Belief... from CrossFit Ramsay on Vimeo.

Well we had a huge group sign up for the Paleo Challenge. I can’t wait to see the change in everyone around here. People are already noticing changes in weight, energy, mood etc. One other thing that I have noticed is that many of you are also getting more interested and are enjoying the cooking experience. Isn’t it amazing that we take more time getting to know what we put in our cars for fuel than we do in our own bodies. I highly reccommend buying ”the Paleo Diet” by Loren Cordain, MD it is an easy and informative read about why we have asked that you remove dairy for example from your diet. Check it out.

There is a new page, Look at top of this page, to collect all of your Paleo food ideas and recipies. Click the menu bar and post them in the comments on the new page.  There are some great chefs in our midst, so check out them out.

There are only two days remaining until the we kick off the Paleo Challenge. We have had a huge turn out and this should be a very exciting 90 Days for everyone. Be sure to post comments to the Paleo Challenge page. You can get to it from the top right hand side of the website. Many of us have already started to dial in the eating and Others are still researching Paleo and others still are sitting on the fence wondering what all the fuss is about. It’s great to see many of you are realizing that eating this way can be delicious and nutritious. Sign up and see what good nutrition can do for your health and fitness.

I won’t go into detail on what the Paleo diet is, since that’s covered elsewhere. This article is about how to transition to it rather than what it is. However, it is worth briefly pointing out that there are a number of variants that loosely fall under the banner of Hunter Gatherer / Ancestral / Palaeolithic / Primal living. The differences, where they exist, are pretty subtle and certainly not worth worrying about if you are planning to transition from some other eating plan to this one.

The first thing to say is this: everyone is different. I went from being a porridge-worshipping fruit hound who carried a rucksack full of bananas and home-made muesli bars everywhere I went, to a fairly strict Paleo dude in the space of 24 hours. I read about it, it made sense, I did it.

Others, on the other hand, have taken years to transition. could be that you are more like them; but if you are more like me, then you can stop reading here, because you are so obsessive and single-minded about this sort of thing that you don’t need advice on how to make the switch anyway.

Step 1 – Identify the Good Guys and Bad Guys

To go Paleo you basically stop eating certain foods and eat more of others to replace the calories. The new foods will be more nutritionally dense that the ones they displaced – hence you get healthier.

So I recommend writing down a list of the foods you need to stop eating (e.g. potatoes, rice, bread, refined sugar) and a list of the foods you need to eat more of (e.g. meat, fish, eggs, nuts.)

You can use this as a reference as you transition, just to remind yourself where you want to get to. Beyond this, how meticulously you plan and document your activities is down to your own style. Do whatever works best for you.

Step 2 – Identify a Bad Guy you Think you can Beat

For my other half, it was refined sugar. The great thing about this one is that you can get some pretty tangible benefits from that change alone.

The key is to pick these suckers off one by one rather than try to do too much. That way your sense of achievement that is not sullied by the fact you are still eating other non-Paleo foods. If you only aimed to give up one thing to start with, then you have succeeded.

Step 3 – Identify the Good Guys

As you start tackling the bad guys, you need to identify your allies amongst the good guys. As you transition to Paleo you will start to lose your treats. No more crackers with creamed cheese or potato chips in front of the TV. You will suddenly become aware of how emotionally ingrained some of the snacking habits you’ve developed over the years are.

For me, porridge was strongly linked to childhood. I still miss it now. But once I started exploring the Good Guys I realised I had some fantastic allies – and now I have even stronger bonds with Paleo foods and now I wouldn’t give them up in favour of porridge or any other non-Paleo foods. My snacking allies are nuts, coconut (in its many forms) and seeds. Other allies are avocado and scrambled eggs.

Step 4 – Re-Position your Thinking on Meal Composition

You have some meat, some vegetables and some brown stuff – this was how I heard a young child describe mealtimes on a recent documentary. Clearly it depends where you are in your transition as to how much and which types of brown stuff you have with your meals. But as you start to pick off the bad guys like rice and potatoes, you need to start seeing meals as meat and vegetables only.

The challenge is then to be inventive and use variety to keep things interesting. Ever eaten a rabbit? Lamb’s hearts? Venison liver? Fresh Crab? There are hundreds of types of fish. Indeed there are hundreds of varieties of vegetables too. And with the potential to throw coconut, nuts, seeds and fruit into the bargain, suddenly pasta seems a little dull – mere padding. This is how you need to think. Exciting recipes for Paleo meals abound on the internet.

Step 5 – Re-Position your Thinking on Macronutrients

Paleo is low carb, by definition – as you eat more of the good guys, you’ll get more fat and protein. As you eat fewer of the bad guys you will get fewer carbs. Embrace this – it’s why you can still get full without the brown stuff. It’s why this diet is so healthy.

Step 6 – Accept that you will get Conflicting Health Advice

But fat is bad, right? Don’t get me started on this. There is conflicting advice even from within the Paleo-eating community on what is the optimal macronutrient composition. Did our ancestors eat lean meat or fatty meat? What was the omega 6 to omega 3 ratio?

My advice is this: provided you eat meat from animals that have had a decent life (i.e. not been intensively farmed) then you can be pretty relaxed about fat intake from animal sources. Clearly there are other fats you should avoid, like trans fats and certain vegetable oils that are high in omega 6; but if you stick to the recognised healthy fat sources (nuts, avocado, coconut, oily fish) and as I say, animal fat from happy animals, you can stop worrying about how much you have.

But if you are in any doubt, do some reading. Empower yourself so that when the doctor or some other pseudo diet expert tells you your diet is wrong, you can smile smugly to yourself rather than inwardly panic.

Step 7 – If you are a Gym Dude or Dude-ess – Let Go!

I used to eat 7 meals a day. I was the Tupperware king. If I was more than 50 metres from a protein shake source while working out, I would panic. What if I missed the window? I sometimes got up in the night to eat nuts. Gotta stay anabolic! I would obsess over glycogen replacement and guzzle energy after workouts.

When you go Paleo there is more to it than just diet – and the exercise component is inextricably bound with the dietary one. But I am not covering that here. All I will say is that when I stopped doing all these things, I did not start losing muscle mass. I got leaner, but I stayed as strong as before. Would it make evolutionary sense for temporary food scarcity or a failed hunt to lead to muscle wastage? We need our strength if the next hunt is to be successful.

Step 8 – Go back to Step 2!

Once you’ve beaten one of the bad guys, it’s time to pick off another. My other half found bread to be the next biggest winner – giving up that corrected several annoying ailments she had been carrying around for years. But it’s your choice.

The Subtleties

How much fruit should I eat? Can I eat honey? Is it possible to eat too much veg?

If you’ve got to this point, fantastic. It means you’ve pretty much cracked it. The answers to these and other questions can be found in the many great sites and great books on the subject – there are too many to list here, but I will mention Mark’s Daily Apple as one of the best websites on the subject and Mike and Mary Eades’ The Protein Power Lifeplan as one of the best books.

A Final Thought

If you are successful then one day you’ll realise there’s no turning back. You’ll realise that you know too much and you couldn’t go back to eating the other stuff without caring. You will mourn the care-free chip-munching sessions in front of the TV. It’s actually rather sad, in the same way as when you realise your childhood is over; but it will be replaced by an enduring satisfaction about the myriad benefits those sacrifices have engendered.

Ok, after the smoke cleared here in BC, and wow the forest fire smoke is thick here, I finally was able to set my sights on Daniel. So between Sadie and I (she helped on the runs and barked with excitement as I did the pull ups) we managed a respectable 21:19. It was a bit of an odd ball. I used a rafter for the pull ups and the rock you see for the thrusters. It was fun. Have a great weekend everyone, now time to try some sprints!

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHAT MAKES LEANNE – ATHLETE OF THE MONTH!

CrossFit Ramsay announces a 90 Day Paleo challenge starting September 1.

The countdown to a better you starts today. Join Crossfit Ramsay’s 90 Day Paleo Challenge and experience a better body composition, more energy and emotional stability, become free of chronic aches and pains (knees, back, headaches, fatigue ect..), reduce your risks of illnesses (cancer, heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol ect..), experience healthier relationships, and set new PR’s on you WOD’s. What have you got to loose (except a few inches)? We can change our awareness of food and lifestyle habits as a community and become that much stronger.

How Does It Work

For 90 days you will live the Paleo lifestyle:

No Grains, No Sugar of any kind, No dairy which include butter, yogurt, No legumes, or any process foods.

Cost $50 – Includes: Body Composition Assessment, goal setting and a plan for success.

Prizes for the top female and top male will be awarded at the end of the challenge.

All participants will have to have a full body composition completed by coaches at CrossFit Ramsay.

Click here to see the all the details

You’ve all felt it during a workout… that burning sensation in your quads during walking lunges, the burning in your lungs during a max effort 500m row, that feeling in your forearms that tells you to drop off the pull up bar, the nagging voice that says, “Stop… please… STOP!” When that voice is talking to you, what do you do? Do you listen to it? Or do you choose to ignore it and go beyond?

I remember when I first did “Fran” – with 65 pounds for the thrusters and it took me about 11 minutes… and in a conversation afterward, I would have told you that I was totally maxed out… couldn’t go any harder, or faster… and I had to stop for rest at each point that I did. And yet, just weeks later, I did go faster… and no, it wasn’t from my body’s training adaptations. I went faster because I knew I could go at least as fast as I did before… and hence, probably faster. The thing limiting my performance… was my brain… every voice in my head was screaming me to stop, so I did.

After some training and practice, I learned that it was possible to go beyond that “governor” (a self-protective mechanism that is hard-wired into our psyches to keep us from damaging or killing ourselves – see Central Governor) in a way that wouldn’t hurt me or kill me, rather, allow me to maximize performance.

How have you noticed this “Governor” working in you? And what has been your experience going beyond? Post to comments.

A great turn out for the open workout today…. 

400m run (both team members run)
100 Wall Balls (between the two, one person working at a time)
90 Double unders
80 Sit-ups
70 KB Swings
60 Pistols 
50 Pull-ups
40 OHS (men 115lb / women 75lb) 
30 Burpees
20 Ring Dips 
10 Handstand push-ups 
400 metre run 

 

Geoff and Nat 26:30, Cory and Bell 26:31, Crystal and Steph 26:47 

Coach and Iain 27:42, Jon and Melissa 32:34…..Great work everyone!

Look out CrossFitters, we are about to add eight new members to the community. This is their last week of On-Ramp and then they are ready to crush some WODs. If  you see them when you’re in introduce yourself. They have done an incredible job and we look forward to seeing some huge fitness improvements in all of them.

We saw the single largest improvement from day one On-Ramp to day twelve when Shane busted out a 5:37 on Day 12.

Day 1 and Day 12 of the On-Ramp are the same workout. We can see improvement in work capacity, flexibility, skill, endurance, etc over the 12 sessions of the On-Ramp. The workout is Run 200M, 15 reps each of Squat, Push-up, Body Row, then 12 of each and 9 of each then finish with another 200M Run.

Shane’s Day 1 time for this workout was 10:24 and his Day 12 time was 5:37. Wow what a change!  Congrats Shane, you rocked it. Come on CrossFit Ramsay send All these new CrossFitters your congrats.