are the enemy. Finally, I’ve learned that the best bonus you will get from CrossFit is not the incredible physical fitness gains, it is the mental toughness that comes from having the willpower to make difficult but healthy choices, like choosing to eat a whole cucumber instead of ¼ of a croissant, or getting up off the ground for that 3rd round of a Fight Gone Bad.
My first blog
Hello! I’ve decided to start a blog to share my CrossFit thoughts and experiences! It will probably soon include a brief bio of myself, my workout log, random posts on hot topics and CrossFit-related blurbs. Feel free to comment liberally
Rachael
