Nutrition
In October, AGATSU started a Paleo Nutrition Challenge. I didn't sign up for it for various reasons but it intrigued me enough to do a Paleo Challenge of my own. I bought a couple of books about Paleo (complete with recipes and meal plans) as a pre-reward for finishing the challenge. I figure if I reward myself before I start something I have to finish it. I think you have to be very dedicated - or slightly insane - for that kind of logic to work.
For those of you who don't know what a Paleo Diet is, it is basically eating the way our cavemen ancestors did. There are some different versions of Paleo out there. Some allow dairy products, although I don't think our ancestors were brave enough to just stroll up to the wild version of what we call cows today and just start yanking on parts of it's anatomy to see what came out. Others allow clarified butter and bacon is quite common in a lot of the information out there. Some information I found allowed beans and other legumes where others did not. They all agree on one thing however - no gluten - grain products are not allowed. I chose to take a very clean approach to Paleo eating only lean protein and fresh produce (nothing processed). Bacon is only a treat, not a staple. In the clean eating books, turkey bacon is suggested. I find the turkey bacon to be extremely high in sodium though so on the rare occasion that I cook it I just use a low sodium version of good quality bacon. I found a good butcher where I can buy bison and free range (NOT grain fed) chicken and turkey and I cut out the grains, legumes and other starches. One of the books I read (The Paleo Diet For Athletes by Loren Cordain and Joe Friel - see link at bottom) suggests that an athlete needs certain types of foods at different times according to their training schedule. Most Paleo diets do not allow starches at all such as potatoes and sweet potatoes. In this book, those are to be used in recovery meals only. Loren Cordain and Joe Friel write that the reason for this difference is the increased need for carbohydrates in order to recover quickly from strenuous exercise. If you are not a serious athlete (as in you train maybe once a day if you are lucky) the need for carbohydrate is lower and you are better off sticking with the traditional Paleo diet with higher protein and lower carbs as in The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf (highly recommended, a great read - see link at the bottom) or The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain. I train several times a day between training clients and doing my own training. (I am currently training for a marathon in May and working towards my Agatsu Kettlebell Certification Level 2.) Because of my large training volume I have found that when I was simply eating clean, I was losing too much weight and was getting very skinny. I am sure I lost some muscle mass as well as fat. I had oatmeal for breakfast every day but when I noticed that I seemed to be losing muscle mass, I started to add more protein to my breakfast (usually scrambled egg whites or protein powder). The extra protein helped but with oatmeal for breakfast I was always very hungry by mid-morning. Grains have a high glycemic index in comparison with lean protein and veggies. The added fiber helps so oats are definitely a lower glycemic index than white bread but your still burn through that fuel very quickly. That is the reason for the mid-morning hunger pangs. With the Paleo Diet, I started paying very close attention to the amount of protein and carbohydrate I was ingesting. I didn't actually keep a record of anything, I was just much more aware of what nutrients my body needed at certain times of the day. I still eat a quick snack in between classes in the morning to keep me going but it is much more rare that I feel dizzy at various times throughout the day from lack of food.
The first two weeks of the challenge were awful. Up until I started the challenge I was eating very clean so I didn't have the withdrawl headaches that some people have experienced but I was exhausted. Every day workouts became a major undertaking. My muscles were so tired that they ached from fatigue. I had to psych myself up to go teach fitness classes because without energy, how do you inspire your participants and keep them motivated? Think about the last fitness class you took. Was your instructor peppy and inspiring or just a trembling blob on the floor at the front of the class? I have some very good friends who were there to offer encouragement when I needed it or to give me the kick in the butt that I required just to get started every day. By the third week I was starting to feel a bit better and by the end of the challenge I felt amazing. I am still eating Paleo over a month later and I feel stronger than I have in a long time. My endurance has increased even more and I was finally able to cross off a goal that has been on my board since February. I had the extra strength and endurance that my body required to be able to do a very difficult exercise that up until now I could never complete and still have enough energy to do it again.
This is a brief overview of Paleo nutrition. There are whole books written on the subject so I can't expect to expalin it all in one blog but I will post more. Really the bottom line for nutrition is that you can't expect to be really, truly healthy with exercise alone. You can't just eat whatever you like and expect to work it off with exercise. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. If you go and work out at the gym for an hour and then pick up greasy fast food on your way home you are undoing all of your hard work. Read labels, be informed, if you can't pronounce it or if it sounds like a chemistry experiment, it is not food.
For those of you who don't know what a Paleo Diet is, it is basically eating the way our cavemen ancestors did. There are some different versions of Paleo out there. Some allow dairy products, although I don't think our ancestors were brave enough to just stroll up to the wild version of what we call cows today and just start yanking on parts of it's anatomy to see what came out. Others allow clarified butter and bacon is quite common in a lot of the information out there. Some information I found allowed beans and other legumes where others did not. They all agree on one thing however - no gluten - grain products are not allowed. I chose to take a very clean approach to Paleo eating only lean protein and fresh produce (nothing processed). Bacon is only a treat, not a staple. In the clean eating books, turkey bacon is suggested. I find the turkey bacon to be extremely high in sodium though so on the rare occasion that I cook it I just use a low sodium version of good quality bacon. I found a good butcher where I can buy bison and free range (NOT grain fed) chicken and turkey and I cut out the grains, legumes and other starches. One of the books I read (The Paleo Diet For Athletes by Loren Cordain and Joe Friel - see link at bottom) suggests that an athlete needs certain types of foods at different times according to their training schedule. Most Paleo diets do not allow starches at all such as potatoes and sweet potatoes. In this book, those are to be used in recovery meals only. Loren Cordain and Joe Friel write that the reason for this difference is the increased need for carbohydrates in order to recover quickly from strenuous exercise. If you are not a serious athlete (as in you train maybe once a day if you are lucky) the need for carbohydrate is lower and you are better off sticking with the traditional Paleo diet with higher protein and lower carbs as in The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf (highly recommended, a great read - see link at the bottom) or The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain. I train several times a day between training clients and doing my own training. (I am currently training for a marathon in May and working towards my Agatsu Kettlebell Certification Level 2.) Because of my large training volume I have found that when I was simply eating clean, I was losing too much weight and was getting very skinny. I am sure I lost some muscle mass as well as fat. I had oatmeal for breakfast every day but when I noticed that I seemed to be losing muscle mass, I started to add more protein to my breakfast (usually scrambled egg whites or protein powder). The extra protein helped but with oatmeal for breakfast I was always very hungry by mid-morning. Grains have a high glycemic index in comparison with lean protein and veggies. The added fiber helps so oats are definitely a lower glycemic index than white bread but your still burn through that fuel very quickly. That is the reason for the mid-morning hunger pangs. With the Paleo Diet, I started paying very close attention to the amount of protein and carbohydrate I was ingesting. I didn't actually keep a record of anything, I was just much more aware of what nutrients my body needed at certain times of the day. I still eat a quick snack in between classes in the morning to keep me going but it is much more rare that I feel dizzy at various times throughout the day from lack of food.
The first two weeks of the challenge were awful. Up until I started the challenge I was eating very clean so I didn't have the withdrawl headaches that some people have experienced but I was exhausted. Every day workouts became a major undertaking. My muscles were so tired that they ached from fatigue. I had to psych myself up to go teach fitness classes because without energy, how do you inspire your participants and keep them motivated? Think about the last fitness class you took. Was your instructor peppy and inspiring or just a trembling blob on the floor at the front of the class? I have some very good friends who were there to offer encouragement when I needed it or to give me the kick in the butt that I required just to get started every day. By the third week I was starting to feel a bit better and by the end of the challenge I felt amazing. I am still eating Paleo over a month later and I feel stronger than I have in a long time. My endurance has increased even more and I was finally able to cross off a goal that has been on my board since February. I had the extra strength and endurance that my body required to be able to do a very difficult exercise that up until now I could never complete and still have enough energy to do it again.
This is a brief overview of Paleo nutrition. There are whole books written on the subject so I can't expect to expalin it all in one blog but I will post more. Really the bottom line for nutrition is that you can't expect to be really, truly healthy with exercise alone. You can't just eat whatever you like and expect to work it off with exercise. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. If you go and work out at the gym for an hour and then pick up greasy fast food on your way home you are undoing all of your hard work. Read labels, be informed, if you can't pronounce it or if it sounds like a chemistry experiment, it is not food.
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