Eat to Support Your TrainingA few weeks ago I blogged about how the Menopause transition is NOT the time for us to eat less and exercise more. Since then I've heard from a few of you about how do you determine how much to eat. First, aside from making us feel nourished and healthy, our food intake should fuel our daily activities. We need to eat enough that we can adapt to our training demands. We need to eat enough so that we have enough ENERGY to get us through our busy day, training session at the gym, and all of the other things we do throughout the day. So how do we determine how much to eat? First we start with taking some important, albeit, uncomfortable measurements. To know how much to eat we need to know how much lean mass we have. I can do that for you with excellent accuracy during our check-in. You can also go to MSU and measure you lean mass via the BODPOD. I mention these measurements can be uncomfortable. Not because the tests are uncomfortable but rather the results can be upsetting for some. In order to understand what our lean mass is we first have to measure our body fat percentage. That can be upsetting for some folks. However, we can't determine mathematically how much to eat without that vital statistic. Once we know our lean mass we can determine 2 important nutrition targets, our daily total calories which we will call Optimal Energy and the amount of protein we need. Knowing Optimal Energy is important because there is an increasing trend amongst the active aging population (that's all of us CrossFitters, women and men over 40) to not eat enough because we are trying to lose weight or are concerned about gaining weight. This is NOT the time to eat less and exercise more. It can lead to a dangerous condition called Low Energy Availability (LEA). According to the Menopause continuing education course I just finished from the smart scientists at Feisty Menopause: Active women are especially at risk for LEA because of high training loads and the traditional emphasis on being as lean as possible for many sports. If you have days, weeks or months when you feel like you just don't have enough energy to do ALL. THE. THINGS. and your performance in the gym decreases, you might just be in an LEA state. The menopause transition is an especially vulnerable time because as we are trying to ride the crazy waves of natural hormonal fluctuations we need to eat enough to continue to build muscle like its our job. Because my strong and powerful sisters, it is our JOB to build muscle in menopause. Low energy availability is a state we slip into after just a few days of not eating to support our optimal energy. Here's what I learned in my Menopause CE course: Clinical studies show that when you reach an EA less than 30 calories per kg of lean mass, your health starts deteriorating after just several days. Now that we know our optimal energy ratio is 30 for women and 25 for men (i'm looking out for you guys, too:) we can determine how many calories we need each day. We do this by multiplying our optimal energy ratio and our lean mass (in KG) to get the calories we need to eat each day just to survive.
For example, my lean mass is 135lbs. To convert that to KG, I divide by 2.2 to get 61KG. Now I multiple that by 30 to get 1840 calories. That is the minimum calories I need every day just to keep my body operating. This number 1840 is pretty darn close to the number of calories I need based on my BODPOD test. It calculated 1921 calories on a SEDENTARY day. On active days I should eat more. I mentioned that our lean mass is important for a second nutrition target. It is the minimum protein we need daily to maintain our current lean mass. In other words, I should eat at a minimum 135g of protein to prevent any loss of bone and muscle. If I'm trying to increase my bone density and lean mass (muscle) I need to eat more protein to support my training. How much more? We will cover that in another blog. Do you need help determining your optimal energy? Book a check-in with me and we can will calculate it together.
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Myth: Food cravings are our body's way of telling us that we need certain nutrients.On Friday I wrote about how to tell the difference between hunger and cravings. Today I'm going a bit deeper into cravings, specifically the falsehood that it's our body's way of telling us we need certain nutrients. If today's myth were true, you would crave peas, tuna, oysters, spinach, and Swiss cheese since these foods are high in zinc, omega 3 fatty acids and Vitamin D. These three micronutrients are the most commonly inadequate in our diet. Cravings for pizza, ice cream, chips, chocolate, fries, bacon, cheeseburgers are all learned behaviors. Before we dive into today's myth let's first use some common language. Cravings are a state of heightened eating motivation that is directed at a specific food. Hunger is a nonspecific motivation for calorie-containing food in general. It's important not to interchange the two. If you're really hungry, you'll be willing to eat fish and steamed broccoli. If you're not, you're most likely craving something based upon a learned response to it. Cravings follow a predictable pattern of cue, routine, reward. Our brains are hard-wired for specific physiological and psychological needs such as water, social support, physical comfort, sex, and of course, food. When we successfully acquire one of those things our brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is an incredibly powerful feel-good biochemical that we instantly want more of. We form an association, a cue, that the thing we just ate, drank, touched, or had sex with is what makes us feel so good. Of course, we don't know that we feel so good because of the dopamine release. We just want more of the thing. Every time we get it we get more dopamine which reinforces the thing and thus our routine is created. Let's explore a real world craving example of pizza. In the very primal part of our brain, pizza is an outstanding source of calories from delicious fat, carbs and perhaps protein. As you eat it your brain releases dopamine and also catalogs all of the smells, sights, and tastes of the pizza. The association becomes so strong that all you need now is a reminder of the pizza and you'll start salivating and craving it. You experience this when you see a pizza commercial on TV or when someone suggests going out to Bridger Brewery after Friday night's workout. You start salivating and obsessing about pizza. This is because the last time you ate it your brain released one of the most addictive chemicals on earth into your blood stream. Here's an illustration of how this works from the smart folks at Examine.com. Since we're all unique snowflakes some of us crave salty things and some of us crave sweet things. But none of us crave healthy things. That's because cravings are a hold-over from ancient times when highly-palatable high caloric food wasn't available 24 hours of the day. Back when we had to hunt, gather and travel for miles and miles just to get something calorically dense our brains rewarded us. It motivated us to find that amazing food source again. Now, all we have to do is call and it will be delivered to our front door!
Chocolate and sugar cravings are even more interesting because of the addition of another highly addictive biochemical called theobromine. Theobromine is a stimulant that accentuates fat and sugar’s natural ability to spike dopamine signaling. That's why sugar cravings are the hardest to control. Some research suggests that sugar is the most addictive drug on the planet, more so than crack, cocaine, meth and heroine. Good luck controlling that craving! Since cravings are driven by sensory cues (sight and smell) the most straightforward way to control cravings is to avoid exposing yourself to those cues. If temptation is not around you can more easily avoid it. Clear out your freezer, fridge and pantry and "it's out of sight out of mind." In the meantime, the next time you see a social media post about how cravings are our body's way of telling us that we need certain nutrients you can confidently call "bullshit." There's a LOT of silly bullshit on social media and I want you help you identify it. Do you have a myth you want me to explore? Tell me in the comments. What's for Dinner?There is one question that every single human on earth asks themself every single day. What's for Dinner? Cooking is a basic human endeavor. We all must eat, multiple times a day, and feeding yourself and others is a basic skill we all must develop. Without it, we will die or be dependent on someone else. I don't want to be dependent on anyone else for my food! Food is the foundation of my health and I want that squarely under my control. When was the last time you were actually hungry? So many times when we feel like eating we might actually be feeling cravings rather than actual hunger. Actual hunger comes on gradually, is felt physically in your stomach, and is easy to satisfy with ANY FOOD. Cravings come on suddenly, are specific to a particular food, are habit driven, and hard to satisfy. One of the biggest myth's in our modern food accessible world is that it's NOT OK to be hungry. We are encouraged to eat at the first sign of discomfort be that physical or emotional discomfort. Often times we eat because we've developed a habit to eat at a particular time or after an event. There's a strong psychological component to why we eat what and when we do. Here's the ultimate test of hunger vs. cravings. Are you hungry enough to eat baked fish and steamed broccoli. No? Then you are not hungry but are craving. I learned that it's ok to be hungry from my nutrition coach. She coached me through a 20 lbs weight loss after I finished my competitive weightlifting season in 2019. Many times our weekly coaching calls focused on how I managed my hunger. I can tell you from experience it's not managed by eating the things I WANTED. The things I wanted to eat did not satisfy my rumbling belly. Things that satisfied my rumbling belly were a very large glass of water followed by lean protein and vegetables. Yes, many times I ate baked fish and steamed broccoli. So the next time you find yourself reaching into the fridge, pause and see if you're willing to eat baked fish and steamed broccoli. If you're not, drink a tall glass of water, step away from the fridge, and plan your next lean protein and veggie rich meal. Good luck! Of course, it's not #foodiefiday without a recipe:) Here's one for delicious baked fish from The Mediterranean Dish. Enjoy!
I follow WOD Science on Instagram. They posted about a recent journal article on why middle-aged women do CrossFit. You can read the entire article here.
The research article states that: Women significantly reduce regular exercise during middle-age by up to 40%. Concurrently, women experience a reduction in basal metabolic rate and loss of lean muscle as they transition to menopause]; thereby increasing their risk for body weight gain and obesity. Obesity is associated with co-morbidities including diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers
It got me thinking about our gym and the amazing middle-aged women in it. Our gym is over 60% women and of those women 60% are 40 years or older. Clearly these women have heard the messages about the importance of lifting heavy shit and high intensity interval training as they age.
On the flip side, I have seen many, many people, men and women, come and go at our gym. So what makes you all so sticky and the rest of the population not? In my nearly 10 years of owning this gym I can usually tell by the end of Foundations how "sticky" someone is. Meaning, I have a good sense based after just 5 personal training sessions if someone is going to stuck with us or not. It's got nothing to do with physical ability. People who stick with exercise, particularly the kind we do at our gym, have particular mental toughness qualities. They are curious, want to improve, lean into hard things, and like having fun with other. The WOD Science folks found this factors lead to the best exercise adherence: CrossFit doesn't work well because it is more effective than other resistance exercise and endurance programs. CrossFit works well because it is fun.
What do you think? Why have you stuck with us for as long as you have?
Feel free to email if have ideas about what makes someone sticky. In the meantime, please take 2 mins and take my non-scientific poll. â |
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