In this video we talk about certain special considerations you should keep in mind when keeping track of your protein macros.
1. When calculating your macros/calories be sure to take account of the protein AND the fat from your quality protein sources.
While oils tend to be pure fat and most vegetables/plant foods are almost exclusively carbohydrate, most quality protein sources are a combo of protein AND fat. An exception would be something like a boneless skinless chicken breast which is almost exclusively protein.
For example, 8oz or half a pound of 85/15 ground beef would be roughly 42g of protein, 0g of carbs, 34g of fat. If you only accounted for the protein you would be missing a substantial amount of fat in your calorie/macro calculations.
2. Weigh and measure your protein sources RAW.
There's debate about this online and you're welcome to do it however you'd like. Generally speaking, though, the best way to go about things is to weigh and measure your protein raw because it shrinks
while cooking. Furthermore the nutrition facts on the label are for the RAW food not the cooked food.
For example, if you weight 8oz of 85/15 ground beef on a scale before you cooked it it should be 227g, but if you weighed it after cooking, depending on the cooking method, it would be as low as 150g by weight. There's a significant difference between entering 227g of ground beef in MyFitnessPal and 150g.
3. Grams of weight is NOT the same as grams of protein.
For example, when you put 8oz/half pound of ground beef on a scale it should weigh 227g. However, that is NOT the total amount of protein in the ground beef. 227g by WEIGHT of ground beef would yield roughly 100g of protein (depending on the leanness of the beef or other meat).
Hopefully these are useful tips for when you weigh and measure your protein.
- Now let's finish by talking about some special considerations.
Okay, so with a lot of foods that we'll be talking about, they are just typically one macronutrient, so I'll give you an example. So oils would typically just be healthy fat. Carbs, or excuse me, vegetables and fruit would typically just be carbohydrates. With the animal protein sources that you're consuming here, typically they are also gonna contain a decent amount of fat in them as well. And this balance is important. So take a couple examples on either end of the spectrum. Chicken breast would be an example of a super, super lean protein, so very high in protein, about 50 grams of protein for having half a pound or eight ounces. Super low in fats. So if you're doing more of a bodybuilding diet, or a leaner protein diet, that's going to be fantastic. Bacon on the other hand is gonna be the exact opposite, total reverse. And most pork in general, with the exception of pork tenderloin and pork chops, is gonna be much higher in fat and lower in protein. So bacon, not a great protein source. It's gonna have some, but it's gonna be mostly fat and not as much protein. So if someone's doing a ketogenic diet. Much higher fat, moderate protein, super low carb, then bacon's gonna be a really good option there. But you should remember that with these animal protein sources, it's gonna be mixed not just of protein, but also of fat, and we'll talk about this when we get to the macros video on fat as well.
Raw versus cooked. So you'll see a lot of debate and discussion online about this, and you're welcome to weigh and measure however you'd like, but if you're weighing and measuring in MyFitnessPal or something like that, I would advocate that you weight your stuff raw, or really the easiest way is look, you've got a pound of ground beef, you know and you're cooking it up, and you put half of that pound, let's say after it's cooked, on your plate, then you write just eight ounces in MyFitnessPal and that will calculate out the rough amount of protein you've consumed based on whether you're eating ground beef or chicken. The problem is that there's going to be a decent discrepancy between these two. So just to give you an example, if you cooked up a, let's just use a half pound for right now, let's say a half pound of 85/15 ground beef. By weight, that's gonna be 227 grams before you cook it. And then depending on the method you cook it, you know, I'll typically roast it in the oven, or saute it, that can come out anywhere around like 150 grams by weight. So we're talking a pretty significant difference there, in terms of what it's going to yield when you enter that into MyFitnessPal or some other program.
Which leads me to my final point, which is a very common source of confusion, grams versus grams, so this is a question I hear all the time about protein that people get very confused about that let's try to clear up. Let's take eight ounces, or half a pound of something. Eight ounces of protein, whether it's ground beef or chicken or what have you, would be roughly 227 grams by weight of that meat. So if you put that meat on the scale, it's going to say 227 grams, before you cook it typically. That's what it will weigh. Because a full pound is 454, so half that, 227. But that same eight ounces precooked is going to be 100 grams of protein. Why? Because, well for many reasons, but the main reason being that not all of that weight is made up of protein, some of it is made up of water, some of it's made up of fat, some of it's made of other things, so the weight of the protein is not the same as the total amount of grams of protein. Which brings me back to one other point that I should have made up here. A lot of times when you're looking on the back of raw meat, or even on a nutrition facts label, whether it be online or in MyFitnessPal, they're giving you the nutrition facts data for raw, not cooked. Sometimes you can find cooked, but generally it's raw. So that's one of the other reasons why it's important to weigh and measure things typically raw. Alright guys, so we covered how much protein you should be having per day, what kind it should come from, and some special considerations to take into account. Hopefully now, if you're looking to make macros a part of the way that you get a sense of what to do with your food, you have a sense of how to go about doing this now, especially with protein. In future videos we will cover carbs and fat. Alright guys, thanks so much for tuning in, see you next time.
In this interview we sit down with Coach Erin to talk about what she eats on a regular basis.
For those of you who don't know Coach Erin, she:
-is a mom of 2
-is a long time CrossFitter
-is a huge fan of dogs
-recently completed her first Whole30.
In this video Erin 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.
In this video we sit down with Brittany who completed our CFSB Nutrition one-on-one nutrition coaching program.
Brittany is a mom of three, and her job as a nurse has unique hours. So, she was concerned about how she could fit healthy eating into her life. Not only was she able to fit healthy eating into her life, she thrived while doing it!
During the program Brittany:
-Lost 15lbs
-Lost 3 inches off her waist
-Lost 2 inches off her hips
Even more importantly she had a lot of non-scale victories:
-She is more in control of her food choices
-Her husband and her entire family are generally eating healthier
-She found ways to fit healthy eating into her busy schedule
Brittany, we're so proud of you and your progress! Keep up the great work!
___________________________________________________________________________Transcript
- Hey guys Robby here from CFSB Nutrition at Crossfit South Bend. Today I'm here with Brittany who just finished three months of nutrition coaching. Brittany, thank you so much for joining us today. So Brittany just lost 16 pounds. She lost three inches off her waist and two inches off her hips and I think we can both agree that the pictures are pretty night and day. You can see a big difference.
- Absolutely, yeah.
- So Brittany, tell us a little bit about what life was like before you started nutrition coaching.
- So we have three small children at home. We have a really busy lifestyle running to soccer practices and gymnastics and just kind of all over the place. So just busy lifestyle, on the go. Not that we ate a lot of fast food because we do have a daughter with allergies but we didn't eat quality food. And we just ate what was quick, what was packaged thinking that there's no way we could do anything differently. Until I hit probably, I would say the lowest or I should say the highest my weight has been since giving birth. And I knew something had to change. I knew that even though we weren't doing fast food a lot that we still weren't eating quality food and we still weren't eating the way we should be.
- So tell us a little bit about what you thought about this way of eating that I was describing was gonna be like before you started. So we sat down, we chatted about it. Were you nervous? Did you think it would be okay? Like what did you think before you gave it a shot?
- So I was nervous because of how busy we are. And although my husband and I both like to cook, we definitely like our sweets and we like our pizzas and our Friday nights. So I was nervous about that. I was nervous about how much prep time and how much time I was gonna be in the kitchen and how that would take away from my children. And so I was a little bit nervous but yeah.
- So after we actually got into the flow of things, tell people how did the reality match up to the expectations? So you were nervous going in. How did that actually manifest itself when you were actually doing the three months?
- So my husband and I, the nice thing is he was 100 percent with me. He knew that we needed a change and he was there to support me. So the first couple of weeks, although yes there was, it does take a significant amount of planning especially when you're on the go and you do have small children. But it wasn't like I was spending hours in the kitchen or anything like that. I for the most part was able to prep and do things ahead of time after the kids would either go to bed or if my husband took over reading with the kids or doing homework so that I could prep for lunches and things the next day. I didn't feel like I was missing out on things. And there are quick and easy meals too. So it wasn't like you had a bajillion ingredients that nobody knew what they were. And we made it work just by shifting the way that we saw it a little bit or the way we did things just a little bit. And introducing foods slowly and taking out some slowly.
- Excellent. So tell people about what it was like, so you've got a family, you got kids. You have a job that sometimes involves unique hours. How did you navigate that?
- So like I said a lot of planning. It does take a lot of talking and looking ahead. There was a good video once about preparing for last minute changes and being a little bit flexible. So knowing that I needed to have extra veggies cut up in case we didn't get a little bit of time between gymnastics and soccer practice. Or if I had to go from I work at a school during the day and then I had to go to work at a hospital shift at night. Knowing that okay well I have to make sure that I take not only my lunch for the school but I have to take with me to the school my dinner for work. But we were really good about talking with that the night before or even a couple days out. And just making sure that A, we had groceries in the house. And B that our kids were taken care of and made sure that their food and everything was packed and then mine as well. So it did take a significant amount of planning and talking with my husband and working things out but definitely worth it.
- Yeah once you put in the effort it sounds like it paid dividends.
- Mm-hmm, it did.
- One of the things we always like to talk about is the so-called non-scale victories. The things that go beyond the numbers and the pictures and the measurements. Tell people what non-scale victories you experienced during the program.
- So for me eating was definitely pleasure. It was definitely comfort. Definitely had a foothold on me. And so part of this program and part of why I entered it was kind of to break some of those unhealthy habits. To feel empowered, to be able to say no, I don't really want that right now or things like that. So that when I went to a party and there was a whole bunch of things out that I wouldn't feel like I had to eat it or I didn't crave it. So I definitely have an empowerment over those unhealthy habits. Different foods that I can walk away from now. And it does make you just feel empowered and good about your choices.
- Yeah, absolutely that's fantastic.
- And definitely an example for my children as well.
- Yeah, absolutely. The last question I always like to ask is imagine you were talking to someone who has a similar job or who's a mom or Brittany three or four months ago when she's not quite sure should I do this, should I not? What would you say to someone who is thinking about doing this after what you've experienced what you've experienced.
- Well I would definitely be honest with them that yes it does take prep. It does take talking about what's going to go on during the week. But that it's not impossible and that it's not crazy hard. It just takes planning. It just takes looking at what the week holds and saying okay, so when do I get my groceries? And how can I get my veggies cut up? And just looking at it and planning ahead. But it really isn't as scary or daunting as it seems. And if you have the support at home, just knowing that you're in it together and you can do this.
- Yeah, absolutely. Well I have to say on my end I'm super proud of you and all the progress you made. I think you did a fantastic job. Yeah, and I wish you guys continued success in the future with eating this way.
- Well great, thank you.
- Alright guys well thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you next time.
In this video we talk about how nutrition coaching can help you optimize your performance.
First let's start off with one of the foundational pieces: food amount.
- I see it over and over and over again where people are under-eating, and this is especially true for people who are training for CrossFit, or power lifting, or endurance sports.
-If you are not eating adequate calories for what you're training for, then you're just, generally speaking, going to underperform.
-So with our InBody body fat scanner, we can actually help you determine the exact calorie needs for you based on your sport and body composition and so on and so forth.
But what if you're eating enough calories but you're still not performing well? Well, maybe then your macronutrient balance is off.
-You could be someone who has a 3000 calorie diet that's very high protein, high carb, and another person who has a 3000 calorie diet that's very high fat, low carb, and moderate protein.
-The balance of those macronutrients is gonna determine to a large extent how well you can perform your sport.
-For someone who is power lifting, you wanna make sure you're getting enough protein.
-For someone who's doing CrossFit, you know, go, go, go workouts, then you wanna make sure you're getting enough carbohydrates. So, that balance is important.
Finally, another way we can help you improve your performance, that goes back to one of our core values when it comes to nutrition, is food quality.
-You wanna make sure that you have enough nutrients to get adequate recovery from workouts, to get adequate sleep, to make sure your muscles aren't sore, to make sure your blood sugar's stable, to make sure you're actually digesting and assimilating your food.
-All of those are incredibly important for performance.
So, hopefully now you have a better sense of how nutrition coaching can help you with performance.
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.
CFSB will be participating for the second year in Walk MS with CFSB Member's Brian and Demetria. Come out with us and show some support with Team Deme on Saturday May 4th - Registration begins at 8:00am and Walk starts at 9:00am
Read on to hear Brian and Demetria's Story
Brian and Demetria’s Story – Walk MS: South Bend 2019My primary job in life is providing care for my wife, Demetria. In 2006, Demetria was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. MS is an unpredictable and disabling disease of the central nervous system that disrupts the flow of information within the brain as well as between the brain and the body. MS is different for everyone, making it challenging to solve. Most people diagnosed with MS have the relapsing remitting form, meaning they experience “attacks” or increased neurological symptoms that last for several days to several months, followed by periods of “remissions” where they partially or completely recover from their symptoms. Demetria deals with a rarer form called primary progressive MS. It’s different in that there are no attacks or remissions, rather the decline of the central nervous system is slow and steady. Unfortunately, there are no medications to reverse the neurological damage. Medications only offer the potential to slow disease progression.Only a few years after her diagnosis, Demetria experienced a rapid and severe decline in her neurological system, developing very serious physical disabilities not typically associated with MS patients. By 2010, she developed a speech disorder, head tremors, severe muscle weakness in her legs, and ataxia in her arms. It’s been a very difficult journey, but we continue to fight her disease together and Demetria’s toughness and perseverance provides a great source of inspiration. But we are not without joy. Despite all of her challenges, Demetria gave birth to our son, Jude, in 2014! The love, energy, and enthusiasm that he displays every day reflects Demetria’s spirit. When I joined CFSB, it was to start “caring for the caregiver.” My experience has been amazing. While I’m proud of my improved fitness, my goal was always to find life balance and strengthen myself to continue my caregiving journey. I never expected to find such a truly positive and supportive community that would help me in achieving this unique goal. Last year, when we invited the coaches to Walk MS, we were hoping they would wear our orange Team Deme t-shirts during classes on the day of the walk to help raise awareness for MS. Instead, they asked us to share our story, closed the gym to join us at Walk MS, and encouraged everyone to join our team. The support we felt from the entire CFSB community was incredibly uplifting. Thank you to everyone that helped make it a memorable day and thank you to the members and coaches who continue to strengthen me and allow me to continue caring for Demetria.This year, we are once again participating in Walk MS: South Bend to recognize Demetria’s fight against multiple sclerosis. My wife and I wanted to invite all of CFSB to join “Team Deme” and participate in Walk MS: South Bend on Saturday, May 4th. Since 2014, Team Deme has raised almost $10,000 for the National MS Society (and with CFSB’s help, almost $4,700 last year)! The money raised helps the National MS Society fund research, advocate for change, and support programs for those impacted by MS – programs that my family has used to obtain home care, medication, and medical equipment. It makes a big difference in many lives. Please consider donating to our team and/or joining us on Saturday, May 4th for Walk MS: South Bend. You can use the following link to join our team, register for Walk MS, and get more information:http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/TeamDeme19Finally, we always give orange t-shirts to those that join us at Walk MS. We are going to re-use the same t-shirt design as last year. If you are new to our team or need a new shirt for any reason, please let us know your t-shirt size by Monday, April 8th. Thanks so much to the entire CFSB community for your love and support!
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!
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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 video we give a practical demonstration of how to weigh and measure your food, with our guest star Lila the puppy.
Do you need to weigh and measure your food to be healthy? Definitely not.
As we've said in many other videos, health can be achieved by focusing on food quality and adequate micronutrients (zinc, magnesium, Vitamins C, D, B12, etc.)
However, weighing and measuring your food can be useful for things like getting lean, gaining size and strength, and for athletic performance. Also, while weighing and measuring your food isn't strictly speaking necessary for health, there are some cool things you can find out that directly relate to your health like how much fiber, sugar, carbs, protein, and fat you're consuming on a daily basis. It can also tell you whether you are over-eating or under-eating relative to your goals.
What do you need to weigh and measure your food? Two things:
-A food scale (pretty much any food scale will do)
-An app for like MyFitness Pal to enter the weights in (there are other apps as well)
How do you weigh and measure your food? For most foods there are three steps.
-Step 1: Put raw food that you want to measure on top of the scale (usually on top of parchment paper, aluminum foil, a plate, etc. so the food isn't directly on the scale for safe food prep)
-Step 2: Check the number on the scale (this could be in grams or ounces, grams are usually more precise)
-Step 3: Enter that number in the food amount section of your calorie counting app like MyFitnessPal.
Repeat these steps for all foods.
Do you need to weigh and measure foods for the rest of your life? Absolutely not. But taking a 3-4 week period to get data on your most common 80-90% of meals can be a super useful exercise.
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Transcript
Robby here from CFSB Nutrition and Crossfit South Bend. Today, I'm here with Lilah, our new addition to the family. She wanted to do a video on weighing and measuring food, so I'm going to do that for her. But I'm going to put her down for now because she'll want to be held for too long. So she'll be wondering around while we're doing the video. Say "hi" Lilah. Cool. Alright. Let's get to it. So people have been asking me for a video on how to actually, practically weigh and measure your food. So let's talk about how to do this. So the first thing we're going to start with is protein, and then we'll move onto the vegetables. Which I've already pre-prepared. So it might be surprising that I'd start with protein you actually don't need to weigh or measure, but I mention this because this is actually going to make things a lot easier for you. This is one pound of ground pork, just split up, on a sheet pan with parchment paper. I have half of this for breakfast and half of this for lunch. I don't need to weigh and measure it because it's already measured as one pound. If I were going to have quarters, I could just easily enter it as quarters. So, that's a really easy way where you don't actually need to put it on the scale and measure it. So that's ready to go. Put it in the oven. On here, on your My Fitness Pal what you would do is, so I've already preloaded this so you guys didn't have to watch me search for it. I'd click my all fresh natural ground pork, and my serving size is one ounce and I have eight ounces of it. If you measured it out on a scale, that would be 227 grams, but again, if you know it's a one pound brick, you don't need to weigh and measure it out. Okay. So. That was protein that was pretty easy to know how to split up. What would you do about a chicken breast? So, let me show you here with this. So I've got my scale over here that you can come around and see, and you'll notice is says 738 on it right now. I'm going to zero that out. And then, normally I would just use my hands to do this, but since I'm going to be handling vegetables, and I don't wanna have to have you guys watch me wash my hands. I'm just going to put this on here with the tong. Hopefully it doesn't slide down for Lilah to eat. And then I put it on the scale. And that says 242 grams, so I would do here in My Fitness Pal for dinner, is my boneless skinless chicken breast. The serving size is one gram. I change that to 242, and it automatically tells me that's 55.5 grams of protein, 3.2 grams of fat, so on and so forth. Check, that's all set. Okay. What if I were doing multiple chicken breasts? All I do is I just zero this out, and then I just add the other chicken breast, just like I added the first one. Okay. So, just put it on there. 224. Zero it out again. And I can do the same thing with this third one. So it's saying that's 134. So if you are doing a meal for bunch of you know if you're doing meal prep for a bunch of different meals or for a family or something like that that can be a good way to just do things all at once. Another important point here guys that I want to make is when you are measuring food specifically protein but also vegetables you want to weigh and measure them raw. That is what the macronutrients values will be listed for on the back of your food, that's what you find in My Fitness Pal. It's going to shrink after you cook it, so you want to weigh and measure it raw. Okay. I'm going to pop this right here, in this oven. Right there I guess. Okay. So that is, the protein. So this is going to be my protein basically for the day. Now let's talk about produce. So. Got another sheet pan here ready. And what we're going to do is the following. So you'll see over here, I've chopped up basically all my veggies for the day. My starch is in the former Japanese sweet potatoes, my kale, my red cabbage. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to saute this kale. So I've got my stove top preheated here. I'm going to put the kale on the sheet pan, and it's telling me that it's 150 grams, so all I would do here is I would go to my kale and it's one gram measurement and I would change that to 150. And I'm good to go. Do you need to weigh and measure your kale? Not really. Do you really need to weigh and measure anything? No, not really. From a health prospective, you can be perfectly healthy without weighing and measuring anything. But for performance, aesthetics, for certain things in health, like the among of fiber you're having per day, or the amount of sugar, it can be useful. But just to have consistency with weighing and measuring everything I like to just do that. Now, what I'm going to do here is I'm not actually going to weigh the fat of course, but I am going to measure it. I'm going to put a tablespoon of oil into this tablespoon right here. I'm going to drop it into the pan. You can do this with ghee. You can do it with coconut oil. You can do it with whatever it is you'd like to do. And then I'm just going to take this parchment paper toss it in here and that's going to start sauteing. And I'm going to put a couple of scoops in here of some salt. Oh, Lilah you like the Kale? Yeah? Lilah likes to hang around and wait for someone to drop them so she can eat them. Alright. So while that's heating up, I'm going to show you guys the next thing. So the next thing is gong to be my starch for the day. So, in this case, I'm gonna use Japanese sweet potatoes. So I'm gonna to zero my scale out. I'm gonna put one set over there other set over here. Okay. So, that's roughly you know, it's saying 376, so that's, you know, basically a little over one eighty per. So what I do here this is kinda a useful thing I do to just make it so I know, ya know, the rough amount for each portion. You take one tablespoon of oil, for this breakfast portion here, drop it right over that. Do another one for this right here. And then get your salt amounts. You don't have to weigh and measure your salt. I actually do. Not because I am trying to get too little, but because I wanna make sure I get an adequate amount. Salt is very important for overall health, performance, and electrolytes, and a whole bunch of other things. And then, I just mix it up over here. Mix it up over there. And I'm good to go. So what I'm going to do here. Just get a paper towel for my hands real quick. And I'm going to make sure I've got Lilah in check. And then just going to put this in the oven like so. And that's good to go. So, one other one I wanted to show you is. What would you do if you had two vegetables on the same sheet pan? How would you do that? So, I'm just gonna grab this other sheet pan over here. And then and zero it out. I put this set of Japanese sweet potatoes on, I put that set and that's telling me about 212, so that's kinda my dinner amount for the carbs. And then for dinner, I could just go in here, and you know, enter 212 right in there. And then that's telling me that it's 44 grams of carbs for those sweet potatoes. And then, I zero it out again. And. Put this on here. And you can come around and see that this is saying about 323. And again all I do with that is I would just put that in right here in my My Fitness Pal. Okay. So in that case it's 100 grams of, I'm just doing three point two three, but it's the same exact thing. Now for this, since I've got two sets of vegetables I just put two tablespoons of oil. So one tablespoon. Two tablespoons. Put the amount of salt I would typically put on two different vegetables. And then just toss it all up. So it's ready to go. So you don't have ta individualize it like I did the other set of sweet potatoes. You can make it where you're doing bulk vegetables for a number of different people. If you were doing this in a saute pan, you can just drop this into the saute pan. If you were doing it in an Instapot, you can drop it into an Instapot. You don't need to use a sheet pan and parchment paper. But that happens to be what I use for a lot of this stuff. Just because it tends to be easy. Okay. I'm just going to throw that in there. So as you can probably tell this is not all for one meal. This is just me prepping meals basically for the day, so that I'm ready to go. Last thing I'm going to show you guys is how to do this with your fruit. Okay. For this, I'm just going to use a bowl. I'm gonna put the bowl on top of the scale. And. I typically have about 125 grams of blueberries. When I have blueberries. So, all I do here is, you could use your hands, I just like to kinda slide it in there like so. And you can just see that the scale is goin' up as I'm doing it. And then right as I get to right around 125. It's a little bit higher. So all I just do is I just take a couple out. And basically around 125. So. Hopefully that gives you a good sense of how to weigh and measure stuff. Now again, you do not need to do this for health, but a lot of people are getting interested because they want to optimize their performance, or the aesthetics, and there are certain things for health, like your fiber consumption, or your sugar consumption, or your protein amount that can be useful to optimize your health. But you don't, strictly speaking, need to do it for health. But hopefully now, you guys have a good sense of how to weigh and measure things. Thanks so much for tuning in. And we'll see you guys 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.
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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.
