30 DAY NUTRITION CHALLENGE: DAY 1
I’ve been doing CrossFit since December 2014 at Fearless Athletics at Penn’s Landing. It has been without a doubt the best decision I’ve ever made. My body has not made the magical transformation I thought it would, but I feel great, and I’m OK with slow, albeit, positive results.
One of my biggest problems has always been my diet. I’m not out here eating fast food or doing case races every night, but I drink regularly on the weekends, and if a sandwich comes with fries, you can put down money that my plate is getting polished before the server takes it off the table...what can I say, I’m a good eater.
This past weekend I went to a nutrition class through my my gym, which included taking my measurements (which I will get to later), and walking us through a 30-day challenge that consists of a Paleo-Style diet (what you are eating) with a Zone-Style diet (how much you are eating). Here’s the high-level of what this entails:
Paleo Diet: you’re eating macronutrients (proteins + carbohydrates + fats), and are prohibiting yourself from grains, dairy, legumes, and processed foods.
This is a good time to state that I know a limited amount about nutrition, but still understand less than nothing about a majority of these subjects. If I need to be checked, please do so on Twitter. The whole purpose of this is to share my experience in an effort to inspire others.
Zone Diet: I thought I knew what Paleo meant, but I literally read about the Zone Diet, and my head exploded. The way I understand it is: Paleo is what you eat, and Zone is how you eat. So. The Zone diet breaks up everything into blocks.
1 block = 7g Protein // 9g Carbs // 1.5g Fat
Depending on your weight, body fat percentage, and activity level, you will be allotted a certain amount of blocks per day. For all intents and purposes, my allotment is 16. This means that every day, I have to split my meals up into an allotment of blocks, so that the end of the day it equals 16 blocks.
Example: Breakfast = 5 blocks // Lunch = 4 blocks // Dinner = 4 blocks // Snacks = 3 blocks
In this example, I know that I love a big breakfast, so I am allotting the most blocks to that meal.
I know. Most complicated shit in the world (AMIRITE?). But, here’s the deal. I started CrossFit in December 2014, and it’s May 3, 2015. In the 6 months I’ve been active ~3x/week, I can feel my body changing, but I can’t necessarily see my body changing. This is a diet thing. I’ve been eating cleaner but I know there is room for improvement, and I’m secretly excited to be able to determine how much I’m supposed to be eating at every meal. Currently, I’ll finish a workout, just to eat all of the eggs and all of the avocados and all of the peanut butter, but there’s levels to this shit.
Another important note is that I work…a lot. I personally have issues when I read about ninja diets, and people have 3–4 free hours to cook up food for an entire week. I need to be efficient, deliberate, and systematic with how I spend my time, every hour of every day of the week…if I can make it through this, anyone can.
I can’t believe I just wrote this much.
So, in an act of pure transparecy, here are my measurements from 5/2/2015:
If you can’t read the handwriting:
- Age: 28
- Height: 5'11" (6'1" on a sunny day)
- Weight: 228lbs
- Body Fat: 28.2%
Again, I’ve feel like superman working out as much as I have, and I’m wild embarrassed that my body fat was 28%. But, fuck it. This is what happens when you eat “clean” all week, but indulge in 20+ beers and a breakfast burrito from Honest Tom’s (they are sooooo good) every weekend.
The long and short of my plan is the following: struggle through the math and make it happen. If you made it this far into this brain dump, you can pick up on the fact that my mind goes off into tangents. And my thoughts on the planning on this are two-fold: (1) the thought of doing this is way harder than just doing it. I am a smart person with a big head and a big brain. I can do the math, if I decide I want to do it. (2) There’s going to be someone waayy less motivated than me (and be clear, I am NOT motivated to do this) that may have some take-aways from this note. So for that, I’m gonna (try to) do it.
*Disclaimer: I have a wedding on May 9th, and a trip to see the Mets play the Pirates on Memorial Day weekend — please believe I will be cheating on these 2 days. I’m also in the middle of moving this month, so I’m between grocery stores, farmers markets, etc: The thing of it is this: we all have something to do every month — but the longer we use those excuses, the longer we are putting off our goals.*
A meeting is only as good as it’s action items, so here are mine:
- Get a food scale
- Go grocery shopping
- Plan at least 3 (full) days worth of original meals per week
- Measure some shit
- Increase my activity level on off days (the 4/7 days I’m not actually in the gym).
- Fully understand the Zone diet by the end of the month so I can’t use “not understanding” as an excuse
- Keep myself accountable
I’ll let you know what Day 2 looks like…
If this didn’t make any sense, tell me: @bdaranda
