CrossFit and the Paleo Diet Provide the Ideal Fitness Combination

CrossFit and the Paleo Diet complement one another. CrossFit is an intense type of fitness training that is designed to improve your overall fitness. The Paleo Diet is focused on quality, non-processed food to ensure you're as healthy as you can be. As such, the pairing of this training and food lifestyle is the ideal fitness combination.

CrossFit and the Paleo Diet
CrossFit originally promoted the Zone Diet which is based on precise measurements of carbs, proteins and fats. However this diet is very difficult to adhere to because of the need for specific measurements.

In contrast, the Paleo Diet does not require you to measure your food intake, and is focused on the consumption of quality food. Also known as the Caveman Diet, it eliminates the frustration that comes with trying to measure out food portions.

The Rules of the Paleo Diet
In simple terms, the approach is:

• Do not eat processed food


• Consume only quality food


• There's no limit on the amount of food that can be eaten

The approach is based on the philosophy of only eating foods that people ate in the Paleolithic era. That means there are no processed foods which eliminates all fast foods, sweets and anything unnatural from your diet.

However there are a number of benefits to this diet. For example, there is no limit to the amount of seafood or lean meats that you can consume. The same €no limit€ rule also applies to fruits and vegetables.

The focus is on eating quality, natural foods which means that processed foods, cereals and grains, dairy products and legumes are not part of this diet.

The belief is that humans survived the Paleolithic era eating foods that were not processed and it contributed to the long-term survival and evolution of humans. This type of eating has several aspects that must be followed for it to provide the health (and weight loss) benefits that are attributed to those who follow it.

The Seven Key Components of the Paleo Diet

1. You can eat large portions of animal meat (protein) without hesitation, as long as it's unprocessed.
2. Obtain your carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables, and not the alternative sources such as pasta.
3. Acquire necessary fiber from non-starchy fruits and vegetables. Again, there is no limit to the amount that can be eaten.
4. Include some mono-saturated fats such as avocados, Brazilian nuts and canola oil, as well as polyunsaturated fats such as salmon and oil, and equal amounts of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats.
5. Eat foods that have low sodium, and elevated potassium levels. Salt is not something that is part of this diet but foods such as bananas provide a great snack for CrossFit participants.
6. You should have an alkaline loaded diet which means that approximately one-third of your diet should be vegetables.
7. Consume foods with elevated levels of plant phytochemicals, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Foods such as broccoli and lettuce are essential components to meeting the food requirements of the Paleo Diet.

These seven rules will put you in a position to achieve superior health, reduce the risk of lifelong illness and lose a large amount of weight.

When you combine CrossFit and Paleo it provides you with the opportunity to maximize your training and health which leads to exceptional results, and reduced WOD times.

CrossFit participants find they are able to workout longer with greater focus and intensity. And they don't feel hungry as their bodies are fueled with quality, unprocessed food.

The Paleo Diet is the best nutrition for anyone participating in CrossFit.

Source Simon Wood / My Crossfit WOD

Cross Training for Fitness and Weight loss

The numbers on your scale do not indicate whether you are fit or fat. Far more significant than your total body weight is the composition of your body tissue. If a man's fatty tissue is bigger than 14% up to 15% of his body mass, or if a woman's is more than 20% to 22%, he or she is overweight, or more precisely, overweight.

A small amount of fat is needed for padding the internal organs and as insulation under the skin. Excess fat leads to such diseases as diabetes, gout, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and gallbladder problems. There are very few, very fat persons. The reason is that the fittest, not the fattest survive.

The problem now is focused on how to resolve the problem. The problem with most people who want to lose weight is that they have the propensity to concentrate more on getting those numbers lower than what they are seeing now. What happens next is that they strive harder to achieve a lower weight, according to the "ever reliable" result of the weighing scale.

It would be more important to think of the human body as a heat-exchange engine that works on the basic principles of energy physics. The caloric balance equals the total calorie intake minus the total calorie expenditure.

Some of the calories people ingest are used for basal metabolism. As people get old, their bodies require fewer calories for this basic upkeep. Some calories are excreted as waste products. Some go into "work metabolism," the energy expenditure required for any physical activity.

Hence, if people take in more calories than are used by these functions, there is a definite caloric excess. By the laws of physics, energy is transformed rather than destroyed. In this case, each excess of 3,500 calories is changed into a pound of fat. If people want to reverse this process, they have to burn up 3,500 calories to lose a single pound.

Winning the War Against Fat

When you think of fighting fat with exercise, you probably think of hours of hard, sweaty exertion. If this is the case, then, you will not get any farther. This is because people who are so much into losing more by exerting more effort tend to get bored easily.

Why? Because experts contend that when people exert more effort than what they are capable of doing creates a tendency to develop weariness and ennui. Hence, they give up, stop doing their routine exercises, and end up sulking in the corner with a bag of chips that seems to have all the bad calories in this world.

Now, you might ask, "What should be done instead?" The answer: cross training.

After some intensive studies and experimentations, health experts were able to come up with the concept of incorporating cross training in order to overcome or break the monotony or dullness in an exercise program.

Cross training refers to the integration of diverse movements or activities into a person's conventional exercise routine. The main purpose of incorporating cross training into an exercise program is to avoid overdoing excess muscle damages and to put a stop to an imminent boredom.

Three of the most commonly used activities whenever a person decides to engage into cross training are swimming, running, and cycling.

In cross training, distance is one way to extend your activity as your condition improves. For this reason, you need to traverse a measured distance.

If possible, swim the course and measure the distance. If you will be using a running track, such courses usually are a quarter-mile per lap for a complete circuit.

Cross training offers a variety of benefits for fitness and fatloss. It builds up the strength and endurance of the heart, lungs, and blood vessels. It has also some tranquilizing effect on the nerves, and it burns up calories as much as it makes your "losing weight" more bearable.

Cross training has three basic components:

1. Endurance exercises to condition the heart, lungs, and blood vessels and to induce relaxation. These begin with a careful planned walking and jogging regimen, depending on fitness level.

2. Exercises to strengthen the muscles, particularly those important to good posture. These include some activities that are selected to encourage some people who are already burnt out with a particular routine.

3. Exercises to improve joint mobility and prevent or relieve aches and pains. These consist of a series of static stretching positions that are safe and effective for most of the people who wish to try to lose some fat.

Indeed, cross training is a great way to modify the concept of exercising and losing fat without having to endure monotonous activities. In fact, the idea of exercising is to like what you are doing, hence, if you engage into cross training, you will be aware of it that you have already achieve your desired weight.

Boiled down, cross training is, certainly, one way of having fun.

Brigi G | Fitness Inspired Formula

Cross Training for Fitness and Weight Loss

by Brigi G | Fitness Inspired Formula

The numbers on your scale do not indicate whether you are fit or overweight. Far more significant than your total body weight is the composition of your body tissue. If a man's fatty tissue is bigger than 14% up to 15% of his body mass, or if a woman's is more than 20% to 22%, he or she is overweight.

A small amount of fat is needed for padding the internal organs and as insulation under the skin. Excess fat leads to such diseases as diabetes, gout, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and gallbladder problems. There are very few, very obese persons. The reason is that the fittest, not the fattest survive.

The problem now is focused on how to resolve the problem. The problem with most people who want to lose weight is that they have the propensity to concentrate more on getting those numbers lower than what they are seeing now. What happens next is that they strive harder to achieve a lower weight, according to the "ever reliable" result of the weighing scale.

It would be more important to think of the human body as a heat-exchange engine that works on the basic principles of energy physics. The caloric balance equals the total calorie intake minus the total calorie expenditure.

Some of the calories people ingest are used for basal metabolism. As people get old, their bodies require fewer calories for this basic upkeep. Some calories are excreted as waste products. Some go into "work metabolism," the energy expenditure required for any physical activity.

Hence, if people take in more calories than are used by these functions, there is a definite caloric excess. By the laws of physics, energy is transformed rather than destroyed. In this case, each excess of 3,500 calories is changed into a pound of fat. If people want to reverse this process, they have to burn up 3,500 calories to lose a single pound.

Winning the War Against Obesity

When you think of fighting to loose weight with exercise, you probably think of hours of hard, sweaty exertion. If this is the case, then, you will not get any farther. This is because people who are so much into losing more by exerting more effort tend to get bored easily.

Why? Because experts contend that when people exert more effort than what they are capable of doing creates a tendency to develop weariness and ennui. Hence, they give up, stop doing their routine exercises, and end up sulking in the corner with a bag of chips that seems to have all the bad calories in this world.

Now, you might ask, "What should be done instead?" The answer: cross training.

After some intensive studies and experimentations, health experts were able to come up with the concept of incorporating cross training in order to overcome or break the monotony or dullness in an exercise program.

Cross training refers to the integration of diverse movements or activities into a person's conventional exercise routine. The main purpose of incorporating cross training into an exercise program is to avoid overdoing excess muscle damages and to put a stop to an imminent boredom.

Three of the most commonly used activities whenever a person decides to engage into cross training are swimming, running, and cycling.

In cross training, distance is one way to extend your activity as your condition improves. For this reason, you need to traverse a measured distance.

If possible, swim the course and measure the distance. If you will be using a running track, such courses usually are a quarter-mile per lap for a complete circuit.

Cross training offers a variety of benefits for fitness and  weight loss. It builds up the strength and endurance of the heart, lungs, and blood vessels. It has also some tranquilizing effect on the nerves, and it burns up calories as much as it makes your "losing weight" more bearable.

Cross training has three basic components:

1. Endurance exercises to condition the heart, lungs, and blood vessels and to induce relaxation. These begin with a careful planned walking and jogging regimen, depending on fitness level.

2. Exercises to strengthen the muscles, particularly those important to good posture. These include some activities that are selected to encourage some people who are already burnt out with a particular routine.

3. Exercises to improve joint mobility and prevent or relieve aches and pains. These consist of a series of static stretching positions that are safe and effective for most of the people who wish to try to lose some fat.

Indeed, cross training is a great way to modify the concept of exercising and losing fat without having to endure monotonous activities. In fact, the idea of exercising is to like what you are doing, hence, if you engage into cross training, you will be aware of it that you have already achieve your desired weight.

Boiled down, cross training is, certainly, one way of having fun.

10 Popular Fitness Terms Defined

Every subculture has its own terminology for describing its way of life. The health and fitness subculture is no different. A few years ago, complaining about the HIIT in your WOD at your local box would have only made sense to extreme fitness enthusiasts. Thanks to the explosive popularity of CrossFit and other high-intensity training programs, we now know that HIIT refers to high-intensity interval training and WOD is an acronym for the unique Workout of the Day offered at CrossFit training facilities (commonly called a ‘box’). 

Whether you’re new to the fitness scene or have been working out in health clubs for years, you’ve probably heard certain terms thrown around, maybe even used a few yourself without really knowing exactly what they mean. Here are 10 commonly used fitness terms along with a brief explanation of the science behind each one.

Burning 

When it comes to exercise, burning is often used to refer to the feeling of when muscles experience an accumulation of metabolic waste, which creates fatigue. Acidosis is a change in blood acidity—specifically, elevated levels of lactic acid and hydrogen ions—that is often the result of moderate- to high-intensity exercise. A burning sensation in a muscle is an indication of acidosis. It’s also a sign that it is time for a recovery period to allow the body to remove metabolic waste from the working muscles and replenish the nutrients required to continue performing muscle contractions. 

Cardio 

Cardio is short for cardiorespiratory or cardiovascular exercise and refers to exercise that elevates the heart rate to pump oxygen and nutrient-carrying blood to the working muscles. Most often used for exercise performed on equipment like treadmills, elliptical runners or stationary bikes, it is important to know that ANY exercise that elevates the heart rate can provide cardiorespiratory benefits. Circuit training with free-weights or performing an AMRAP (as many rounds of a particular circuit as possible in a given amount of time) can be considered cardiorespiratory exercise. 

Core Training  

This has become one of the most popular and overused fitness terms of the past several years. It seems as if almost any fitness class, workout program or equipment will provide “core training” benefits. The “core” most often refers to the muscles that make up the mid-section of the body, including the ever-elusive six-pack. However, it is much more effective to think of the body’s core as the center of gravity and not an actual group of muscles. When we look at how the body functions during upright movement patterns such as walking, lifting an object off of the ground or moving an object from one place to another, we have to consider the fact that any muscle that attaches to the spine, rib cage or pelvis influences movement around the body’s center of gravity. 

High-intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

We have written previous blogs about the benefits of HIIT here and here. This term makes the list because it is often used to refer to exercise performed at maximal intensity. However, it’s important to remember that intensity can be subjective—what may be low intensity for some may be high intensity for others.

For individuals with a history of being sedentary or who have been dealing with chronic medical conditions that limit their ability to exercise, simply walking continuously for a few minutes at a time could be considered “high intensity.” 

Metabolic Conditioning 

Similar to HIIT, metabolic conditioning is often used to refer to high-intensity exercise performed to the point of being out of breath or experiencing muscle soreness. Here is why this overused term ought to be retired from the lexicon: Metabolism is the chemical process by which a biological organism produces energy for muscular contraction. That means that any exercise requiring a muscle contraction (which in itself requires energy) is a form of metabolic conditioning. Standing from your chair after reading this post requires your metabolism to fuel your muscles. Therefore, it is more appropriate to describe the level of effort required to perform the planned activity, such as low-intensity, moderate-intensity, high-intensity or maximal intensity. 

Mind-body 

This term is commonly used to describe a general mode of exercise such as yoga or Pilates, because they are traditionally performed with bodyweight (with the exception of Pilates programs involving equipment such as a reformer or barrel) and require concentration to execute challenging movement sequences. However, any purposeful movement, whether it’s a biceps curl or downward facing dog, requires conscious effort. Therefore, almost any physical activity that involves learning and executing movement patterns, no matter how basic, requires cognitive focus and should technically be classified as mind-body.   

Muscle Confusion 

A popular consumer-oriented fitness program claims to be based on the science of “muscle confusion.” This is simply a marketing term created to describe the physiological effect of periodization, which is a method of organizing exercise programs based on alternating periods of intensity. The concept of periodization was developed by Soviet Union sport scientists who recognized that periods of high-intensity exercise (high stress) should be followed by a period of low-intensity exercise (low stress) to let the body to fully recover from the workouts and allow the time for the physiological adaptations to occur. 

Plyometrics 

Many programs or fitness classes refer to using plyos, which is short for plyometrics. Looking at the etiology of the word, ‘plyo’ (from pleio) is a pre-fix for “more” and metric refers to length; therefore, plyometric means “more length.” This describes the physiological affect of the involved muscles during jump training (the most common application for the lower body) or explosive movements such as medicine ball throws (often used for upper-body plyometric training).  

Plyometric training was developed by Soviet sport scientists who originally referred to it as “shock training” because of the high forces experienced by the involved tissue. That’s why it’s important to perform only a few repetitions at a time to achieve the highest level of force output possible. Any program requiring participants to perform more than five or six rapid movements (i.e., jumps or explosive lifts) in a row can significantly increase the risk of injury by placing too much force on the involved tissue. 

Tabata  

A number of exercise programs and classes are called Tabata, which is an actual person. Twenty years ago, Dr. Izumi Tabata, an exercise scientist from Japan, and his colleagues conducted research on ways to improve aerobic capacity using short intervals of extremely high-intensity exercise. They found that exercising at 170% of aerobic capacity on cycle ergometers for a work interval of 20 seconds followed by a brief recovery interval of only 10 seconds, repeated to exhaustion, was extremely effective at boosting aerobic capacity. Since publishing the study in 1997, Dr. Tabata’s name has been used to refer to a protocol of high-intensity interval training featuring 20-second work intervals followed by 10-second recovery intervals for eight cycles (a total of four minutes).  

Toning 

If you ask most people what their general fitness goals, the answer often is to “tone up and get in shape.” We have come to accept the term “tone” to mean muscular definition, or the appearance of a well-defined muscle. The term is actually short for tonus, which is the technical term used to describe a state of contraction in a normally functioning muscle. Using a muscle repeatedly during a strength training exercise will leave that muscle in a state of semi-contraction, creating the defined appearance we have come to expect as the result of exercise.

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