Barry Sears IS Paleo!!!

This little rant-par-excellence comes straight from the fingers of Robb Wolf. Robb, to put it bluntly, is a superx26 busy man. Take it from someone who knows, you dont want to ask this man simple questions you can find answers to on google and ones that he has been asked 600,439,027 times, especially when you can do a simple search on his amazing blog and find the answer to. The last thing you want to do is say to the man that what he does and teaches "isnt real." If you do, you cause him to do this (which is unfortunate because he is a super humble guy):

Barry Sears is Paleo!!

By Robb Wolf

I receive a lot of email from folks asking a variety of questions. Two questions tend to about send me over the brink: “How many blocks should I eat?” and “should I eat Paleo or Zone?” Both questions are troubling for several reasons but it’s actually the later question that just slays me and, is in fact, the causative factor FOR question number 1. You see, Barry Sears, The Zone, everything the man and the diet represent, are steeped in evolutionary biology. That folks, (Level 1 Cert crew teaching nutrition…) is paleo. For some damn reason CrossFit HQ (or elements so of it) can not wrap their minds around the concept that the basic premise of the paleo diet, that nice bit of writing from World Class Fitness in 100 Words: “…Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds. Some fruit, little starch, no sugar…” is in fact everything that Barry Sears talks about in the Zone! Sometime ago I received confused emails from people who attended a closed to the public gig in which the HQ lecturer, when asked “What about paleo?” responded “Paleo is pseudo science and the individuals who purport it’s methods are pseudo scientists…”
WOW! Better than half of my Crossfit Nutrition Certification is pseudo science! That’s a bummer. Strike one for CrossFit Nutritional offerings. Strike two was delivered this past weekend when Dr. Barry Sears gave a seminar to a large group of avid CrossFitters. Kelly Frankson attended the seminar and was kind enough to allow me to link to her notes. What we find is that Sears is practicing Pseudo Science just like other scientists like Cordain, Eaton, Eades and, well, me. Sears talked at length about genetics that are mismatched for our current environment, the need to return carbohydrate and essential fats BACK to Paleolithic levels. It’s a pretty serious situation if myself, Loren Cordain and Barry Sears are all practicing pseudo science! How long until Dean Ornish or John McDougal will lead the vegan charge for HQ. Those guys are definitely NOT paleo, so they must be of credible scientific pedigree…
Of Weights and Measures
There is a common bit of “wisdom” that is shot around the CrossFit world that goes something like this: “No one will ever reach elite athletic performance without weighing and measuring food…”. Interestingly however, few of the top finishers the CrossFit Games weighed and measured. Would they do better WITH weighing and measuring? Sure, I think you need to keep track of your chow at some point if you are going to affect some additional changes above what a food quality (paleo) approach will provide. But THAT is not the statement, nor the sentiment. Despite defying logic AND the actual stated nutritional hierarchy within Crossfit (don’t piss in your gas tank) the order of operations out of HQ is NOT food quality first (paleo), weighing and measuring second. It’s weigh and measure, whatever you have on hand and THAT will guarantee your ultimate success. It’s an interesting proposition that is proving itself to be completely false. Laura Demarco was an ardent Zoner (weighing and measuring) using VEGAN foods. She had ass-kicking performance but she did one simple thing (always nice in science) she shifted her food from grains to paleo carbs and her proteins all became animal based (paleo). You know what happened? She saw remarkable IMPROVEMENT in her performance. For her it mainly focused on strength (former 1RM DL was 275, current 5RM DL 285!!), but the results are stunning. The only change was a shift in food quality. I have dozens of stories like this. Apparently, food quality DOES matter.
Back to the Barry Sears seminar, Dr. Sears, the developer of the Zone…DOES NOT RECOMMEND WEIGHING AND MEASURING. HE RECOMMENDS FOOD QUALITY FIRST. He makes the point that WAM may be more trouble than it’s worth. For the vast majority of folks I work with that is absolutely the case. When we shifted AWAY from weighing and measuring in our clinical practice our clients got far better and more consistent results. Wacky things like reversing autoimmune disease, something that weighing and measuring beer, Pringles and beef jerky will not accomplish. Which reminds me, I’ve received quite a number of emails about the nutrition lecture at given Level 1 cert. The gist of the lecture is that a well-known athlete weighs and measures his beer, Pringles and beef jerky. He kicks ass (he is about 23…wait till 10 more years are on the odometer), so this is what you should do too. The best spin on this I can provide is this is a method of portion control. Being less diplomatic, I’d say people paid good money to attend that cert and the nutrition portion was a failure. We can and should do a hell of a lot better than that. As a Fitness company I cannot figure out why a general policy on eating is not “Eat the best food you possibly can, as often as you can. Slice it and dice it into the proportions that help you to reach YOUR goals”.
I’m NOT trying to make a paleo cult, I am encouraging people to TRY things and then report back what works. In the mean time I’ll be developing a t-shirt that says “Paleo Diet: Pseudo Science Since 5-million BC”.

Very Sound Advice

Stolen from the Fingers of Melissa Byers:


The Byers Guide to Eating Dirty (Part I)
This weekend, I discovered Nutella. Yes, Nutella – that chocolate hazelnut spread that the jar assures you can be a part of a balanced, healthy breakfast. Now, Nutella marketing people, come on. I’ve read the label. I know there is nothing about Nutella that is balanced OR healthy. But damn if it isn’t delicious between two pieces of French toast. (Put that on the label.) Yes, this weekend I “cheated” on my diet with grains, sugars and processed foods. And that’s the subject of the day – eating dirty.If you’re reading this blog, we probably have one thing in common. We all try to eat well. We eat Zone proportions or Paleo quality or some other mechanism that we would call a “clean” diet. We know the difference between Real Food and Stuff You Can Eat.

We eat real food, natural food, nutrient-dense food. We avoid foods that require additives to be “healthy”, high-tech fabrications designed to replace real food, and food-like products made from ingredients we cannot pronounce. And we do this, day in and day out, for the vast majority of our meals and snacks.But most of us don’t eat like that ALL the time. A 100% strict diet is mentally taxing, socially restrictive and just plain not fun. So, we “cheat”. We go off diet, eat things that we normally wouldn’t, indulge in things that taste good and satisfy our urges.

But on the Healthy/F Off Scale, we still want our diets to tip well to the Healthy side. Which means we need to think long and hard about how we cheat, what we choose to eat and drink during these cheat periods and how often we go off diet.Let’s first define what we mean by “cheat”. I’m going out on a limb and saying 99% of the time, cheat = high carb, processed, sugary foods and drinks. What else do we cheat with? Certainly not fat. Fat is not only allowed, it’s encouraged. No, we cheat with dirty, dirty carbs. Beer and pizza, nachos and tequila, cinnamon swirl French toast slathered with Nutella.

We cheat with insulin spiking, sugar rushing, energy crashing CARBS. (Can I get an "amen" from my Brooklyn boys?)Now that that's settled, in this next section, we’ll talk about the physiological benefits of cheating. Surely, you’ve heard that cheat meals or cheat days are a necessary part of your fitness program? They “shock the body”, “keep it guessing”, “jump start your metabolism”, right? So this next section will discuss the science-y details of how going off diet and cheating with things like pizza, pasta, cake and cookies has a positive impact on your physical health, fitness and performance.This section is short.IT DOESN’T.To be perfectly clear, a cheat day does not have a single significant, long-term positive effect on your metabolism, your body composition or any other internal science-y factors, despite what you read on the internet. Mathieu Lalonde can step into comments and explain all the reasons that a single cheat day negatively impacts how you look, feel and perform for the next two weeks... but I’ll shoot down some common arguments here.First… for those of you who eat a bowl of Breyer’s every night before bed and suddenly notice you’re looking leaner… that’s not the Breyer’s.

It is, however, a sure sign that you have not been eating enough. The ice cream is giving you a caloric boost, and has jump started your metabolism. Which is great, short term. But keep eating ice cream every night for months on end and tell me how that’s working out for you. Or, I’ll argue, how much better would your fat loss and performance be if you instead ate more almonds, chicken and/or sweet potatoes to get those extra fat and calories in? In short, the “cheat” may have helped short term, but it’s a bad long term solution, and you could do better. (Pay attention to that last part. You’ll hear it again.)Second, you may pass off your cheats as preventing metabolic slow-down. Serious calorie and carb restrictions decrease the release of the hormone called leptin. Leptin is important to keeping up your body’s metabolic rate. Increasing food intake drastically, even for a short period of time (like with a cheat day), will prevent the drop in leptin that occurs when dieting.

But most of us aren’t seriously “dieting”, are we? We’re CrossFitting, so we are at least eating enough to support performance. We may have a slight caloric deficit to prompt fat loss, but we are NOT in starvation mode. Not even close. Our metabolisms should be chugging away like a super-powered bullet train. So, if we are already eating for performance, do we really need to “mix it up” and “jolt our metabolisms” with chili cheese fries and an ice cream sundae? (That's rhetorical, kids.) And if for some reason you are on a seriously calorie-restricted diet... again, I'll say that you can pull off a better metabolic shock-and-awe with a higher volume of good, clean carbs than you can eating crap.How about the idea of “loading” or “refeeding” – essentially, replenishing glycogen stores? Glycogen (the carbs stored in the muscles and liver) is the primary fuel source for intense physical work.

When your glycogen stores are low, you won't be able to train as hard as when you're fully loaded. For that reason, it's a good idea to periodically give the body a shot of carbohydrates to keep glycogen stores at least somewhat full. (We do this in the form of a post workout meal.) But again, it comes back to this. You can “refuel” with ice cream and candy… or you can refuel with sweet potatoes and butternut squash. Ice cream supports the basic, fundamental requirement of replenishing glycogen stores… but also messes with a whole host of other body processes, like insulin sensitivity, fat stores and autoimmune responses. Again, you could do better.So there you have it – a cheat meal or a cheat day does nothing for your physical health and well being that couldn’t be done better with good, clean food. But there are a whole host of reasons to cheat that I DO support - and those are all mental. Your taste buds crave things that taste good. Your brain rebels against the rigidity of “can have” and “can’t have”.

Your emotions needs a break from the isolation and social pressures of being the weird eater, the difficult dinner party guest, the one who makes everyone else feel bad about the way they eat. You need a mental break, which means you need to stray from your diet. And I am more than okay with that.So we’ve established that we want our diets to weight in on the side of Healthy, but that there are mental and emotional reasons that mean it is absolutely necessary that we go off-diet from time to time. And as you might imagine, I have a few thoughts as to how you do that. Tomorrow, I'll publish my advice for how to strike the best balance possible while still preserving your mental sanity.

My pen is out of ink

Hey there!
Where the hell have you been?!?

Well Im back!!! After a small stint in jail for stalking Jessica Alba, no no thats not true at all. I wish it was though.

Ive been going through quite a rough patch of things recently (for about a month now) and just havent been gather and posting information as quickly (last post was in june).

And I know what youre saying "chris is really dont give a Sh*t about you and your problems, I just need to know how not to get fat and how to gain muscle." And you are totally right. I always said I would never make a blog where I cry about my feelings, so let me set the tissues down and get back to business!

Note: Thanks to my girlfriend and friends who think I should live a little and party like Keith Richards long lost child I have become very out of shape. It took a solid two weeks and it will take three to get back to 60%. Bad diet+bad sleep+alcohol= a fatter, slower(mentally and physically) christopher. Ill keep you updated about cravings, cheats, and gains (good gains I hope). Current standings:
Weight: 183.5 (way less than I thought it would be).
Waist: 33"
Bodyfat: 11% WAY less than what I thought
Body fat lbs: 20#
Muscle lbs: 165#
Daily Protein Req: 99g