 The Holidays are time to have fun with friends! Alcohol is a pervasive cultural vice and one that many of us can easily over consume. This time of year, especially, can be a difficult time to keep to just a few drinks on the weekends. Family, friends, co-workers, everyone wants to meet up for festive holiday cocktails. I just read this very interesting blog post from Precision Nutrition on drinking and it's impact on health, fitness and performance. I was (well, perhaps I wasn't really) surprised to see how easily I can go from a moderate to heavy drinker. I certainly feel the deleterious affects of heavy drinking, my wedding ring doesn't fit well, my pants are harder to button, and CrossFit workouts are so. much. harder.  There are some well researched impacts of heavy drinking on our health. A few of them are:
Light to moderate drinking may have some positive impacts as identified the by Precision Nutrition folks:
As with most healthy lifestyle practices, context matters as we are all unique snowflakes with different tolerances. Have you heard the saying, "The Dose Makes the Poison"? What might be tolerable to you could be fatal to someone else. That is why I hate the idea of moderation. Moderation is relative to each individual and it is a moving target. You're idea of moderation is probably not mine. Your moderate dose might be fine for you, but for me it bring me to my knees worshipping the porcelain god.
I agree with the Precision Nutrition folks, we should drink because we enjoy the taste and flavors, not because we're stressed, or it's our daily habit, or social pressure from others. What do you think? Have you experimented with alcohol consumption? Do you do a sober January? Tell me in the comments.
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 Having a plan and letting your friends and family know about it will help keep you on track and accountable to your goals. Make it fun! Establish safe words, secret handshakes, or whatever to keep within the guidelines you establish for yourself. Tomorrow starts the 6 weeks winter holiday eating season. Do you have a plan to avoid gaining weight? Do you know how you will politely say no when your mom offers you a third slice of pie? Do you know how you will navigate your fourth holiday party of the weekend without consuming your 15th alcoholic drink in 2 days? Lucky for us all, Working Against Gravity has published a holiday survival guide. You don't need to eat every single holiday cookie to enjoy the season, nor do you need to keep a bag of baby carrots hanging around your neck. You can have your fruit cake and eat it, too. The WAG guide will show you how. The winter holidays are fun and stressful. This year why not create a plan that will help you navigate the churning seas of eggnog and pumpkin pie? Remember, we are CLOSED Thanksgiving day and Friday. The Huffing for Stuffing is our official workout of the day for Thanksgiving. Friday the WOD is 100 burpees for time. Enjoy! We'll see you all on Saturday for a fun partner workout.
Celebrate Honor Week with this limited-edition shirt! They are on sale only through midnight on Sat, Nov 30. The more we order the less expensive the price becomes. We are offering men's shirts and women's shirts. Make sure you select the correct style you want. Click on the link below to order yours today!
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 The 6am class deadlifts. We're pulling some weight from the floor today:-) For the past few Wellness Wednesdays I have explored the science behind supplements and their role in a healthy lifestyle. Today I'm exploring Protein, essential for repairing and building muscle tissue, and very few of us eat enough of it. Protein is one of three macronutrients, the other 2 are carbohydrates and fat. Protein is the building blocks of muscle, carbohydrates fuel our activities and fat is vital for brain functions, energy storage and it protects our internal organs. All three macronutrients contain calories which our bodies use to fuel our metabolism and activities. Counting macros means to consume a precise amount of each macronutrient according to your macro plan. Through counting macros, calories are controlled for weight loss or weight gain. (There are 4 calories per 1 gram of protein and 1 gram carbohydrate and 9 calories per 1 gram of fat.) CrossFit, unlike other types of exercise, is a strength and conditioning program which means you'll develop muscle mass in addition to cardiovascular endurance and stamina. Developing stamina and strength requires a higher amount of protein than just developing cardiovascular endurance alone. A good guideline for CrossFitters is to consume protein in grams equal to your lean body mass. This is why I measure your body fat when you join and every time you have a check-in with me. If you've done a check-in with me you can find you lean body mass in your weigh-in history on BTWB. Your lean body mass is the weight of your muscles and bones excluding the weight of your body fat. For example, if you weigh 200 lbs and have 20% body fat you have 160 lbs lean body mass. Based on these measurements a CrossFitter might aim for 160g of protein every day. For most of us, eating our lean body mass in grams of protein is a challenge, which is why you see so many of us supplement with whey and casein protein or collagen peptides. Drinking a protein shake or eating a protein bar is an easy way to reach your protein goals. Whey protein is easily digestible by almost everyone. Most whey protein supplements provide 20-40g of protein per serving and the recommendation is to consume post-workout. Casein is a slower digesting protein which is why it's commonly consumed in the evening. Collagen peptides can be consumed anytime. I supplement with all 3 types of protein since my protein goal is higher than I can consume by meat and eggs alone. I put 2 scoops of collagen peptides in my coffee every morning for 20g of protein. The collagen peptides I use are unflavored and don't affect the flavor of my coffee. Within one hour post-workout I drink a whey protein shake which provides another 20g of protein. After dinner I eat a delicious casein protein pudding which provides another 20 g of protein. If I'm low on protein for the day I make the casein pudding with Darigold Fit Milk or Core Power. When calculating the amount of protein in your food, you'll need to measure or be pretty good at estimating the quantity you're eating. Here's where it gets confusing, the weight your food in grams it DOES NOT equal the grams of protein in that food. Weight in grams is a measure of the mass of your food, whereas the amount of protein in grams of food is a measure of that macronutrient only. Weight in grams does not equal grams of protein. Let's look at two common examples. Tuna fish is a delicious source of lean protein. The convenience of eating tuna is that is comes in a package that tells you exactly how much protein you get with each serving. According to this nutrition label the serving size is 56g and the protein amount is 11g. There are 2 servings per container, so if you eat the entire package you get 22g of protein.  Foods that don't come in packages with nutrition labels require a bit more sleuthing, and everything you need to know can be found online. The resources I like best are https://nutritiondata.self.com/ or My Fitness Pal or the Macros feature of BTWB.
Let's say you eat skinless boneless chicken breast for lunch. One cup of diced chicken, or 140g of diced chicken, provides 43.4g of protein. Let's add this up with our 3 types of protein supplementation and see where we end up. Collagen peptides: 20g Post-workout whey: 20g 1 cup diced chicken: 43.4g Casein pudding: 20g TOTAL Protein: 103.4g To make the goal of 160g of protein we need to eat about 60g between breakfast and dinner. If you eat 2 scrambled eggs for breakfast you get 12g of protein (1 egg has about 6g of protein). Now you'll need to eat 48g of protein for dinner. Grilled pork chops are on the menu? Fantastic, you'll get about 52g of protein in one (180g) chop. As you can see, it's difficult to eat enough protein to meet your needs as a bad-ass CrossFitter, that's why protein supplementation is important. Once you start eating protein equal to your lean body mass you'll find that you're better recovered from each workout. You'll find yourself getting stronger and leaner. If you want a more customized nutrition plan, book a consult with Coach Audy.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEATHER (RED FEATHER)!!!
For the past several weeks I have been exploring nutrition and supplements. You may recall my Myth Busting Monday post on cravings and what they mean. In that post I discussed the three most common micronutrient inadequacies, zinc, Vitamin D and Omega 3 Fatty Acids. I have addressed Vitamin D here and Omega 3 fatty acids here. Today I explore the role of zinc in a healthy diet. Zinc is an essential mineral that is an important catalyst for certain biochemical processes and important structural element for a particular class of proteins called mettalloproteins. It is estimated about 10% of the US population has inadequate zinc. Remember, a micronutrient deficiency causes a disease, and with zinc a deficiency causes hypogonadism in men, as well as mental lethargy, depression, and skin abnormalities. Inadequacy can lead to acne, insulin resistance, low testosterone and decreased mental health. Before you rush out to supplement with zinc, remember the dose makes the poison and too much zinc can lead to zinc toxicity which can lead to severe GI distress e.g., nausea, vomiting, and because of its catalytic nature zinc toxicity can lead to a copper deficiency. Foods that are rich in zinc include oysters, crab, shrimp, eggs, some seeds, and mushrooms. You can check out a nice collection of recipes with zinc rich foods from Precision Nutrition here. Because zinc is lost through sweat, it can be an important micronutrient for athletes. If shellfish are not a regular part of your weekly diet, then you might consider a low dose zinc supplementation of 5-10mg. There are some caveats and considerations to note with zinc supplementation and you can get solid peer-reviewed research on that here. Since only about 10% of the US population has a zinc inadequacy, before you pop some pills, try eating more zinc rich foods. Since most of the zinc rich foods are tasty sea creatures, you'll also get a healthy dose of other important micronutrients. As always, if you have something you want me to explore, tell me in the comments and I'll do some digging. |
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