CrossFit South Bend

In this video we sit down and chat with the founder, CEO, and co-owner of CrossFit South Bend, Brandon Wilton about his nutrition.

We talk about
-5 crock pots going at a time
-yacht-stuff
-taco night
-looking good naked
-Sheet cakes from Wal-Mart
-Silver beach pizza
-fluctuating carbs
-goals vs. fantasies

Brandon tells us:
-what eating was like growing up
-his journey from unhealthy eating to healthy eating.
-his current eating regimen
-how he meal plans during the week
-lessons he’s learned from training at a high level and coaching others in terms of food consumption

Lots of great nuggets in here so be sure to check out the full video.

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– Hey guys, Robby here from Crossfit Supplement today. I’m here with Coach Brandon who is the co-owner and CEO of Crossfit South Bend and today we’re going to be talking to him about what he’s eating. Alright, Brandon, thanks so much for being with us today, appreciate it.

– Thank you, Robby.

– You’re welcome. So first of all, tell us about what eating was like growing up.

– It was traditional. I actually when I was talking to my parents last night and I called my mom to make sure that my memory was still on point. Cereal for breakfast, normal traditional American stuff. You’re looking at peanut butter and jellies, pizza rolls, something like that for lunch. We always had, I remember this distinctly, like theme night. Spaghetti night, taco night, pizza night, all those kinda nights. She did cook good food. She wanted to make sure we get that out. She did make homemade chicken noodle soup which was fantastic, still love to this day. But yeah, they worked real hard for us, so that’s a shout out to my parents, love you guys.

– So tell us about the journey, we’ll get to what you’re eating currently in just a second but tell us about the journey from when you started find out about how to kind of eat healthy to now, like what did that journey look like? You know, finding out about the zone and paleo and all these different things.

– Yeah, in the past it was kind of, you know, you have me growing up through adolescence and you’re getting your information through marketing. You know, you’re getting it through Flex Magazine or your bro that says you need to eat more protein, and you know, do whatever it is, and you stop in vitamin shops, they give you horrible advice. Now I don’t wanna say vitamin shops specifically but any kind of supplement store like that they’re just gonna give you, you know, some just general advice. Then we get into the Crossfit era and it made me a little more dogmatic about things. You get onto the zone and you get into things like that. I weighed and measured in the zone for two years aggressively, blocks, blocks, blocks. And then, you become less and less dogmatic, ideally, and you start to realize that there is no one size fits all. There’s no right diet for anyone. There is only principles that work for some people and better for other people. So you have to be more self-aware of what works really well for you and what your goals are, in training, in life, and in nutrition and things like that, and what’s sustainable for you in your life. So I think being really honest with that happened over the last three or four years since I started working with OPEX and some of my mentors and things like that, and having a ton of discussions with you and stuff like that, so yeah.

– So, tell us what eating is like now. How do you eat on a day-to-day basis? And we’ll talk about your meals. Tell us about everything with regard to how you’re eating now.

– How am I eating now? So, everyone out there in the audience if you saw Mitch’s and Carl’s video, they prepared, they said they prepared meticulously some meals, their stuff doesn’t look like that, I’m gonna tell you that right now. It doesn’t look like that, this is real stuff. So, typically, what I like to do, and what happens more often than not is Costco runs on Sundays. Bulk food, I think I’ve got like five crock pots at home, that’s an exaggeration, I’ve got like three or four, but things go in crock pots. I generally have an idea of how much protein I eat a day which extrapolates to how much per month that I’ll actually need, and that goes into some just general type containers. What I’m gonna do is make a bunch of proteins, my carbs are coming from vegetables and I usually keep carbs here at the gym cause I’ll eat most of the carbs post-workout, fueling for that, or sometimes, depending on my training, I may not need as many carbs so it’s just trivial here. Things are cooked in fat, and because I know I don’t do too well with nuts most of it’s just coming from oils and things like that. So I cook in bulk. And, what do we got here? We got some chicken casserole. That was in a big ‘ole thing. Dump a bunch of eggs and chicken in there. I make things for fuel and for taste, it has to have a decent blend. If you ask some of the other coaches here, it’s gotta be primarily for taste and what have you, but I mean, I’m cooking in bulk and I’m cooking fast and that’s the way I prefer to do it. We’ve got some turkey burgers and check it out, rice. Half of it’s gone. I cooked most of it up yesterday, used half of it post-workout. Other half’s going today. So most of it, and I want to express this, and I went to Whole Foods cause I didn’t have enough protein the other day. I can’t tell you why that happened, but with that being said, I cook in bulk and I do it all at once. And you know, it’s kind of the parent life for people who say that food is either too expensive, you go to Shelton’s Farms, you go to some of those other places, you get in bulk and maybe I spend two hours cooking. It doesn’t really take all that long to make a lot of it, maybe three depending on what you wanna make, but you just make all this stuff in bulk and I eat nothing fancy.

– So, one of the things we like to do with these videos is, with Andrew we talked about the fact that he was a student, Mitch is training to go to regionals, Carl rugby player, rugby coach. You’re a CEO, OPEX certified coach, you’ve trained for the Crossfit Open, you’ve done a 50-mile run. Tell us about what you found works best for you with performance and all the things you have on your plate, cause you got a lot of different stuff you’re trying to take care of. What sort of unique things have you learned about the way you work best in terms of fueling for training and things like that?

– Well I think it’s important to note that a lot of people have these goals, and sometimes, very often they’re fantasies, they’re not actual goals. You know, I can talk about yachting and talking about sailing the world, but unless I’m actually studying how to do yacht stuff and saving up, then it becomes, it’s a fantasy and it’s not an actual reality. So when it comes to stuff like that people, you know they say they have these lofty goals that they’re trying to eat for or trying to do nutrition for. In the past I did more competitive stuff and then being CEO and then being more aggressive with business practices, I had to pull back the goals to match that because, you know you’ve gotta be aware of what leavers you need to pull and how much you need to fuel yourself, cause it’s a full-time job and you have to kind of pick and choose, but that being said, you know with my goals just being longevity and feeling good and performing well enough, I’m not trying to go to the games or go to regionals but I like to be strong, and you know, everyone wants to look good naked. They want to feel good, have good energy, sustained energy through the day and perform reasonably. There’s no reason I have to do a triple back-flip handstand pushup, you know. So yeah, that’s kind of what I’m eating for right now is just longevity and health and you know, all that kind of stuff, and then my diet reflects that. Mostly protein, as much as I can kind of digest. I pay attention to my digestion. A little under, actually a gram per pound of body weight right now. Fat winds up being about .6 grams per pound of body weight, and carbs fluctuate. I push the carbs when I’m having a heavy day, and then on a day like today I may come in and drink a little coffee with some butter in it and some protein powder in the morning and then I may fast if I’m not doing much training throughout the day and then get on to it.

– So tell us about nutritional off-roading, so what are your top three to five off-plan foods and what are some of your special occasions that you like to have off-plan foods for?

– So even if it is a special occasion, when I feel like my will power is high – have you ever had somebody offer you some of your favorite foods and you’re like you know what I don’t really want it, I take advantage of that. I take advantage of that. Will power being a depletable resource, when I have good will power, no thanks. When I’m having bad will power, we know what that’s like, then what I do is I still try and talk myself out of that kind of stuff, but special occasions, you’re looking at some pizza. I like pizza, Silver Beats Pizza. Some baked goods, and then tacos, yeah that kinda stuff just normal food, but it’s gotta be good, can’t be a sheet cake from the grocery store or anything like that, you know?

– Yeah, can’t be a sheet cake from Walmart.

– Yeah.

– So last thing is any advice? You know, you’ve been at this for a long time, any advice to people who are starting out, trying to change their diet for the better or any thoughts on your journey and what you’ve learned and what you could teach others nutritionally?

– Yeah, I think it goes into a lot of what we do as a business. You know, move slow, enjoy the journey, enjoy the process, don’t get obsessed with the destination. You should be aware of where you wanna be, but just because your weight hasn’t changed in one or two weeks what you do is you pimp it and you change and you notice. You look for explanations. You change something. You prescribe something different, you action it, and then you just go through concentric circles of that just again and again and again until you find what works for you. You know, so one is enjoying the journey and enjoying the process and learning yourself and being very aware of that. Don’t be dogmatic. Just because somebody’s a vegetarian or they do this diet or that diet, if it’s working for them great, good on you, that’s fantastic. You know, it’s kinda hard to fit all those things. Don’t make nutrition sexy. Pay attention to, be wary of marketing and what marketing’s doing for you. Educate yourself. Learn to flip it over and look at the back of the ingredients and start to understand that and just be aware of what you’re doing. So yeah, those three things are a good start.

– Awesome, well thank you so much for joining us today Brandon, appreciate it.