CrossFit South Bend

Is eating less always a good thing? Put simply, no. Because we live in a society of overweight people and excess processed food consumption, we tend to think the less you eat the better. But, more often than not, I'll see people under-eating relative to what they need, and it's sabotaging their weight loss and health goals. Not only are they not getting enough micronutrients and calories, but what they are getting is harmful to them. So what are the downsides of eating too little? 1. Not getting enough nutrients like Vitamin A, magnesium, and omega-3s. Nutrient deficiencies can lead to excess cravings. 2. It can lead to blood sugar crashes because you're not getting enough in the macronutrients to stabilize blood sugar. 3. Unhealthy psychological relationship where you view food as something that's to be avoided rather than nourishing 4. You won't be able to have enough energy to exercise or to recover properly from exercise. 5. Your body starts to go into starvation mode if you consume less than 20% of your calorie needs on a regular basis and not burn. In general if you're a female eating less than 1500 calories a day and if you're a make eating less than 2000 calories a day you're probably eating too little. How do you determine your calorie needs? Check out the following video. https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=0j9LTrIDOwM ______________________________________________________________________ Today we are going to talk about under eating. You might be surprised to hear us talk about this. You might think, "Oh, well the scourge of the modern world is that people are overeating and under exercising." And obviously to a certain extent, that is certainly the case. Whereas food, quite a long time ago, used to be very scarce, and we weren't very sedentary, we'd need to go work for food, or go out and hunt for food. Now we're very sedentary. A lot of the time we don't exercise, and we tend to overeat. But I will tell you what. I see very, very, very often when people come in to see me, when we actually calculate what they're supposed to be eating in terms of calorie needs, or protein needs, or carb needs, or fat needs, or all taken together, a lot of people are actually under eating. So it's this combination of them eating too much in the way of bad stuff, and not eating enough total. That's a horrible combination. Now obviously, you wouldn't want it to be the case that they're eating too much of the bad stuff and whole lot of it. But at the same time, one of the things we will see over and over again is that people are under eating, and they're actually sabotaging their weight loss and health goals. You might be wondering, "What's the problem with under eating? Isn't eating less good? Isn't that an unqualified good that everyone should be trying to do anyway?" Well, not necessarily. There's some things that don't admit of just going to the extreme. Working out is good. But that doesn't mean that working out seven days a week, three times a day is better, right? So there's a happy medium, there's kind of a balance point. Same thing with eating less. We don't want to gorge ourselves and be gluttons, but at the same time, we don't want to starve ourselves. So what are some of the downsides of eating too little? Well, number one, when we go to food quality standard number one that we talk about all the time, not getting enough nutrition. Not getting enough nutrients. Vitamins A, D, E, K. Minerals like calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, iron, things like that. So you just become nutrient deficient, and because of that, your body craves more food, and you end up kind of binging and eating things that you shouldn't. So you're not getting adequate nutrients to support your body's function. Blood sugar roller coaster. If you are taking in too little in the way of nutrition, your blood sugar's gonna be on this kinda roller coaster throughout the day, where your hormones like cortisol are gonna need to come in to balance things out. And this is gonna cause you being hangry, hungry plus angry, having your blood sugar dysregulated, having your stress hormone, cortisol, be dysregulated. That's not good either. It's gonna lead to an unhealthy psychological relationship with food, where you tend to view it has harmful rather than nourishing. [inaudible 00:03:04] something to be avoided. And when we talk about exercise and performance, you're just not gonna perform that well. And you're just generally gonna feel tired, and not have enough energy, won't be able to recover. So under eating is not a good thing. People assume because overeating is bad that under eating must be okay, and it's not. So you need to determine what your caloric needs are. So I did an entire other video on that that you guys can check out, but let me just use an example here to indicate how you very well might be consuming way too few calories. As I mentioned in that other video, there are a lot of different ways to determine calories, but let's just use a super simple one to show how probably a number of you watching this are probably eating too few calories. One of the ways I mentioned in that other video to calculate calorie needs was a very simple back of the envelope calculation. Where you would do, you'd basically multiply a certain number of calories by someone's body weight. So let's say we have 100 pound person, someone who's super, super light. If they wanted to maintain that weight, they would multiply their weight time 17 calories per pound, you'll eat 1700. If they wanted to lose weight, they would multiply that times 14 calories, which would be 1400 calories. And if they wanted to gain weight, they'd multiply their weight times 20. So think about that for a second. We're talking about 100 pound person, most people watching this are not gonna be 100 pounds. That's really, really light. And we're saying that for them to maintain their weight, they would need to intake 1700 calories. And even if they wanted to lose weight, 1400 calories. So those of you out there that are eating 1100, 1200, 1300 calorie diets, that is way, way, way, way too little in the way of calories for you. And especially if you're working out, especially if you're working out. We haven't even factored that into the equation yet. If you're working out, and you're aggressively hypocaloric, it can actually thwart your goals, it can actually make it so that not only do you not lose weight, but in some cases, you can actually gain weight, because your body slows your metabolism down so much that it's just trying to hoard whatever it gets. It's really, really important that you are eating adequate calories for what you're trying to do. And just in general, if you go below 20 percent of what you need calorically on a daily basis, your body will tend to go into this kind of starvation mode, and it will hoard calories. It will hoard the food and the energy that you've consumed. You really want to make sure that you're intaking enough calories. So how do you determine this? Well, I'll put a link in the video. I'll put a link in the description below to that other video. You can come in and see us, and you can do an in-body scan, and we can determine your calorie needs for you. There are online calorie calculators. But generally speaking, if you're someone who skips breakfast and then has a yogurt and a couple handfuls of nuts, and then has a salad for dinner, you're probably eating way too little. Just do a little accounting, maybe, with something like My Fitness Pal, or come in and see us here at the gym, and figure out your calorie needs, and maybe that could be the key to getting you to not only feel better, but perform better, and maybe even reach your weight loss goals.  

In this video we sit down with coach Mitch to talk with him about what he normally eats, his relationship with food, and his advice for those trying to change their dietary habits for the better. Mitch's story is unique for a number of reasons: -He's a member of CFSB's full-time coaching staff -He recently got engaged -He is one of our top athletes in the gym -He is training to go to CrossFit Regionals There are a lot of great insights to be gleaned from what Mitch has to say about how he eats. In this video we talk about: -what Mitch typically eats -what he grew up eating -his favorite off-plan items -how he navigates social situations -how to eat healthy while training for top performance ____________________________________________________________________ Robby:             Alright guys, Robby here from Crossfit South Bend. Today I'm here with coach Mitch, and we are going to be talking about Mitch's relationship with food. So Mitch, first of all, thank you so much for being here. Mitch:              Thank you, I feel like I'm in Batman's layer almost. This is like a privilege, this is great. Robby:             Appreciate it. No windows, yeah, completely cordoned off. So Mitch, the first thing I want to ask you about is, tell me what food was like for you growing up? Mitch:              Growing up it was probably your classic American lifestyle. It's a bag of chicken strips that we preheat the oven, or a Tombstone pizza. Having my mom being a full-time worker, she wasn't at home all the time, so usually it was us kids fixing our meals initially, and then when she'd get home she'd usually cook us some kind of meal that is closer to what I'm going to show you guys here in a little bit, but for the most part it was frozen foods, veggies out of a bag, thing like that. Robby:             Okay. And then when did you start getting interested more in healthier nutrition, when did that transition happen? Mitch:              So the biggest thing, it was actually brought on through fitness. After high school I was no longer playing any sports, so I wanted to fill my time with some sort of activity, and luckily my brother-in-law helped influence my fitness lifestyle. So I started working out in a gym, and then I realized, "Oh crap, I can't really get away with eating this stuff anymore, especially if I want to get to this kind of PR." Or whatever the case may be. So I just had a roommate at the time, who lived a very similar lifestyle as me, and he helped show me the ropes on how to meal prep so to speak, and I just blossomed from there. And as the years have gone on I look back like, "Damn, was I really eating that stuff back then?" And I'm sure five years from now I'm going to be like, "What the hell was I thinking at Crossfit South Bend?" Robby:             Okay, awesome. So tell us a little bit about what you typically wat now, what your food looks like, and I see you've brought some food in, what these typical meals are? Mitch:              Yeah. So with me wanting to be on the performance side of my fitness routine, wanting to compete, things like that, you definitely have to fuel your body or else you're going to crash energy wise, or your body's just not going to recover. So the things that you guys have taught me is really, really make sure that you're putting good quality food into your body day in and day out. So luckily I have a significant other who is also in the same mind frame, so we usually do our meal preps together on Sundays, and on Thursdays if we're running out of food by the end of the week. So usually that's a three or four hour process that we spend on those particular days, and I generally eat about four to five meals a day, as crazy as it sounds- Robby:             That's awesome. Mitch:              And this is how it is. So generally, it's going to be all broken down from a macro standpoint, like I have my numbers that I follow, and I try and stay within that range as best I can, and I generally try and eat every two to three hours, as long as my work schedule allows me to do that. But yeah, for instance, I have a cup of oatmeal with some chopped up apples in there, and some crushed almonds to give it a little extra crunch, and then I have egg whites mixed with white onions and broccoli, and that's a go-to meal for me for breakfast. Then before my workout, probably an hour or two before that, I'll have six ounces of some kind of beef, or maybe even chicken, just depending on what we have, some green veggies, and some rice, because that seems to be a carb that really sits well with me. I feel like I get a good energy from it, it doesn't really make me feel bloaty or anything like that, and I didn't realize how important that was until I started to really follow my diet and started noticing certain foods were making me feel less energized, or more sluggish, things like that. Then usually about an hour or so after I work out I'll have this big, big meal. That's usually where I get the main source of carbs from, and that's usually a little bit harder for me to get all that through, because I'm a cow, I'm a slow grazer, if you will. So I could just sit there and just pile it in for and hour if I have to. Then I tend to have a home cooked meal with Stephanie whenever we get home from work, so that's our ritual, if you will. Robby:             Awesome. So, one of the things I like to do with these videos is, with Andrew last time we were talking about the fact that for him, his unique situation was he was a college student. Mitch:              Right. Robby:             In your case, you are a competitive cross fitter, and working out multiple times a day, doing really hard programming. What sort of nutritional modifications have you had to make in the past few years, and what sort of things have you learned about the way you eat with all this stuff? Mitch:              The biggest thing that I've really learned more about myself is how much we're like a car. Legitimately, we're built like a car. Like we have to do our maintenance work, we have to fill our gas, we have to change the oil. Things like that, and I didn't realize how true that was until I started really making sure that I was changing my oil every couple of hours by eating food, and how skipping a meal and choosing to exercise versus eating, how big of a difference your performance can be with that, and not being in a set routine can definitely mess up your performance. For me, I'm very lucky that I can work out at the same time, generally, every single day, and my diet falls into that schedule as well. But if things are very busy in my life, I might have to work out earlier or later, or maybe only get a portion of my workout in, but I do know that if I'm choosing exercise over food, I know that my performance is not going to be that good that particular day, or maybe even that week because of that decision. So just learning how diet and nutrition is key, versus putting in a better workout. So that's probably been the biggest thing, and the most rewarding thing I've gained from doing this. Robby:             Awesome. So, we've talked a lot about good food. Mitch:              Right. Robby:             Now, let's talk about what are your favorite off-plan foods? What do you like to do when you're nutritionally off-roading? Mitch:              So, none of my athletes know this about me, they would be totally surprised when I say this, but I love spicy food. Just kidding, they probably know that better than anything. Whenever I'm describing a workout, whether it's a long aerobic piece, I'm like, "Yeah, this is like your honey barbecue flavor workout, it's just super chill. Or you've got your mango habanero, that ghost pepper, that's the 500 max row. That's going to make you hate life for a little bit." So that actually stems from me actually loving spicy food. Put a plate of wings in front of me, just sit back and watch the show. Die hard pizza lover, I definitely could eat that at any point. But desserts, I blame my girlfriend for this, but she's really got me into Ben and Jerry's ice cream, getting the little pints and just destroying that, late at night sometimes. Luckily we haven't done that recently. We've been really dialed in with diet and nutrition, things like that, but if you put those three things in front of me it's game over. Robby:             Awesome. So, yeah, that gives us a really good sense of what your diet's like now. Do you have anything else you'd like to share with anyone about food, and things you deal with related to food? Mitch:              Yeah. I think the biggest thing, and I try and relay this to our athletes as well, is that, look, I get it, if you're invested you're going to commit 100%, things like that, but we have other priorities. Some of have family obligations, job obligations, there's other things that play into our day to day lives, and I think sometimes people get discouraged when they can't sit down three or four hours on a Sunday and meal prep their food for the week. And I think that instead of making small jumps, whether that's preparing one meal a week, or whether that's ordering Meals by Maura, hashtag throwing that in there. Generally, making just a small step forward is still a step forward, that is a room of growth, and just start from there and build off of that if you can. It has to have meaning to you, you have to put value in it if that's something that you want to get towards and become. It can happen, just don't be so discouraged if you can't give 100% right off the bat. And luckily I'm very fortunate that with my job path, and the people I'm surrounded with on a day to day basis help promote this kind of lifestyle, and even with that being said, it's still hard. I still find times where it's like, "Damn, I have to meal prep today," or, "Damn, we've got to go get groceries." I understand, it is very challenging. Nothing is easy about this, but it's not just a diet, or a meal program, or anything like that, it's genuinely a whole lifestyle. So I totally get where being discouraged comes from, but don't let that get the best of you. Just start one thing at a time. Robby:             Absolutely. Could not agree more. Well, Mitch, thank you so much for being here, thank you so much for sharing this food with us too. Mitch:              Thank you, Batman, I appreciate it, and I'm going to go eat. Robby:             Awesome. Alright guys, thank you so much for-  

In this video we discuss alcohol and whether alcohol has any place as part of a healthy way of eating. One way to answer that question it to look at alcohol is in terms of nutrients, blood sugar balance, psychological addiction, etc. Viewed in that light there's no such thing as a form of alcohol that is a pure positive contribution to your health. All forms of alchohol are either a mix of good and bad aspects or just purely bad. For example, red wine does have antioxidants, but it also has alcohol, which is a known toxin so it's a mix of some good and bad aspects. Meanwhile, beer, doesn't really contribute anything positive to your health whatsoever and if anything negatively contributes in many ways (alcohol, sugar/carbs, grain-derived). However, an important perspective to keep in mind is that there is more to health than food and more to life than health. So, while alcohol shouldn't be a staple of most people's lives (yes, a glass a day is probably too much), if it's a legit special occasion and it's a form of alcohol you really like you're probably okay to have it. Tips for drinking: -Drink earlier in the day -Have a fattier meal to balance out the alcohol -Be sure to get a good night's sleep the night before and the night after to make sure your body processes the alcohol in the best way possible -Robb Wolf says "Drink enough to maximize your sex life, but not so much that you impact athletic performance" That's definitely one way to look at things. Here's the hierarchy of alcohol from least bad to just plain bad (from the book Paleo Happy Hour) -potato vodka, tequila, rum (not derived from grains, very little sugar) -wine, gluten free beer, and champagne (not derived from grains, but more sugar) -gin, vodka, whiskey, scotch, hard cider (derived from grains, have a few more carbs) -liquers, dessert wines -beer, wine coolers, pre-mixed drinks (e.g. Magaritas) (just bad news all around) ________________________________________________________________________ Today we're going to answer the question, "What about alcohol, can alcohol be a part of a healthy diet?" And just like anything else, you know nothing is either purely good or purely bad, it just depends on the context so we are going to give you some relevant considerations to keep in mind when deciding or not deciding to have alcohol. So I think it's always helpful to kind of frame things in terms of this system or framework that we've developed for categorizing foods. On the one hand, there's your green light foods, these are going to be the things that are, generally speaking, super nutritious, keep your blood sugar in line, they're antiinflammatory, they're not addictive, this is real whole food, right? So meat, eggs, seafood, fish, veggies, healthy fats, fruits, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices. Things of that nature. So alcohol, I don't think there's a single form of alcohol that I would put in the green light category as something that you would have on a daily basis as contributing to your health and yes, that includes Red Wine. I'm a fan of what the developers of The Whole30 have said about this which is, "If you really want the benefits of Red Wine, just go have some Red Grapes, you don't need the Red Wine to get the health benefits of Red Wine." So there's not really a form of alcohol that's a green light food. Now the two other categories are these yellow light foods which are things that kind of have some good aspects and kind of have some bad aspects, and then the red light foods that are just pretty much, generally speaking, pretty bad for you. So soda, pizza, cake, cookies, things of that nature. So I'd say most of alcohol fits in either the yellow light category or the red light category. So before I get to which categories those things fall into with the particular types, let me talk about some general rules for alcohol. So alcohol's one of those ones where, again, it's not a green light food, you do not need it to be healthy, you can go your entire life without a single drop of alcohol and be perfectly healthy. But I would also say it falls into the category of there being more to health than food and more to life than health. So sometimes it's a way to have more fun at a social event. Now you got to be careful with that, if someone's an alcoholic or they see alcohol as their only means to having fun, well that's not good. But a little bit here and there for an otherwise healthy person who's not addicted to it, that maybe lower their stress levels and thus contributes to their health and while alcohol might not have any nutrients in it, it could contribute to health in kind of that stress reduction way. But then we have to balance that with the fact that it negatively impacts sleep even though you might feel like you sleep better when you have alcohol, from an objective standpoint, you're actually sleeping worse and they've done a number of studies to show this. So I think alcohol can be had in these contexts and can be something that contributes to other aspects of health but it's not a nutritious food. So one of my favorite sayings about alcohol comes from Robb Wolf where he says, "Drink enough to maximize your sex life but not so much that you diminish athletic performance." I think that's a pretty good teeter totter scale to try to balance yourself on. Another thing to keep in mind with alcohol is, generally speaking, if you want to minimize the negative impacts, try drinking earlier in the day. I know you might be surprised to hear that but that allows you to not have it impact sleep and try to have a fattier meal afterwards to kind of balance out the alcohol that you might be consuming. So I'm going to go through the hierarchy of alcohol here in just a second and this comes from a great book called Palio Happy Hour, which if you're interested, you should go pickup, but they kind of talk about the hierarchy of alcohol. So before I go through the hierarchy, just make sure to make a distinction between what you hear and what I'm saying. So what you might here is, "Oh, Robby is saying there's a type of alcohol that's the best, that means I can have it every day." No, what I'm saying is that there are bad and less bad versions of alcohol. So the least bad version of alcohol would be things like Tequila, Rum and Potato Vodka. Why? Because they are not derived from grains and they have very little in the way of sugar. So they are not healthy for you in any way shape or form but they're less unhealthy for you than other things. Next on the docket would be Wine, Gluten-free Beer and Champaign, they're not derived from gains but you start to get some more carbs in the mix there when you have those. Next on the list would be Gin, Vodka, Whiskey, Scotch, and Hard Cider, they're derived from grains and they have a bit more in the way of carbs. Next on the list would be Liquors and Desert Wines. And then on the generally avoid or you might as well be having a pizza and a soda at that point would be things like Beer, Wine coolers, Premix drinks like Margaritas, yeah. Those are very much going to fall in the red light category. So Red Wine, I would say White wine, generally speaking, I would say those are probably in the yellow light category. Maybe a shot of the harder Liquors that I mentioned like the Tequila, Rum, and Potato Vodka could maybe be in the yellow light category if they're kept in check and they don't cause you to have a ton of them. Alcohol, just like chocolate or other things is something where you're really going to need to be wary of your tendencies and are you more prone to addiction or more prone to wanting it if you have just a little bit or not. But generally speaking, those would be kind of the yellow light items and then your red light items would be your standard Beer, Margaritas, things of that nature. So can alcohol be part of a healthy way of living? Yeah. I mean assuming, if you have a clinical diagnosis, obviously, you want to stay away from it if you're an alcoholic, but generally speaking, if you're otherwise eating real whole food and it's a way for you to maybe relax with friends or family or for a special occasion then it can be a part of a healthy lifestyle if kept in moderation. But just keep in mind, there is no such thing as healthy alcohol, it's not positively contributing to your health, it doesn't have any nutrients in it and it's got a whole bunch of stuff like extra calories and sleep impact and sugar content that can really harm your health. So if you just keep it in the relevant category of either a yellow light or a red light food that's only for special occasion and in moderation, you should okay. Alright guys, thanks so much for tuning in, I'll see you next time.