Wednesday, December 30th 2015
NEW YEAR 30 DAY PALEO CHALLENGE
For those of us who have indulged too much over the holidays or have fallen off course, we are kicking off another 30 Day Clean Eating Challenge on January 6th. In the past we have done a Whole 30 (which was great) and many of you learned what your body can and cannot tolerate.
What we liked about the Whole 30 is that it really was a “diet” that is not meant to last forever, so 30 days felt very doable. But similar to the Whole 30, Paleo is also a “regimen aimed at identifying foods or additives that may be causing an allergy or other symptom, and usually involving the removal of suspected foodstuffs from the diet to see if the symptoms disappear, then adding them back one at a time to see which ones make the symptoms recur.” But the downside is that it is hard to keep as a “forever” way of eating.
So this time we’re trying a different variation on “Clean Eating” and going PALEO! What we like about this Challenge is that you will likely find it is completely sustainable and becomes your diet, not a ‘diet you are on’.
One of the founding ideas of CrossFit is the Hierarchy of Athlete Development which can be seen in the “Pyramid of Fitness”. We can save the details for this pyramid (see picture below) for a later blog post but note that the base of that pyramid is nutrition. It is very easy for us to focus on the sexy workouts, pr’s and movements that we see regularly here at the Cove. However for you to truly reach our fitness goals we need to focus on that base of the pyramid- Nutrition. The one hour of work we do in the gym can not make up for what sort of damage we can do with the what we eat the rest of the day.
So what can we eat? We can eat meat, seafood, eggs, tons of vegetables, some fruit, and plenty of good fats from fruits, oils, nuts and seeds. What to eliminate? Avoid all process foods (think of anything in a package) and a number of other food types that are difficult for our body to handle. These would include grains, dairy, legumes, alcohol, and most sugars. These modern agricultural items can often be difficult for our body to digest. For 30 days you would avoid these types of foods and then, if you’d like, you reintroduce them into our diet to see if we indeed can not handle them.
To many of you this may seem like an impossible challenge and people certainly do slip up but you will be surprised what strength you can find in community. When we last did this challenge that entire gym supported each other and people found strength in each other. We will be have a private Facebook group so that members can share recipes and encourage each other during the Challenge.
And this isn’ t just ‘for fun’. We had a lot of members who had a LOT of success. People gained in athletic performance (both in strength and conditioning), their body composition changed, energy levels increased and we even saw improvements in skin and hair quality.
Looking for more information? On January 4th we will be having a kickoff meeting at 6PM. Also note that we will be doing a “tester” workout on January 4th as well. This workout will be retested at the finish of the 30 Day Challenge and see how the diet improved your performance. For the last challenge we saw members improve there WOD time by an average of 2 minutes!
So who’s in? There is a sign up at the whiteboard.
BABES AND BARBELLS AND BRUNCH
If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s the ladies’ only WOD for Sunday! At 10am we will WOD and then hit the potluck after (with mimosas and bloodies, of course!).
So, ladies, get ready!
“GIRLS ON GIRLS”
PARTNER WOD
(performed in teams of two with a running clock)
“Jackie”
2 minutes of rest
“Annie”
2 minutes of rest
“Grace”
100 Burpees
(the burpees can be performed throughout the WOD but NOT during the rest periods)
COVE ANNIVERSARY BASH
On February 6th (a Saturday night) at 7p we will be having a one year anniversary party. It was previously published as the 7th… it is the 6th!!! Get those sitters lined up, call an Uber and make sure you can make it. No WOD planned… just enjoy a night drinking and socializing with our Cove peeps!
NEW YEAR’S SCHEDULE
New Years Eve: 6:30a, 9:30a, Noon
New Years Day – Noon
STRENGTH WOD
WOD
Grace
30 Clean and Jerks for Time
