CrossFit KoP September Kick the Sugar Challenge is on...For ONE month - ONE MONTH ONLY -just try it. Make the effort, see what it does for you. See how you feel, look, perform. You can do ANYTHING for one month, especially knowing it's for your HEALTH and PERFORMANCE. If you choose not to do it, if you haven’t sincerely tried committing to good nutrition, maybe it’s time you looked at your reasons. What are your excuses? How valid are they, really? Are you so invested in them that you’re willing to sacrifice your potential and long term health?
For those of you who missed the Sugar Challenge kick off with Evan, he provided us with an overview of three different ways of eating.
Paleo:
What is Paleo?Paleolithic people were hunter-gatherers. All their food came from what they could hunt and find around them. For most of the period, most of the cultures tended to be nomadic, following food sources.
The period after the Paleolithic period is called the Neolithic, which began approximately 10,000 years ago. At this point, agriculture made it possible for people to settle in one place. People’s lives became more sedentary, although still active by today's standards. Especially, people started growing sources of starch, especially grains, which could be stored. Another big innovation in the later part of the Neolithic period was the development of pottery, which made it easier to cook and transport staple foods. Writers espousing Paleolithic diets point to evidence regarding both prehistoric people and more recent hunter-gatherer populations that agriculture increased chronic diseases such as heart disease in these populations.
Types of foods
Early on, before fire was controlled, only food which could be eaten raw was consumed. This ruled out grains, legumes, and some tubers such as potatoes. Even when early people started to use fire to cook food, they were mainly limited to roasting or toasting it. Besides meat, a few roasted nuts or grains by the fire were pretty much it. Additionally, before animals were domesticated (around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago) milk and dairy products were not consumed.
Obviously, any refined sugars other than occasional honey, or any processed foods, were totally out.
What exactly was eaten by early people clearly varied according to geography, but most of the diets are thought to be at least half animal foods (including insects), and many up to 70 percent food of animal origin. Gathering enough plant food to support highly active people simply wouldn't have been feasible in most places. Despite this, large amounts of vegetation were consumed; some estimates are that in many areas early humans ate up to 6 pounds of greens per day. This is a lot of greens -- about a grocery-bag full, but this produces only about 400 to 700 calories. However, the nutrient load of those greens is huge, producing many times the minimum daily requirement of most vitamins and minerals. Of course, other parts of plants were eaten, including nuts and fruit, though we probably couldn't recognize the ancestors of the sugary fruit we eat today.
Primal:
What is Eating Primal?Eating Primal is eating the way nature intended.
It's not eating anything that didn't exist when man first walked the earth.
It's eating simply- fresh foods, whole, natural and non-processed foods free from hormones, chemicals and pesticides.
It's eating REAL foods, not the fake stuff.
It's shopping the perimeter of the grocery store for organic and hormone-free foods.
It's buying local at Farmers Markets. It's doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint by not eating foods shipped to stores from countries 3,000 miles away.
It's being aware of what we put in our bodies and avoiding poisonous things like refined carbohydrates (sugars, flours etc...), trans-fats, chemicals, pesticides, MSG, additives, food colorings, artificial sweeteners, most all dairy products and gluten. Read the ingredients, if you can't pronounce it, chances are you should not eat it.
By avoiding these things, we are able to eat the best foods possible in order to give our bodies the best nutrients available in order to live healthy lives free from the dark hole leading to no where- known as the Standard American Diet (SAD).
Zone:
What is the Zone?The concept of "the Zone" is that food should be balanced "40:30:30" ratio of calories obtained daily from carbohydrates, proteins and fats respectively. This will promote the desired hormonal response throughout the day.
The goal of Zone dieting is to eat the correct balance of carbohydrates and protein so that glucagon is produced instead of insulin, because glucagon promotes the formation of "good" eicosanoids while insulin promotes the formation of "bad" eicosanoids that cause all sorts of diseases.
The Zone converts grams of Protein, Carbs and Fat into blocks of protein and carbohydrate and provides food lists and meal plans for these. No more than 5 blocks should be consumed in one sitting and no more than 5 hours below. The CrossFit Journal link below will explain in detail how many blocks for your body size and will list some great Zone Performance meals.
Click here for CrossFit Journal Issue 21, Zone Performance.The Rules:1. All participants must commit by posting to comments below. You can choose one of the above options or try a combination of all three that works for you. The Challenge starts on September 1st and ends at midnight, on September 30th. Evan and I will post some helpful tips, recipes and ideas along the way. Please feel free to post about how you are feeling on your NO-Sugar Journey!
2. The way to kick sugar is to not eat ANY sugar of ANY kind.
3. Only consume sugar that is found naturally in foods such as fruit - and limit the consumption of too much, choosing low glycemic index fruits primarily.
What is the significance of Glycemic Index? Not all carbohydrate foods are created equal, in fact they behave differently in our bodies. The glycemic index or GI describes the difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose and insulin levels.
4. The best way to be successful with this is to eat clean. Create meals from meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and NO SUGAR. No processed and refined foods with high fructose corn syrup and high sugar content (i.e.: chips). Shop the perimeter of the grocery store; avoid the aisles where labels and long shelf-lives increase the sugar content. Limit bread.
5. If you drink adult beverages, only pure spirits (vodka, whiskey, rum, etc.) and wine are allowed in small quantities. No dessert wine, or any other alcoholic beverage made with added sugar, such as beer.
6. Keep a food log, writing down EVERYTHING you eat. At the end of each week, show it to either Aimee or Evan and have them help you with your choices of foods and staying on track. The winner will be the person with the most consecutive days completed successfully. The runner-up will be the person with the most overall days completed successfully. This may be the same person or persons.
7. Please feel free to email myself or Evan or post to comments with your own input, comments, encouragement, articles, recipes, struggles and victories.
*There will be a special prize for those who complete all 30 days!!!*
WHO’S IN???
Check out the air Chris P. gets on his burpees!!!
Results
