I finally took advantage of Cross Fit’s nutritional counseling. It’s something I’ve both wanted to do and have been avoiding. Anyone who’s significantly overweight has spent a great deal of time hiding what they eat. I’ve thrown fast foot wrappers away in the outside garbage can (placing it under a garbage bag that was already there). I’ve bought junk food, when there was already junk food in the house, to hide how much I was eating.
I’ve scheduled nutritional counseling sessions with a nutritionist through my doctor’s office. I just never showed up for them.
One of the reason’s I joined Cross Fit, besides the fact Brett belongs to a Cross Fit affiliate (and hundreds of other martial artists do, too), is that the people there understand Paleo. It was the diet I chose to start, knowing I would have to eat this way forever.
Even with all that, the physical act of writing down what I ate and then showing it to someone (who presumably had some knowledge of nutrition, physical fitness, weight loss, etc.) was a huge demonstration of trust on my part.
Craig studied my food log. Rewrote some of the calculations. Paleo people don’t think in “blocks;” that’s more of a Zone thing. But, I was supposed to figure out the blocks to make sure I was getting the right (equal?) amount of macronutrients. So, the block thing was a foreign concept and some foods (like the milk from my morning latte) counted as two different types of macronutrients.
“You’re making the right food choices,” he started. (Wow, who ever thought someone would be saying those words to me?)
Craig had also just attended a new nutrition class and had been reading the latest research about when and how often we eat. It turns out that the 5 or 6 small meals a day I’ve been eating is a little old school. And the after karate snacks I was consuming was too high in carbs. It was fruit and veggies, of course, but still too high in sugars and carbs for eating right before bed.
The basic idea of what he said was that the liver is able to both store energy and release it. He used words like ketosis and glycogen to say this, but it’s the gist. So, eating every few hours makes sure the liver is full of energy and there’s still plenty of energy in the rest of your body. But the liver doesn’t get to do the other half of its job (releasing the energy). To get my body working the way it should, I’m cutting back to three meals per day. (Eeek.)
I’m one of three or four people who have this directive. We’re his experimental group. His “guinea pigs,” he admitted.
He suggested I give it a try for a few days and see what happens if I let my liver try to do it’s job. So, I’m taking another small step of trust.
