The Nutrition Cert: A Review

So maybe one post a month is more my style, anyway... 

The EmerFit staff (Jeff, Crystal, and me) hit the road two weeks ago to visit CrossFit Agoge for the CrossFit Nutrition Certification.  The 1-day event was presented by Coach Robb Wolf and assisted by Robb's better half Nicki Violetti.  Aside from the Nutrition Cert these two also own and operate CrossFit NorCal, one of the first CrossFit Affiliates.

Listed below are what I heard as the key points or the things that I found insightful.  I have listed them in no particular order.  Where applicable I also added my own commentary or a note on changes I intend to make based on the topic.  Overall the cert was very well presented.  Robb answered any and all questions with good humor and the grace of someone who knows what he is talking about.  I would highly recommend this cert and when considering it amongst all the education experiences CrossFit has to offer I would put in on a tier with the Level II.  If you are coaching you are doing your clients a disservice if you do not go to this cert.

• You can't burn it off.  We tell our clients this over and over again in every way we can think of wording it.  Nutrition is key.  You won't get the results you are after without thinking about and experimenting with your food.  Changes to your eating habits should result in you looking, feeling and performing better.  Plus, you should have mesurable improvement in various "bio-markers".

I wish this wasn't true and yesterday's Filthy 50 really made up for a six-pack of Fat Tire.  The older I get the more I realize that I can't burn off a whole pizza.  And what is really scary is the long term health effects that are more severe than a few extra pounds.  I could maybe handle the "love handles" but not Type II diabetes in 20 years or Alzheimers in 40.

• Chronicly elevated insulin makes you look bad, feel bad, and perform poorly.  Many modern pathologies are the result of insulin resistance: abdominal adiposity (fat around the belly leaves you looking like a big apple), hypertension (high blood pressure), hypertriglceridemia (cholestrol problems), high levels of circulating blood glucose (here comes Type II diabeters or Sydrome X), and inflammation.

During one of the breaks Robb and Nicki displayed some photos of clients who had great results with CrossFit and better food.  One of their stories reminded me a lot of my own and encouraged me to go dig out the numbers and photos one more time.  I'll take a "after" photo sometime and post it with my photo from 2004 but if you haven't heard this before my numbers were:

2001: Blood lipids unknown.  Body weight: 201, measured when we joined Miramont and they estimated 12% body fat.

April 2004: Total Cholestrol: 215, LDL: 148, HDL: 45.  Hypertensive at 170/95.  Body weight at 250.  Doctor told me to exercise more, eat less fat, and start taking my blood pressure everyday.  If it didn't go down in 6 months he recommended medication.  At this point I was eating a standard Western diet and exercising little.

January 2006: Total Cholestrol: 222, LDL: 152, HDL: 59.  Still hypertensive but if I remember right my weight was down a bit to 230.  I was doing a lot of kettlebells since November of 2004 but my diet had not changed much.  I was trying to avoid fat and salt.  Didn't get a physical for nearly 2 years in an effort to avoid medication.

September 2008: Total Cholestrol: 176, LDL: 83, HDL: 76.  No longer hypertensive, typically 115/60.  Body weight at 200.  Implemented the Zone in February of 2006 along with CrossFit 3-5 times a week.  From February '06 until September '08 I had one or two months where I worked out  1-2 times or less per week.  I probably only weighed and measured for a total of 6-8 weeks during that 19 months but I had scheduled weekly cheat meals and used CrossFit Journal 21 for food selection.

• Gluten and its brethen of anti-nutrients will mess you up.  We likely all have some level of adverse reaction to gluten whether we notice it or not.  Gluten irritates the gut leading to constant inflammation.  At a minimum you are stuck with a weakened immune system making you more susceptible to other problems.  And more likely you're risking the development of an autoimmune disease that could have syptoms ranging from skin rashers to depression.

I'm going to try going gluten and dairy free for a month to see how I feel, look and perform.  One week in I am rather suprised at changes to my mood and skeptical that it isn't a fluke.

• Jack up your insulin level on a regular basis and eat lots of gluten (wheat, spelt, rye, oats, millet) and you have a major double-whammy.  Suppressed immune system, increased inflammation, potential autoimmune diseases and all the maladies of Western civilization listed above.

• Robb presented an incremental approach to avoiding the problems listed above.  First they ask their clients to eat meat and nuts for breakfast.  Once they are doing that consistently then meat, nuts, and veggies for lunch.  Then dinner.  I found Robb and Nicki's methods here enlightening and it was nice to hear another approach to improving what people eat.  We have been advocating a weigh and measured Zone to all our clients right off the bat.  We have mentioned alternatives but we haven't had a step-by-step plan for clients who for whatever reason can't go from zero to Zone in the next 7 days.  I didn't walk away with a step-by-step plan that I would use but I feel I have the knowledge to create one.  I also realized how different people will need different steps.

We are going to work on a new hand-out and presentation for our new-client nutrition session.  We are also working on some presentations about food and cooking for all our clients.

• There are a numer of different ways to manipulate the Zone for better performance and convenience.  Robb has a Performance Menu article on this topic and he mentions the topic on his blog regularly but it didn't really sink in until he went through some examples during the lecture.  We are now armed with tweaks for someone brand new to the Zone, someone who is already dialed but ready to up athletic performance, and the transitory person in between.  Not to mention tweaks for post-workout nutrition, always hungry people, people you can't eat all the food, faster fat loss, adding mass, and people with syptoms of an auto-immune disease.

I am experimenting with eating more carbs post workout.  We have also shared some of these ideas with clients who were clearly having the problems Robb described.

• There are soooo many choices for meals.  As an example if you limited your choices to chicken breasts, ground beef, pork chops, brocolli, carrots, spinach, onion, olive oil, almonds, butter, cocunut oil, garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, and curry you are looking at 256 different possible meals.  It could be baked chicken spiced with paprika and a spinach salad with oil and vinegar or a pork chop with brocolli and almonds.  Thats just the combinations from 4 meats, 4 veggies, 4 spices, and 4 fat sources.  We left out cuts of meat, cooking methods, fruit, and multiple combinations (bacon wrapped chicken breast?).

• Treating your affiliate as a practice in the same way that doctors and lawyers have "practices".  This was one of the last topics of the day but this way of looking at cliets was obviously part of the whole presentation.  Robb and Nicki had client case studies built on data (photos, blood work, and performance measures) and client feedback.  Some of the discussion and student activities during the day reinforced this view of a coach's job and how much thought had been put into it by Robb and Nicki.  Robb once had aspirations of being a doctor and it shows in the way he thinks about his athletes.

Aside from inspiration to learn more and implment more nutritional best practices this was the most insightful idea of the whole day.  Of course, I had a solid background in the non-academic nutrition literature (Pollan, Sears, Eades, etc.) and I am an affiliate owner.

• Anyone can do a Google or PubMed search to learn more than they ever wanted to know about the risks associated with bad nutrition. 

Given some health problems that run in my family it was interesting to search Google and PubMed for "gluten psoriasis" and "gluten mood".  Replacing "gluten" with "hyperinsulimia" in those searches gets even more interesting reads.

• If you want to really geek out on the endocrinology and biochemistry of nutrition there isn't a clear path of academic study beyond self-study.  This is a personal interest of mine and Robb suggested a survey of biochem, organic chemistry, etc.  It would be very cool if there was a recognized accredited degree with a focus on nutrition and human performance.  But then again a professional program in the education of a coach would be cool too.

• You need to weigh, measure and record if you want to have any idea how changes to your diet are impacting you.  Doing this does not mean you must judge yourself or even change what you are eating just because you are writing it down.

For me the record keeping part of better eating has always been wrought with stress and anxiety.  However, looking back over the changes my own body went through in the last 4 years I really wish I had written more down.  The idea that my eating log need not be a source of angst and self-loathing was enlightening.