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Meathead

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

For those of you that are CrossFit faithful and care about such things as being lean and building muscle, you probably already understand that we follow a Paleo style of eating that includes eating lots of meat. But to be truly Paleo you need to be eating meat that comes ONLY from animals that are "grass-fed". Why? Check out this snipet (or click on the blue print to read the whole ka-boodle) below to save yourself a potential trip to the hospital or potentially an early grave!

"Because we eat quite a lot of meat, quite a lot of meat must be produced. Large-volume meat production means large farms, large herds, and large, centralized, highly efficient processing plants. At best, this all translates into relative neglect of any individual steer, and a relative inability to inspect the quality of every steak.

At worst, it offers reminders of the "jungle" to which Upton Sinclair introduced us all at the turn of the 20th century. And it means feed animals are raised as an industrial commodity, rather than as creatures. Their natural diets are disregarded, and they are fed whatever leads to the fastest growth and greatest profit.

The origins of E. coli 0157H7 are not mysterious; they relate to changes in the feed of cattle. We say "you are what you eat," and since the construction materials for growing bodies come from food and nowhere else, it is literally true. It is just as true if you happen to have hooves.

Cattle eating grasses have a healthy gastrointestinal tract that is not conducive to the growth of this particular mutant germ. Cattle being fed grains instead of grasses -- and in many cases, ground-up bits of other animals including their own species -- develop abnormal conditions in their GI tract, such as a change in the pH level.

It is this abnormal environment within cows that consume abnormal diets that gave us E. coli 0157H7. The jury is still out on the new E. coli variant, but precedent likely predicts the trial outcome for our current tribulations. We -- and our resultant health -- not only are what we eat; we are to some extent what we feed what we eat."


Sam enjoying a nice concrete nap after a 15 minute CrossFit session ; )

WOD
Waylayed
Warmup
30 PVC Rotaters
30 Hypers
2x Dwn-n-back Bear Crawls
Strength
Deadlift 5 x 5 Max Weight
Bench Press 5 x 5 Max Weight
10 Minute AMRAP
20 Air Squats
20 Box Jumps

Comments(0)  Tags: WOD | crossfit body construction | paleo | meat

Say What?!!

Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Here's an interesting article from Robb Wolfs blog...enjoy : )

Meat & Potatoes: Back on the Menu Just in case you haven’t been paying attention lately, meat and potatoes are okay to eat again. It’s a pretty comical situation, really. Meat and potatoes used to be the basic chow of every American – at a time when Americans were the healthiest and tallest people in the world.

I was a youngster in the 70′s and 80’s, and I can remember even then how if you ate meat and potatoes you were some kind of throwback – caveman, even. People would shake their heads and tsk, tsk, tsk. Doesn’t he know that meat is full of fat and that will lead to an early grave?

Even back then we were already being indoctrinated into the fat phobic culture. We all know now how badly that worked out. People didn’t get healthier, they got sicker. The “bad fat” got replaced by low fat junk food – Snackwells and such. That was the start of the obesity epidemic. Then Atkins burst on the scene. It’s not the meat that’s bad it’s the potatoes.

Potatoes are full of carbs and that will lead to an early grave. Same story, different scapegoat. The only problem was those pesky Kitavans – living on their tropical island and mowing down on copious amounts of roots and tubers and doing just dandy with it.

The Atkins concept was better, but still didn’t explain all the observations. So what have we learned here? Judging a food solely by its macronutrient composition is stupid. It’s hard to believe it has taken us 50 years to figure that out. We have good fats (saturated and omega-3’s) and bad fats (omega-6’s), good carbs (fructose) and bad carbs (processed sugar), good proteins (meat) and bad proteins (gluten). It’s the quality of the macronutrient, not it’s classification, that makes it good or bad.

So does that mean everyone should be out there chowing down on potatoes? Unfortunately, no. Not because there is anything unhealthy about potatoes, but a lot of people cannot process dense carb sources in a healthy way. It ultimately depends on your activity level and metabolic status.

Basically those carbs fuel your activity level. If you’re living a desk to couch lifestyle then either up your activity level or keep the intake low. You have to earn your carbs.

If you have metabolic issues (read: abdominal fat) then you need to get that sorted out first since you are not processing carbs correctly. It ends up being shuttled to the fat tissue instead of being available as energy. But if you are a lean, hard training athlete then go ahead and eat up.

In fact, you NEED to. Without sufficient dietary carbohydrates your body will start scavenging protein to convert to glucose (a catabolic process) and your aerobic capacity will suffer without sufficient glucose to burn the fat.

Does this mean that fries and a Big Mac are recommended? Nope. That’s meat and potatoes in name only. It’s a meal featuring highly processed industrial food-like items, combined with gluten and soaked in omega-6 fat, so stay far far away. We’re all about food quality here.

What I’m talking about is a homemade stew with a big joint of meat with potatoes, onions, and carrots in the mix. This is easy to make and kicks ass in every way possible as far as nutrition is concerned. And it’s cheap.

Here’s the kicker. Meat and potatoes is probably the most Paleo of all meals. While the men were out hunting the women were gathering. What were they gathering? More often than not, tubers. For the most part, fruits, nuts, and seeds are targets of seasonal opportunity. Because it’s a plant’s long term storage organ, tubers are always around.

They can and did form the backbone of many hunter/gatherer diets. It was this high nutrient density diet based on meat and tubers that made humans the high energy, big-brained masters-of-our-domain that we are today. It’s our heritage and it’s time we (re)embraced it.

WOD
Warmup
5 Mins Foam Roller
20 OHS
200 Rope
15 GHD Situps
Wendler - deload cycle
Squats 5-5-5+  @ 40-50-60%
Metcon
15 Min AMRAP / Team Competition
60M Prowler Push 180/135
60M Farmers Carry 32kg/24kg
Parking Lot Sprint = 15 Pushups - Sprint Back
* Each person starts on a different exercise and then rotates - you must wait for partener(s) to finish before you switch...you cannot jump ahead.

Comments(0)  Tags: crossfit | wod | meat | farmers carry | prowler | potatoes