I got this email this morning, I figured I could reply back or answer questions to our gym body. Here goes.
“Hi Jesse:
After a strenuous workout and the next day my muscles are trashed and my brain is fuzzy. So I kinda googled it.
I read this stuff and need your guidance.
The next day after a workout and you are physically trashed and sore, you should beef up your carb intake to exceed your protein intake. That it will help with muscle restoration and brain fuzziness. What do you think?
And, you know my belly is not my friend and I am battling with that physically and mentally. I read that strenuous exercise raises cortisol levels which piles on belly fat. Do you think that is a contributing factor with me?
Thanks for your help on this. You know there is so much stuff out there that you read it and, shit, I don’t know!!!!!!”
This is pretty loaded stuff. Note: the only way to store body fat is to form free fatty acids with a glycerol molecule to which an alpha-glucophosphate molecule must be present (thank you Gary Taubes) through carbohydrate metabolism. You read that right, without carbohydrate it is impossible to store body fat.
Dr. Barry Sears created the Zone Diet after years of research on recovery and reduction of silent inflammation. He concluded that as a baseline (think bell curve here) most people thrive on 40% Carbohydrate, 30% Protein and 30% Fat intake. Which is more carbs than protein anyway. So should you beef up your carb intake? Nope.
Ever seen that commercial for Relacore? It goes like this: “Cortisol raises belly fat, you have cortisol, Relacore blocks cortisol, you need Relacore. Cortisol raises belly fat, you have cortisol, Relacore blocks cortisol, you need Relacore.” The best part about this is that they actually repeat it twice like that in the commercial, verbatim, they don’t even try to change it a bit, hysterical.
Cortisol is a stress hormone. Stress (Eustress or Distress) increases the amount you have circulating. Intense workouts do raise cortisol, so does: not sleeping enough, coffee, grains, high insulin levels, people yelling at you, babies crying, scary movies, tax season, endoscopes, illness, deep tissue massage, deadlines. Get the picture? Our workouts while very intense are also dramatically shorter than “regular” gym sessions, which results in less of a cortisol bath. Your average triathlete (sprint distance or otherwise) doing “cardio” (where’s the cardio in CrossFit!?!?) for hours at a whack is going to create much more cortisol than “Fran”, “Helen” or “Filthy Fifites” ever will.
Questions? In short, eat Zone proportions, with as much real food (as paleo as you want) as possible, sleep 8-9 hours each night, have a high paying low stress job with a great fulfilling happy home life, do CrossFit (constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity) and you’ll have no hormonal problems and be lean and mean!
Clan Cheiftan Out.
Clan Chieftan = Metabolic Engineer / BS cutter.
Love it.
Throw in some meditation to remedy daily stress of bullshit like traffic and commutiing!
It’s crazy the contradictory info that is out there and always has been!
I have truly become a believer of the theory that our shit hasn’t changed in 5000 years.
By our shit I mean DNA.
Thanks for your guidance and committment Clan Chieftan!!!
Instead of 5000 years let’s go with 2 million-ish years spent hunting and gathering, living off the land, rather than cultivating it and irrigating it. Hmmm…
High Paying Low Stress Job, where can I get one?
One thing you might expand upon is while your ratios of fat, carbs and protein should be based on your prescribed blocks (if your Zoning) it does seem to be a widely held beleive that it is good to get more of your carbs within an hour of workout. However you don’t go over the amount you would for the whole day, just increase right after workout and compensate for the later or earlier in the day. Most importantly the Carbs MUST be QUALITY!!!!!!!!
But what the hell do I know, I almost died yesterday in my workout thanks to my miserabe diet on my camping trip over the weekend
I’ve had my own endrocrine issues, wacko hormones, insulin resistance but the Zone has got me balanced. When you add the WOD into the equation, I’ve lost 12 pounds in 7 weeks. I know it doesn’t seem like much but it’s amazing progress for me! So, the gist is – follow the plan Jesse put out there and see what happens, it can’t hurt! 🙂
The Zone is working for me. I have experienced a improvement in my numbers, I feel more even
in my mental state, I’m down almost 10 lbs. in 6 wks and hell I think my breath is fresher.
Jes you are to the point no BS good science. Thanks and did I mention I love my wife.
I’ve been zoning as well probably not as well as I should be :/ (about 80% of the time). I’ve been doing it for around a month and dropped around 4 pounds – The main change though has been body composition. At least to me it looks like I’ve dropped a lot of fat.
Also I never feel tired during the day anymore! The only time I feel like crap is when I have a Massive bad carb overload and it comes back to bite me about 30-60 minutes later.
Thanks for telling me to Zone at our intro meeting Jesse.
Check out paleonu.com as well. It goes along with the same principles as the Paleo Diet books, and just sort of breaks it down into layman’s terms. I, being a layman when it comes to scientific terms and health, think it is great.
Interesting PaNu quote: eat one meal to satiety (meat mostly) and then drink decaf coffee and cream all day to get the mix of nutrients right…. Interesting, possibly cortisol stimulating, I’d still Zone it. The possibility of Robb Wolf coming is getting better, there’s been some emails!!! So start saving some cash for the sign up cost you guys!! it’s going to be an awesome seminar!
J