This morning we had our Reverb Summer Shred Nutrition Seminar at the gym!
We learned why eating real food is so important, how to spot real food, and kicked off our 6-week Summer Shred Nutrition Challenge!
Check out below for the video, a recap, and our whole foods cheat sheet:
(You can still join in on the challenge by clicking HERE!)
Who is this for? Anyone who wants to:
- Feel better
- Have more energy and more stable energy
- Build muscle, lose body fat
- Reverse and prevent chronic disease
- Maximize fitness
CrossFit’s nutrition prescription:
- The first two sentences of CrossFit’s “Fitness in 100 Words” are:
- “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts & seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar”
- “Keep intake to levels that support exercise but not body fat”
- What you put in your body is even more important than all the time you spend training in the gym!
- Allocate time to plan your nutrition accordingly!
- This is as simple and elegant as it gets, and it works!
Recent study comparing whole foods vs highly processed foods
- Compared two groups eating the same amount of protein, carbs, fats, and calories
- Group one mostly whole foods
- Group two mostly highly processed foods
- Highly processed foods group gained 2 pounds of body fat and saw their blood pressure and cholesterol get worse in just 3 weeks.
- Food quality has a dramatic effect on how you look/feel/perform, and your health!
How to Spot (not) real food: red flags
- Any added sugar whatsoever
- More than a couple ingredients and/or ingredients you don’t easily recognize
- It can sit on a shelf for a long time
- It didn’t exist 5,000 years ago
- It has a big marketing budget behind it
How to Spot real food: green flags
- Easily recognized as fresh: meat (and dairy), vegetables, nuts & seeds, fruit, or (minimally processed & limited quantities) starches and grains
- Doesn’t have an ingredients label
- Could have been eaten by humans 5,000 years ago
- Refer to our Reverb whole foods cheat sheet when in doubt!
Serving sizes
- Protein (meats + dairy): 1 palm
- Vegetables: 1 fist
- Carbs: 1 cupped hand
- Fats: 1 thumb
- A starting point for a balanced meal, depending on your body weight is:
- 1-2+ palms of protein
- 2+ fists of veggies
- 1-2 cupped hands of carbs
- 1-2 thumbs of fats
- Notice, the protein and veggies have a “+”. If you’re hungry, add more of those first!
- Key Takeaway: for most of us this means upping the lean meats and veggies, and reducing the carbs!!
6 week challenge
- Everything tracked in the My Coach app!
- Daily lessons
- Daily tasks
- Social interaction with the crew!
- Most important part of the challenge:
- Your 1:1 nutrition coaching check-ins with your coach – start, middle, and end of challenge.
- Personalize your 6-weeks so you have an achievable plan to focus on
- Discuss your specific challenges and strategies to overcome them; keep you on track
- Prizes
- Sticking with it to the end no matter what % you “succeeded”: challenge t-shirt!
- Additional prizes for best results (muscle and body fat)!
Strategies for success
- Planning ahead
- Initial kitchen cleanout and re-stock with real foods
- Have a weekly plan, then execute it!
- Batch prepping
- Cooking larger batches and saving leftovers for the next few days
- Cooking a bunch of meats and then having your veggies, nuts & seeds, fruits, starches stocked so you can mix and match and throw together a good meal at any time
- Meal Prep companies
- Local meal prep companies that do the prep work for you; great to have a ready-to-go meal in your back pocket that you can pop in the microwave and done!
- Collaborate during the challenge!
- Post what’s working for you, try what’s working for others, experiment, learn, and succeed together!
“But Coach Dean … ?!” Questions:
- What about the things you cook your veggies in (butter, oil, etc)?
- Those count, and can sneakily add up! Count them towards your servings of fats!
- Veggies: is it 2+ “fists” raw or cooked?
- Raw. Note that it’s 2+… meaning you can eat as much veggies as you want! They’re low calorie and high in nutrients!
- What about eating out?
- It’s going to be harder to eat well because restaurants are cooking for flavor and you won’t know exactly what’s in the recipe
- You can get 90% of where you need to be by choosing the dishes consisting only of lean meats and veggies!
- What about salad dressings?
- Check the ingredients (for sugar and calories) and how much you’re using
- If you’re not using a ton of dressing every day, it’s probably not the first thing to worry about
- What about protein bars?
- Protein bars are better than a cookie, and not as good as real whole foods.
- Depending on where you’re at with your goals, you’ll want to eventually keep moving towards all real, whole foods!
- What about veggie burgers?
- There are some relatively clean ones with few, whole food ingredients, and there are many that are highly processed with a paragraph worth of chemical ingredients
- What about making “bread/wrap alternatives” with whole food ingredients?
- It’s possible although tricky. Keep an eye on the ingredients and serving sizes!
- What about my glass of wine?
- Alcohol is detrimental; and the more you drink the more detrimental. It affects your sleep, recovery, fat gain, and many processes in your body.
- Assess your goals and the progress you want to make; if you decide to drink, know and accept that it will affect your results.
Coach Dean Holcomb
Certified CrossFit Trainer Level 3
Certified Nutrition Coach Precision Level 1
