5/11 #PODIUMWEEK DAY 5 - Baseline & Beers!

What a great #podiumweek it's been! It's clear that all of you are getting stronger, faster, fitter, and happier. Just look at all those PRs and big smiles. Let's celebrate tonight at 5:30PM with Baseline & Beers. Remember to bring a friend to class today. It's Free! 
In last week's Foodie Friday post I wrote about the problem with sugar. Remember our CrossFit nutrition plan is to eat meat, vegetables, nuts & seeds, some fruit little starch and no sugar. We are to keep food intake to levels that support activity but not body fat. This week I want to address food intake or food quantity. 
How much we eat does, absolutely, impact our body composition, our daily energy levels, our hormones and all other metabolic processes. Food is super important and you need to eat it, just not too much of it. 
Here's the hands down best guide to figuring out the appropriate food quantity for you. 

Use your hand, it's already calibrated to your body size! In the example above, carbs are all below ground vegetables and fruit. The thumb sized serving of fat is your nuts, seeds and oils. Now, if you're a man you get 2 servings of everything and if you're a woman you get one. Your plate should look this:

Tonight at 5:30pm we are celebrating with beers after our Baseline. So how does alcohol fit into all of this? It counts as a carbohydrate. The more beer you drink, the less carbohydrates you get to eat. So, while beer is super tasty and super fun to drink with friends, it's not so great at fueling our bodies. Here's an excellent guide from Working Against Gravity on to how track your alcohol consumption. Click on the image to check out their online alcohol calculator. It's super handy! 

If you want to look better naked, perform well at CrossFit, have enough energy to keep up with your kids and do all the fun things after work and on the weekends, you need to eat whole foods, limit your alcohol to ONE drink, and control how much food you put in your face. Yep - it's that simple - yet so very difficult. 
Here's a FANTASTIC recipe from Well Fed that you can easily use to practice using your hand to portion. Use chicken thighs as they are just about the size on a small person's palm. Adjust according to the size of your hands and gender. Click on the image below for the recipe for Tandoori chicken with pineapple curry cauliflower rice. ​Enjoy!