Since the 1st of  January, my inbox has been filled with emails from direct marketing companies about diet regimes and annual gym memberships.

Early January, so it seems , is the time to “snare” the unsuspecting would be weight loser and would be gym goer. This for many gyms is their financial motor: sign up loads of people,  and get their money upfront for services they will never use.

Frankly, I think its an unethical disgrace and a stain on the fitness industry.

Partly for this reason we steer clear of any new member offers and any diet challenges in January. We dont want that type of  money. We focus on training people who want to train. The other reason is that unless you are quite experienced, training in january can be difficult. When it cold and dark, weight loss, especially  for the emotionally vulnerable can be  daunting task.

Maybe there is a better chance if that 1st serious  weight loss attempt is postponed a bit, and  comes with a “history” of success.

For thousands of years, people  have decided to give something up for Lent, so I thought, this year we would play with a 40 days  strict zone/paleo challenge starting on Ash Wednesday (22 Feb) and ending 8 April, mirroring the Lent period.

Ive stereed clear of diet challenges before, for a couple of reasons. The most important being that I could never effectively workout how to measure success: We need to look at  weight loss, fat loss, muscle gain, quality of diet, quality of sleep, quality of training and improvement in blood chemistry.

For various reasons,  I now feel we are near to having an effective ( or much better) assessment  package. Steven has invested in a  sonic body fat measure,  Katarina often uses fat calipers, so can read them well. We are also developing an effective relationship with blood test agencies who can  help us with the chemistry . Perhaps we could  test blood pressure?

What im trying to say is that  a  Zone /Paleo challenge is, of course, about weight, but, its more about how it underpins a better life. How it moves blood chemistry , how it helps you train. How it helps you sleep and recover. Above all, its about what you learn about food, both quantity and quality.

So let me make this the 1st call for interested people. who would like to  get involved in this challenge.

It could  involve body fat measurements, before and after pictures, weekly weighing, and encouragement to get some blood tests done.  You will need to keep a food diary,a training and sleep diary. It will be quite public.

We are open to any ideas: should it be  done  it for charity, should we monitor “other stuff”. But for now, could I have expressions of interest

From a marketing point of view, it may be  as well to book yourself into this sundays Zone masterclass so you can learn how to  Zone properly. I was chatting to a paleo expert on Friday so we may also be able to come up with some effective how to do paleo, while crossfitting,  ideas.

The basics of the Crossfit London approach to  a healthy diet is the Zone. We base all our initial education on the Zone as it appears in the Crossfit Journal No 21.

Download your free copy . You will need to know it really well to get the most out of the Zone Foundation Classes ( thee are lots of tests, with burpee penalties!)

http://journal.crossfit.com/2004/05/zone-meal-plans-crossfit-journ.tpl

The trick of mastering the Zone, and to  getting all its benefits ( weight loss, nutritional understanding, enhanced performance), is being really, really simple. The almost unbearable temptation is to attempt to change it. I’ve seen beginners , from day 1, combine the Zone with intermittent fasting, cheat days , reducing the carb content blah, blah.

The aim of the Crossfit London zone session is to get you  do a months worth of  the basic zone: as its written in the journal .

So when reading issue 21 what do you need to “get” ?

What are the principle messages?

1) the zone has broken down all the types of food into 3 types.

Carbohydrates, protein and fat. ( if you are stupid you may need to repeat these slowly to your self).

2) Every time  you eat, or consume calories ( drink stuff) , your meal must have all three types of food in it . You dont have to scoop all 3 types into your mouth at the same time, but at the same  sitting ( they can be spread over a starter, a main course and  a”pudding” ( gosh you can tell Im over 50!).  The most basic example is this.

If you are inspired by old sayings and you decide that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”  thats probably a good plan (better than  chocolate bar). However, , if all you do, at that snack , is to eat an apple , you are not Zoning!  A proper snack, would be ( for example) an Egg for the protein, the apple ( which is carb), and some nuts for the fat.

3) Finally, you need to balance the proportions of these 3 types of food. You must eat in a strict ratio  of protein to carb to fat.

How the hell do you do that?

This is the same problem that all economies have. How do you make a medium of exchange that puts a value on different things.  If you go to market with a goat, is that worth 1,2 or 3 chickens. If you sold a chicken and  you got a DVD in exchange,  is that a fair trade??

Advanced economies use currency: The Zone uses “Blocks”

So, how do you match up protein with carbs and Fat: All foods are different. The carb content in bread is not the same as in  an apple: the fat content of meat varies as the wind blows.

Enter the BLOCK.

Rather than say, put some protein and  some carb and some  fat on your plate, we say put , 1 block of protein, 1 block of carb and one block of fat on your plate.

How much of a certain  type of food goes to make up a block is done for you. Issue 21 has columns with types of foods, and the amount of each  you need to use to  make a block (see below).

To really understand that, you measure and practise ( and we will show you how in the foundations class).

But to give you a more practical example, from our apple snack that I mentioned before: a one block snack would be  1 egg, half an apple and 3 almonds

4) So you need to be able to use “cups” and a scale. ( we will show you how)

5) finally you need to understand how many blocks you need. Once again, Crossfit simplified  this into this chart

At the end of the zone foundations class, you will have practised and drilled these concepts ( in  a fun lively environmnet: which will include finger painting  crayoning  and picture you can take home to your mum to put on the fridge).

Then its 4 weeks of practise ( if you want to).

After this  there will be other sessions  where we will discuss in (boring) detail food quality, paleo, intermittent fasting, high/low protein, blood types  but for now, you need the basics.

The obvious question. Is this diet good for you. It could be a wacky fade  diet. it could be ok for some, but not ok for you as an individual ( you may have an illness that means you need to eat in a certain way). Every  diet observation we give you  is based on the assumption that you will take the information and get your doctors input into it, and use the internet and other  research  methods to understand how your body uses food.

Good Crossfitters take  responsibility for what they eat. You too need to take responsibility for what you put in your mouth.

See you at a Zone Foundation class, I’ll be presenting along with the phenomenal Kate . I’ve got all the flashy qualifications: Kate learned her business in the trenches.

See comments below for dates of  the next session ( once a month…ish)

I had great fun watching channel 4′s Food hospital this week.

It occurred to me that we could all do with a reminder of what are the better foods. Sure we can eat Paleo or healthy Zone, but im sure it would help to be reminded of stuff like garlic, turmeric, sprouting broccoli, and ginger ( not that I have the faintest idea of what to do with ginger!)

Here are some guidelines I culled out of “Health Defence” , (Dr Paul Clayton.)

Eat more flavonoid rich food. which is stuff like prunes, strawberries, bilberries, apples, citrus fruit, raisins, raspberries, blackberries. red and yellow onions and shallots. walnuts, pecan nuts and tomatoes.

Switch from beer/white wine to red wine

A good anti cancer diet includes onions, walnuts, pecans, tomatoes, tea, coffee rosemary, turmeric and garlic

Tea ( probably without milk and sugar!), especially green tea.

get outside and get some sunshine

anti oxidants; fish oil, turmeric, ginger, curcuminoids

Can anyone add to this list. it would be nice to get it into a handy to carry format so you can carry it around the supermarket.

I read some interesting ideas that a bit of live natural yoghurt does you good, however most   probiotics are little more than liquid sugar, and the bacteria they carry may not be what they seem; its like, allegedly , someone saying they will bring George Clooney to your party, only to discover that  there is “a” George Clooney  who lives in Edmonton  and he is a part time road sweeper!

Im aslo beginning to  consider experimenting with eating “organs” rather than exclusively meat ( apparently liver/kidneys are good /better for you) and Im plucking up the courage to ask my local butchers to begin ordering “game”: fluffy bunny rabbits, and friendly fowl…. no idea how to cook them

(A quick note from Andrew & Steven We woud like to welcome Brie as one of our new Website contributors.The brief we have give her , (along with Kate)  is  in the tricky area of weight loss . This, hopefully means that in the very near future, our weight loss advise will be road tested by  women  ( and guys) who have  been there and done that, or by our growing team of sport scientists ( like Andrew, katarina and Ben C)

Over to Brie…..

Sometimes it seems things just all fall into place.  This past month has been one of extreme decadence for me – Canadian thanksgiving, visiting family, 30th birthday… I trained regularly through most of it, but I can just feel that I’ve put on a bit of weight, drank a bit too much, eaten a bit too much crap and with Christmas coming it might be best to go on a bit of a detox for November.

This also coincided with my thinking that perhaps, finally, I should give this ‘paleo’ thing a try.  I’ve been really skeptical about this system – but perhaps some of it is in the name, some of its that I like cheese… but I’ve seen some amazing things when followed strictly so why not!  I may not drink the kool-aid, but I will at least sip it.

It seems I’m not the only one craving a clean November – Kate has returned to ‘strict zone’ and Kirsty has pledged solidarity with me on my 30 day paleo challenge and we want the rest of you looking to slim yourselves a bit to join us in the name of Movember!

Kate has pledged £5 for every pound lost, while I have pledge £5 for every inch lost.  While the boys grow those fine mo’s, we’ll be working hard to present new svelte selves ready for Christmas fun beginning in December.

We hope you’ll join us!

Its part of my job description.

I must do other peoples  exercise regimes, go one other peoples courses, follow other peoples programming and do other peoples diets, otherwise we lock ourselves in our box in bethnal Green and crawl up our own bottoms. Our job is to be open, listen, learn, assess and criticise.

So it was inevitable that I had to do a month of the cult  Paleo diet .

Ill report at the end of a month how it went , but for now, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you. I would like to publicly attack one of the assumptions behind the Paleo diet. The assumption is, that in dietary terms,  we have not evolved to cope with the bad  current day food supply, fast carbs, bad fat, salt laden protein. Obviously there is great supporting evidence: diabetes, heart trouble, obesity, and other woes

.But, lets tun this on its head. What does evolution mean. It means getting rid of  less successful species and types. Nasty but true. So if we stop looking at diabetes, heart disease and obesity as illness, but as a naturally occurring “weeding out mechanism”,  we have been trying to evolve for the last 200 hundred years. The only problem is that doctors and do gooders keep on stopping the natural process. If we let the diiabetics, the obese and the  broken hearted follow their life style to its natural conclusion without medical intervention, they could, within a few generations, drop out of the gene pool, leaving us with a type of human who can survive on a high carb diet, and who is able to moderate their food consumption in an environment of plenty.

Obviously Im talking at a high statistical level. On a one to one basis,  no one would wish anyone a premature death:We probably have too much humanity for that.

Im no fan of carb,( Im writing this as I  have a spare few minutes and wanted to brew up some mischief) , but if you leaf through  Caesers “The conquest of Gaul” it becomes clear that to maintain armies in the field, (or people in urban centres) you need them to eat carbs ( a ration of grain, or some bread). its not really  possible to  give every legionary some meat, salad and vegetables and some fish oil capsules:other than what they can forage:  if you are part of a 53000 person army, forage becomes hard to come by.

Over the last few days Ive eaten  meat, fish, fruit , vegetables nuts and fish oils pills galore: all   have been jetted in from around the world and now Im dependent on a fesh, pure food sources. I suspect that if and when ( and possibly if)  I go back to normal eating, wheat,  milk and “meddled with” meat will make me ill.

The problem is  this. If we have a crisis and our cozy western world goes bottoms up, it will be those who can eat refined carb who will be able to survive better. After all, when there are famine and disasters,  we just ship in corn and rice: We dont  food drop olives, avocados and curly lettuce.

Does it come down to greed. Why should we stuff luxury food in our mouth that could never grow near us  and claim to be living a natural lifestyle while the other half of the world starves. As a british paleo man what  should i be eating? Deer, blackberries, apples? That sounds dull!

On another level, why would I want to be mimicking the  food choices of  a group of morons who thought that dragging stone around the wiltshire countryside was a useful pass time .  I like having  a house, an internet connection, a car ( although im getting rid of it soon). I love civilisation:

But, this said, 3/4 days of eating clean, and I dont “eat”, I “refuel” with as much emotion as filling up ( my soon to be gone) car with petrol. Gone  are the violently fluctuating  cravings,  but also gone are the enhanced mood that a sugar buzz gave  me,. As my fellow suffere kate says, ” i just feel slightly miserable”.  For me, its strange to have gone 3 days without milky coffee with sugar: Its the 1st time in 42 years ( yep, my loving parents allowed me  coffee and tea  at the age of 8!). Whats worse, ( or better) is that after a 4 day  lay off, we had a cheat meal of bread and cheese and coffee. and didn’t like it!

Am I facing a life of emotionless food? have I broken the spell? Am I never to get high on the  over-consumption of carb ever again??

Andrew, Confused of Bethnal Green, Stemler

I think it has been established previously that I am rather partial to meat. And like most other carnivores, steak sits somewhere near the top of my most wanted list.

Thing is, I’ve never really been very good at cooking it. Almost irrespective of the quality of the meat, whether it turns out well or not seems to be a hit-or-miss affair.

Then yesterday, whilst pruning some old bookmarks I stumbled across this article from The Food Lab on ‘More Tips for Perfect Steaks’. What separates Food Lab articles from the normal cook-book affair is the semi-scientific testing that goes into the tips:

“To test this, I bought myself a a half dozen thick-cut bone-in ribeyes…and salted them at 10 minute intervals before searing them in a hot skillet. So the last steak went into a pan immediately after salting, while the first steak went in a full 50 minutes after salting. All of the steaks were allowed to rest at room temperature for the full 50 minutes, ensuring that they were all at the same starting temperature before cooking began.”

There is quite a lot in here – especially when you end up running down all the extra links to previous articles – but the key tips that I took away were related to salting, flipping frequency and post-cooking rest.

Needless to say, the steaks that I cooked last night were the best that I have ever achieved; an opinion enthusiastically endorsed by my wife.

All bodes well for next weekend’s BBQ…

The Food Lab: More Tips For Perfect Steaks

A long time ago, when I was  being rude about  the Paleo diet, , I remember saying.”well lets see the hard core paleo  guys eat bugs then, cause thats paleo, that is”. Gosh I can be difficult and truculent !

Well. eating  small crawling things that make girls shriek is now becoming trendy. I even caught this article in the Metro recently “Eating insects provides an alternative to meat. It’s bug-a-go-go”

As Im terribly influenced by fashion, ( giggle) Im off to buy  some insects to eat from Thailand Unique. Im not sure how to cook them, or if they are a good supplier or not (it was linked to in the metro article: this is not a recommendation yet!), but  if crunching on an ants skull is your idea of fun, these guys can help ( apparently)

But if we need protein and our meat is becoming so toxic it jumps up and chases you around the kitchen ( or is so full of water that you could squeeze it over your head as a mini shower) , why not have a rummage around the back of your sink , see what you can find, whip up a nice sauce and dunk away. Yum yum.

So insect munchers, sound off, give us your recipes, tell us if we can eat house flies ( or was that just that solicitor in Dracula)  or  suck on  garden worms,  and can we pour a garlic sauce over the snails you find in the garden and be sophisticated… or is that just niave and yuk.

So More links about where to buy bugs, complaints from the Bug Liberation Army, should bugs have the vote …. PURLEEZ

Remember, the next time your girlfriend screams  that there is a spider in the bath, grab  the parmesan shaver.

I love writing about the paleo diet: Hmm,  thinking of the zone, I wonder how many maggots are  in a block

We will attempt to serve an (additional, trail/taster)  insect buffet at the  may Crossfit London UK party…yuk

It was whilst frying bacon for breakfast that I began to consider the implication of water content on the Zone block system. When weighing meat, should it be weighed cooked or pre-cooked? I had noticed, especially with bacon, that I ended up with a pan full of “water” (or stuff that looked like water).

I had heard rumours that  farmers pumped their meat full of liquid to inflate the weight. If this was the case, could this throw off the protein content of a meal? Could we be consuming “water” rather than protein? In the Zone, this seemed quite important as on any reduced calorie diet, we surely need to know that we are getting the right amount of macronutrients.

So I carried out a test to see if the net weight of steak reduced during the cooking process

I hypothesised that more expensive meat would have less fluid “padding”, and that if there was a loss in weight, it would be less in “decent” (expensive steak) than cheap steak.

We bought expensive and cheap steak from our local Straford Sainsburys, and over two days, fried them

Day 1.

So 298g of fillet steak went to this after 6 minutes (approx) of frying

Day 2: Now it’s the turn of (cheaper) rump steak

Which became this weight after the same amount of frying time…

I wish i could come up with a great conclusion,  the obvious one is weigh your meat cooked!

Strangely the better meat lost more weight, probably because there was more natural juice in it: ( they came vacuum packed)

I reckon this must be the most asked question/ greatest source of stress for people making their first foray into either the Zone or Paleo diets.

Now that bread, oats, Weetabix and Sugar Puffs (mmm…Sugar Puffs) are off the table, what on earth can you eat for breakfast? Consider these ideas…

Egg-based breakfasts

Scrambled eggs with butter
2-4 eggs either with or without yolks depending on your preference

Melt a generous dollop of butter in the pan, add eggs and stir until as solid/wet as you like. Add smoked salmon if you are feeling posh. Serve with half a sliced avocado if you need to ramp up your fat intake.

‘Spanish’ Omelette
Same as scrambled eggs above, but after you add the eggs to the pan chuck in various finely chopped vegetables (onions, peppers, etc.) and DON’T stir.

Bonus meal: Eggy Muffins
Exactly the same as above except mix all ingredients together, pour into muffin cases and bake in the oven for 15-20 mins. Great for making the evening before and storing the fridge.

Frittata
Heat a pan with oil and chuck in a variety of vegetables, stir fry them until al dente. I like to chuck in another form of protein at this point (salmon, chicken, etc.) and continue to fry until nearly cooked. At the last minute toss in 2-3 eggs and stir like crazy until you have scrambled the eggs. If you are feeling adventurous, I like to add a dusting of paprika, ground black pepper and parsley to the mix.

In short, anything + eggs = frittata.

Bacon and eggs
I don’t really need to explain this, do I?

Paleo Pancakes
3 eggs
3 tablespoons butter or coconut oil, melted (plus extra butter or coconut oil for cooking the pancakes)
3 tablespoons coconut milk or whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons honey
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3 tablespoons coconut flour or almond flour or a mix of both (which is very yummy)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Whisk everything together in a pouring jug. Heat pan and pour in a little at a time (these pancakes need to be a little smaller than the normal type). Make pancakes! Toss some berries into the mix if you need to ramp up your carbs.

Other breakfast alternatives

Paleo porridge
1 cup of almond flour
1 cup of water
1 apple, cored
1 teaspoon of cinammon

Put everything in a blender, and, erm, blend? Pour contents into a small pan and heat on the cooker until hot. Enjoy!

Quick tuna salad
2 tins of canned tuna (in brine or spring water, not oil)
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon jalepeno peppers
1 large tomato, deseeded and chopped
2 teaspoons of mixed herbs or parsley or oregano, or pretty much anything green
As much mayonnaise you feel appropriate

Put everything in a bowl. Mix. Serve on lettuce leaves.

Last night’s leftovers
Last night’s leftovers. Seriously. Unless it was curry.

Other ideas? Let us know in the comments!

Banner image from The Paleo Table, an excellent source of simple and quick to make recipes.

Enough feasting, it’s time to prepare for the Zone: the effective diet that produces weight loss, enhances performance and gets your body “right.”

Kate and I have gone strict  Zone strict from the 1st of January 2011, and thought it would helpful if we posted up our preparations and ideas. Elsewhere on this site you will find a Journal article about Crossfit’s recommendations of the Zone diet to get you started.

Our first observation was that neither of us were happy with using the crude Zone method of dealing with carb items. We don’t understand the concept of 1 block being equal to ” 1/3 of a banana” or ” half an apple”, as they come in wildly differing sizes. Equally we were none too keen with the cup system for measuring “lumpy” things like grapes and broccoli.  Frankly we are happy to weigh stuff with a scale like our mums did.

So keeping the Zone tables in mind, we hunted out a carb counting site. Check this one out:

http://www.low-carb-foods.biz/carb-counter/

Which  is a a low carb informational website, featuring articles on low carb foods, diets, recipes and weight loss. Includes carb counter.

Here are some basic carb foods converted into blocks and giving their weight in grammes.
Each item= 1 block carb

banana 39g
apple 65g
blackberries 93g
raspberries 75g
strawberries 93g
orange/tangerine 80g
peach 94g
pineapple 71g
melon 110g

tomato 229g
broccoli 125
cabbage 201
cauliflower 218g
mushrooms 152g
spinach 240g
pepper 142
lettuce 273
bread 20g
rice raw 11g
rice cooked 31g

All Bran 19g
porridge 15g

Animal proteins are a lot more consistent: 28g of beef, chicken, lamb, pork or salmon equals 1 block. We leave you to look up the various fat blocks yourself.

So in the next few days , we’ll be analysing what we eat, where its easy to go wrong (sugar in tea, invisible biscuits)