CrossFit Charlottesville is hosting our eighth Nutrition Challenge! This event is open to the public, so come redefine your relationship with food, learn how to cook again, and get in shape before the holidays!
At 5 PM on Sunday, September 22nd we will host our Nutrition Challenge Kick-off at the gym. Anyone, member or non-member, is welcome to participate; all you have to do is bring $20 in cash for the prize pool. Here are the results from our past challenges:
- Changing Member Lives: 8 Weeks of Paleo/Primal Eating and Strength Training with Result Pictures
- Second Nutrition Challenge: 8 Weeks of Paleo + Primal Eating and CrossFit Training with Result Pictures
- Third Nutrition Challenge: Paleo Eating Before and After Pictures
- Fourth Nutrition Challenge: Paleo & Zone-ish Eating for 8 Week Before and After Pictures
- Fifth Nutrition Challenge: Paleo Nutrition and Zone Guidelines for 8 Weeks Before and After Result Pictures
- Fall 2012 Nutrition Challenge Results, Before and After Photos, and Winners
- Spring 2013 Nutrition Challenge Results, Before and After Photos, and Winners
Then around 6 PM we will host a Paleo Potluck Dinner. Bring snacks, appetizers, entrees, or desserts, as long as they emphasize good-quality real food (meat, fish, veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, etc.) and skip out on the bad stuff (processed sugar, gluten, etc.). We will supply utensils, plates, bowls, and paper towels. Bring your own beverage.
Food is fuel, and in order to fully achieve your health, performance, and body image goals, you need to dial in your nutrition. Unfortunately, exercise alone will not do the trick, and there is no such thing as out-training a bad diet. Here are three great resources about proper nutrition written by our very own trainers from CrossFit Charlottesville:
- Nutrition Resources and Summary
- Nutrition Basics for Health and Performance
- Zone Diet for Health, Performance and CrossFit
Nutrition Challenge Rules
- Consult your doctor before you make any nutrition changes.
- You must bring $20 in cash to the meeting on Sunday in order to participate. The money will be used as a prize pool for the winner.
- This year we are encouraging every participant to get their body composition tested at the ECPL (Exercise Physiology Core Lab) in the Bod Pod. View their video HERE on how it works. Participants of the Nutrition Challenge will receive a discount if they have testing done within the first week of the challenge as well as at the end of the challenge.
- If you want to enter the Nutrition Challenge, follow the guidelines exactly. There are no exceptions or “cheat” meals.
- It starts Sunday and ends after 8 weeks (before Thanksgiving).
- On Sunday we will take a picture of you showing your mid-section. The winner will be the one who shows the best body recomposition (more lean muscle mass and less fat). Men will go shirtless for the photo, and women will be asked to wear a sports bra.
- You need to enter everything you eat into FitDay for the first three weeks. Once a week, print out your FitDay information and bring the sheets into the gym to review with Scott or Chris G.
- Emphasize naturally-raised, organic, and pastured food as much as possible. Shop at Whole Foods, the Farmers’ Market, and the C’ville Market. Avoid processed food-like substances in the aisles by sticking to the perimeter of the grocery store.
- Good: local, organic, or pastured meats and eggs, wild-caught fish, local or organic vegetables and berries, oils like coconut or olive oil.
- Bad: processed sugar, gluten, grains, alcohol, soda (even diet).
- Grey area: full-fat grass-fed milk and butter, whey protein, full-fat Greek yogurt
- Supplements: fish oil (5 to 8 grams daily), multi-vitamin, vitamin D (5,000 IU per day), creatine (3 to 6 grams daily)
Calculating How Much to Eat
- Take your body weight and subtract fat mass. For example, if you weigh 150# and have about 20% body fat, you have 120# of lean body mass.
- Everyone will start out by eating 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass (our example would eat 120 grams of protein per day). Based on general Zone guidelines, divide that number by 7 to estimate fat and carb macronutrient blocks. This gives us 17 blocks for our example.
- Multiply by 9 for carbs and by 3 for fat; so roughly 150 grams of carbs and 50 grams of fat (which we will tweak later on in the challenge). This is not purely a science, but rather it is just a starting benchmark.
- If you are looking to shed fat dramatically, you need to be eating under 100 grams of carbs per day. Under 50 carbs per day and you are going to be lethargic and your performance will decrease. You need to experiment, track, and dial things in based on your specific needs.
More Resources
I signed up for weekly deliveries of vegetables, fruit & eggs through Horse and Buggy, it’s been a really great motivation for me to experiment in the kitchen with locally grown produce. It’s not that expensive and ends up being just the right amount of food for 2 people (you can get bigger boxes if you want). Best part is they deliver to your doorstep.
http://www.horseandbuggyproduce.com
Is there anyone doing grass fed beef buy?
Quick word on supplements, especially creatine: DON’T BE AFRAID OF THIS. It gets a bad rep for no good reason. Creatine monohydrate is only going to help you in many ways, just like fish oil and vitamin D (and I’ll even add a suggestion for vitamin C, especially as it starts getting colder).