CrossFit South Bend

In this interview we sit down with Coach Raleigh to talk about his thoughts on healthy eating. For those of you don't know Raleigh, he is: -A USA Weightlifting certified coach -One of the head coaches of our Olympic Weightlifting program -a PhD student in the theology department at Notre Dame -a CFSB CrossFit coach In this video Raleigh tells us: -What eating was like for him growing up -His personal evolution when it comes to healthy eating -What he currently eats on a daily basis with concrete examples -What he's learned about healthy eating given all the different commitments in his life -What his favorite off-plan foods are -His favorite special occasions to eat off-plan food.

In this video we sit down with Matt to chat about his experience with our one-on-one nutrition coaching program. Matt's story is unique for a number of reasons. -He was already lean and fit when we started working together -He's a busy financial advisor who has to eat out at restaurants for work a lot -He was looking to improve his athletic performance, -He mainly wanted to learn the tools and develop the habits necessary to eat healthy long-term In the video Matt tells us about: -how he actually SAVED money eating real whole food despite people thinking eating healthy is expensive -how he gained more control over cravings and sugar swings with the program -how things like apples and 70% chocolate actually tasted super sweet after eliminating processed foods -how he learned the tools necessary to eat healthy for the rest of his life. We're super-proud of all your progress Matt! Keep up the great work! __________________________________________________________________________ Transcript: - Hey guys, Robby here from CSFB Nutrition at Crossfit South Bend, and today I am here with Matt who finished up a few months of nutrition coaching not too long ago. Matt, thank you so much for joining us. - Thanks for having me. - So, Matt tell us a little about what eating for you was like before we started working together. - Yeah, I ate just about anything that I saw. I didn't have a lot of discipline in what I was doing, I think that's really what kinda pushed me towards this is I knew that at certain point, you reach a stage in life where you can actually feel that that's not a healthy thing to be doing, but that's how I was all my life, I just ate whatever I wanted to in the moment and, you know, just start seeing the physical effects, so I mean you name it, Doritos were one of - Yeah. my weaknesses, I like sweets, you know, whatever it is, I just ate it. - So, in your mind, you know, you already, you know, you already were and you still are very lean and fit guy, but you had goals for performance. Tell us a bit about kind of what was the main impetus to start with this. - Yeah, well I think it was that thing you always tell yourself that you can still be the athlete you used to be, and just decided I was gonna try and start working out more, and just wasn't feeling the results, and I was talking with some of the coaches about it, it's like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I feel like I'm doing the right things but I'm not seeing results and somebody mentioned, you know, hey, have you looked at your diet, and I thought about it, and came and saw you, and yeah, that definitely was a big part of it. - So, tell us a bit about the journey, you know, month one we were kinda transitioning to the Whole30, then we did the Whole30, and then we after reintroduced, tell us about what that experience was like for you. - Oh, and remember with mine we had to delay it so we actually - Right, yeah. had the two month intro, so that took a long time, and I think at one point I just said I'm just ready to start this thing, I can't warm up anymore - Yeah, lets just do it. but it was, it was a big change trying to find, you know, ingredients that I just wasn't used to using. - Right. They weren't things I disliked it's just, you know we were talking about before it just takes the time to get those things together and prepare 'em, and make something happen, but that was a learning experience for me, but it was a good learning experience. - True, good. So, we were just talking about this earlier, you know, we might even do a video on it in the future, so you're a financial advisor over at Edward Jones. Tell people a little bit about, you know, what this was like cost wise, you know people have this persistent myth about food being, healthy food being super expensive, and cooking at home. What are your thoughts on that having experienced it? - Well, I think you can spend as much on the Whole30 as you wanna spend - Yeah. on it, and if you're gonna try and eat out a lot it's gonna rack up the bills, but I was surprised at how inexpensive it can be if you really want to. Simple ingredients, I mean you can get a bag of flash frozen vegetables for a dollar, you can get chicken breast for a, you know, reasonable price, and you can make a full meal that really fills you out of that, but yeah, I think that when people do say that it's too expensive, you gotta look at what they're actually spend their money on, - Right. cuz there are some great foods out there that aren't that expensive, but I think the difference is, it takes time, they're just not convenient foods necessarily. Now, if you wanna do Whole30 and you want it be convenient you're gonna spend a lot of money. You wanna take the time and do it right, you can do it for a reasonable price, no question. - Absolutely. So, one of the things we always like to talk about with people that Whole30 emphasizes this idea of like non-scale victories, so obviously you're at a good body composition to begin with, things changed positively for you, but you were already basically at a good place. Did you notice anything with sleep, or energy, or mood, or cravings, or performance at the gym, or anything like that? - Yeah, the biggest thing were the, it evened out a lot of the swings, you know the sugar swings where you're starving, you have that craving, you wanna grab something to, you know, fulfill that, and then, you know, an hour later you're looking at the fridge, you're looking into the pantry, that type of thing, so I definitely saw much more evening out of those, and didn't feel the drop, and that's what I didn't like, when you feel the drop, you just feel like, man I gotta get a pick me up, and amazing how things that I never would have thought as sweet, like an apple, tasted so sweet, first time afterwards I tried a 70% chocolate, - Yeah. and I thought this is gross it's so sweet, so I would say that was the biggest change for me, and it definitely saw some great results from it. A lot of things in your body that seem to waiver up and down, on the Whole30 they really were evened out quite a bit. - Awesome. So, the last thing we like to ask people is, you know, if you could talk to someone, you know, Matt a few months ago, or someone in a similar position, or you know, one of the things I remember we talked about was, you know, as part of your job you've got a lot of professional lunches, you know, talking to someone who is in a similar scenario, is like, can I do it, can I not? What would you say to someone who's maybe in a similar situation and isn't sure whether they could do something like this? - I mean there's no question, it's difficult, especially if you're on the go lunches, but for me it was really a questions of, and I talked to you about this early on, was the question do I wanna learn how to eat right going forward? - Right. The Whole30 is a temporary time. I think you can get through - Absolutely. 30 days of just about anything. - Yeah. - Can I sustain Whole30 for six months? Absolutely not. - Right, not me neither. But, at least now, what I've taken from this is a wonderful education that, you know, whether I'm, you know, doing a lunch with a wholesale, or something like that, I know which options on the menu are gonna make me feel better, and which ones are gonna make me feel worse. Where before, I just ate what I craved, and always felt bad afterwards, so I would say from that you can get a great education from this, and really help change your choices going forward, and it's worth it. - Yep, yep, absolutely. - 30 days of sacrifice and I get a lifetime education, that's a good deal. - Yeah, yeah, learning the right tools to actually sustain it going forward. Well, I gotta say on my end, I'm super proud of the progress you made, and the effort you put in, you did a fantastic job, and yeah, I appreciate you coming out to tell your story. - Well, I appreciate it and anybody watching this who's thinking about the coaching's just fantastic, and does a great job - Thank you. walking you through it. There's no way you can do it alone. If you can, hat's off but good coaching to through the program, so I appreciate it. - Yeah, thank you very much. Alright guys, thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you next time.

In this interview we sit down with Coach Megan to talk about her thoughts on healthy eating. For those of you don't know Megan she is: -currently a high school science teacher -a CrossFit coach -training to be a nutrtion coach -a mom of three In this video Megan tells us: -What eating was like for her growing up -Her personal evolution when it comes to healthy eating -What she currently eats on a daily basis with concrete examples -What she's learned about healthy eating given all the different commitments in her life -What her favorite off-plan foods are -Her favorite special occasions to eat off-plan food. _____________________________________________________________________ Transcript: - Hey guys, Robby here from CrossFit South Bend today I am here with coach Megan and she is going to be telling us about her life with food. So Megan, thank you so much for joining us today. - Thank you. - So first of all, Megan tell us what food was like for you growing up. - Huh, very traditional, cereals for breakfast. My parents both came from farmers. And so they kinda were raised on kinda real whole food initially. So we, although we had processed things like mac and cheese, ramen noodles, they were always like a big favorite as a kid, and cereals. My mom usually made dinner at night. She'd kind of throw together whatever veggies, meat, we'd have lots of butter and whole milk and stuff like that. But yeah, I think their background kind of lended itself. The problem was that is they also loved food and food was always around the table. So portion control and active lifestyle was not necessarily part of our life growing up. - Right, okay, so tell us about your journey through healthy eating. Like when you first started thinking about healthy eating to how you eat now and then we'll get to you know actually how you're eating at the moment. - Okay, so yeah because we always kind of had food and was always making food that was always part of my life. Always how I ate. High school, college, you go off and there's a lot of processed, a lot of convenience, and then got married and you kinda started playing with food, I realized I liked to cook. But there was still a lot of convenience, like Hamburger Helpers in the first couple years of marriage. And so you kind of didn't have, had an idea of what things sort of were healthy but not a real clear idea. And kids, time, fast forward to about three years ago, no? - Yeah, pretty much. - I got into the Whole 90, with you and then did food journaling for a year. And took a lot of I think what a background was and then was able just to change and tweak things. And so now it's very much real whole food, minimally processed stuff, trying to get the healthy fats, the quality protein, the veggies. So yeah, the last, I would say the last three years have been, I've felt really good and confident about my food. And it was not, it's nice because I didn't worry so much about weight. You know, that was always kind of a part of food. Like it was more like food was something I had to manipulate to be a certain way or to look a certain way or and so it's kind of been a nice shift for me within the last several years to I like my food and it doesn't, I know it fuels me and I'm not so worried about having to take something out or limit yeah. - So tell us a little bit about how you are eating now. Like what typical foods you might eat and then you know you brought some meals with you. - Yeah okay, I feel like I have to preface a little bit that I don't meal prep. I have the three kids, I have three kids, a 12 year old, a nine and a six year old. So I'm making dinner every night anyway. So most of our foods are dinners, I make large portions dinner. And then I will sometimes eat that for breakfast or I'll get it for sure for lunch, Mike and I take them for lunch. So, like I said dinners are usually. This is a good one to start with. So this is a pork steak that I don't know can you see, pork steak that we had one night, roast potatoes. We love roasting potatoes. I roast sweet potatoes, potato wedges, big, little potatoes, salt, pepper, whatever seasoning. And then we roast brussels sprouts, we'll roast broccoli, and then we'll kind of have this. Often we'll have, they're like a lettuce, grains, and have a small side salad on there. If you haven't seen my video on the buffalo chicken patties or you haven't checked out that recipe, this is my go to, and we're on the Whole 30 right now so this is like, I make it and I have it in the fridge always. And I put it over greens, and then it comes with like a mayo dressing on top so the fat it's super great. This was dinner last night, cauliflower rice with the teriyaki chicken. There's some chicken down under there and it had like zucchini and broccoli and carrots and onion and pineapple and all over cauliflower rice. So it's a lot of veggies, a lot of protein, I'm very liberal on my fat when I'm cooking. I like my fat a lot so, but it varies, so we have like soup, we love soup, we have soup once a week. It's just different every night. - Yeah. - So. - Those look delicious, very well presented, very easy. - Literally I threw them, like it's just leftovers from dinners this week so. - Yeah they look great. So I always in these videos like to talk about kind of unique aspects of someone's life, you know, Andrew was a college student, and you know, Carl's a rugby coach and all of these different things. So you are an anatomy and physiology teacher. You are a mom of three, you are a CrossFit coach, you are an athlete, you have all these different responsibilities and life things going on. Tell us how healthy eating fits into and relates to that and time constraints and kids and just anything you'd like to talk about with relation to that. - I very much have taken on, in all of this, it's very easy to become overwhelmed and want to like jump headfirst into everything. So as I was thinking back about things, I've taken on the approach of like put on my oxygen mask first. So that's really where it boils down to, is I've figured out what I needed to do for me to feel better personally, better in the gym. And so I made those changes for me and then Mike was like okay if you're making dinner I'll eat whatever you're making for dinner but I'm still gonna eat whatever over here. And then he's come on board, come a long way, just you know slowly, and now we're getting into the kids. So to help with that, like for me, I like to prep, not meal prep, but like I have to have a plan for the week. - Right. - So I make my menus, it's like my thing, if I don't know what I'm making that week, and I haven't gone and bougthen the things it's just, it all falls apart very quickly and it can get ugly. So I make my lists and then, and then we just you know I try to think about what's going on in my week and the easier meals to put together go on those busy nights and then the ones that take a little bit more time is those nights that I'm not coaching. You know, the insta pot is Tuesday, Thursday. Yeah, those are the nights that like I'm coaching, you know, going on. So a part of it, like really when it comes to food, a lot of it is convenience but to keep my family happy like I have to have something that is going to be taste good and that the kids are going to be interested in. If the kids aren't interested into it then life becomes difficult. So it's kind of this juggling like I make it to the quality that I want it to be I just try to search new recipes to fit the family. The time or the picky eaters, the little ones, so. - Good and you're doing a-- - Whole 30-ish, is that-- - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, so this year was the first year at like, I said Mike kind of got on board and so this year I was like I'm gonna do a Whole 30 in February after my birthday. And so Mike has been eating really well with us and he's like I think we all should. Okay! So I wasn't quite there yet but the words came out of his mouth and then it was kind of like well let's try it, we'll see. So we are doing a Whole 30 with all three kids, ish. Now I would have to say there's certain tweaks that I've, like it's not perfect Whole 30 with kids but little things here or there that we'll let slide. Like I put some plantain chips in their lunch or something like that. But yeah the kids are on day 23, 24, something like that. So the real test is today when they come home with their Valentine's Day candy. - Right. - They know they're to put it in the cupboard and wait 'til next week but we'll see. But it's going really well, you know, the buy-in with the, we talked, prepped them a lot before, before doing a Whole 30. And then some of the buy-in was getting them to look at my recipe books and figure out what they might want to have for dinners. And so then we made the things they wanted for dinners. And sure enough a couple meals that they're like eh, lukewarm on. You know, every night they're like this was good, it was good and they haven't really bocked too much. They do like day dream about doughnuts and candy and bread 'cause you know I had taken cereal out of the house but breads, milk, sugar being the big things that they had to get rid of so. But yeah, it was, I thought I'll give it a week, we'll see how it goes and we're on week, three weeks now. - So-- - Wow. - Yeah. - That's fantastic. - For me it was a success whether it was-- - Yeah, that's huge I mean, yeah I mean to just do it you and Mike let alone you know the entire family I think, that's definitely an amazing accomplishment. - Thanks. Yeah now the tricky part is I have to figure out what I'm gonna, like where do we go after these 30 days. - Right. - So, we'll figure out that. - Cool, let's talk about nutritional off-roading. So as you know very well we typically like to talk about you know completely off planned foods in the context of special occasions. So tell me A about like special occasions that are meaningful to you in terms of food and then B like what are your favorite like, I don't care, I just want to have it. Whatever it is, it's like my favorite off plan food. - Oh, that's a good question. Special occasions, obviously the holidays. But even then I liked what Brandon talked about, you know like if I have to, if I really want it, like and where my willpower is in all of that. You know, I can have holidays and still be really good and say to the dessert. - Right. - There's a certain thing my mom's rolls at Christmas time like-- - Yeah. - Yeah, a lot of my special occasions tend to be I try to like save those for like our anniversary or date nights and usually they are to a special place that we like to go. Like our favorite like pizza is usually my thing. Or wine or something like that, but that, so those are my favorites. We have certain things like special occasions, like tailgates, oh we go camping every year. And like, actually, the last two years have pretty good though but, I don't know. It's hard because there's a context for everything just to say. - Right. - But pizza is a good one, burger, like a really good burger. And if it's baked goods like cake, I really like cake, that's my kind of, but I don't eat it all the time so like it's-- - Right, it's very infrequent. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, but those are my like-- - Go tos. - Go tos. - That's a good list, I like that list. - Yeah. - It's more me. Okay well, I think I'd like to end with the sense, you know you've already mentioned some great advice to people about you know, put your oxygen mask on first. Is there anything else, you'd like to share about your own personal journey through food or dealing with your family or any other nuggets of wisdom that you've encountered over the years that you'd like to share with others starting out maybe. - Yeah take care of yourself, that's a big one. Every once in awhile, I'll stop and I'll think about how far I've come, especially in my kitchen. I remember when I was first starting and looking at recipes and I'm like coconut amino what? And fish sauce huh? And you know all these things that seemed so foreign and my guess one of my biggest recommendations is to start little, like it doesn't have to be a huge transformation at first. It was, I took this one recipe and I tried the coconut aminos and I made this and I tweaked that and it worked out okay and then it was just little things along the way. So it doesn't have to be a complete 180 or life changing immediately. It was, I did a little bit that I could along the way. Like do your best until you know better and then you do better, you know that quote. And so I've just, okay well I'm gonna try this now and I'm gonna incorporate this. And so and there's no endpoint, like I'm still learning new things and I'm still trying new things. So I just, it's kind of a fun, it's just a constant experiment I think for me. And I just have fun kind of playing with it and learning more and trying more. I don't know, that'd probably be, yeah. - Cool, well thank you so much for being with us today, I appreciate it. - You're welcome. - All right guys, thanks so much for tuning and we'll see you next time.