February Real Food Challenge

Gardens Walk in the Park Real Food Challenge

It is time to decide that we all take this whole ‘life’ thing a little more seriously so that you do not have to take it so seriously later down the road.

Why bother? I’ll interrupt the many good reasons you were about to tell me and suggest the ‘elevator pitch’ length answer is almost certainly “To be better at life” or “Eat real food”. One way or another, that probably falls nicely into the basket of reasons why we all work so hard.

Over the course of four weeks, from Friday February 1^st to Thursday February 28^th, we are going to join in a challenge together. The challenge is to remove the undesirable and less desirable elements from your daily diet and to get a solid understanding of food quality and portion awareness. In addition, by doing this, you will be improving your performance at Gardens CrossFit. Inadvertently, or advertently, you will be significantly decreasing your chance of cancers, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and the like. We want to see how your performance, your health, your general sense of well-being and your body composition reacts to eating what nature intended for you to eat, at the right amounts and in the right portions. To some extent we will be following the tenets of our ancestral diet or as some call a “Paleo-type diet”. However, we’re not going to give this a name, because ‘diets’ have an end point: you’re either on a diet, or off a diet and that is NOT what we are in for here. We like to think of this more in terms of a lifestyle and not a "diet". Simply find what supports your health, your work, and your recovery and does not support illness or the accumulation of body fat.

We want to learn to eat, not diet.

Eat in a way that on every level promotes health and not disease. Eat in a way that promotes better recovery, better sleep, a profoundly stronger immune system and fulfills the needs of the elite and performance athlete in all of us: a lifestyle of eating great flavors and whole, nutrient dense foods that promote a stronger, faster athlete with increased endurance, improved body composition. Simply, a better you.

Here’s how you get started

…and what you need to do to join in and hopefully walk away with the bragging rights:

1. You need to pay to play. Yep, no pay, no prize. The cost will be fifty dollars. Included in this price will be a bottle of the popular Anabolic Gardens Super Mag. Payment will be accepted up until January 30th at which time we will have a meeting where you will be given a booklet that details everything you will ever need to know about life. You will also become a member of a private Facebook group which will include everyone participating and going through this journey with you. There will be daily postings, recipe ideas, encouraging thoughts, etc. and DAILY correspondence with the doctor.

**Mandatory meeting for all participants on Wednesday January 30^th, 7:30 PM at Gardens CrossFit**

2. If you do not have a Facebook account you need to create one.  If we are not already friends, please send me a Facebook friend request by searching “Wayne Broth” and clicking, with your mouse, “Add Friend”. Within 24 hours I will accept your friend request and grant you access to our private Facebook group. Access to the FB group will be granted before the start on February 1st.

3. You need to take three photos of yourself; we call these the “veritable before photos”. These will be from the front, from your right side, and from the back. Men will be wearing shorts, no shirt. When I mean shorts, I do not mean knickers. Think, “Could I do a kettlebell swing without the bell getting stuck in my shorts?” You get the point. Ladies we be sportin' a sports bra and shorts. Both genders need to think ‘high speed, no drag’ when it comes to the clothing choices and be sure to put those clothes away in a safe place; you will need them for the ‘after shots’. Yes, they must be EXACTLY the same clothes, same lighting, in the same room. Fairness is the key here; you know what’s what.

4. Measurements and weight: Kind of the “gold standard” for anything having to do with nutrition. Right? No measurements, no play. No play, no chances of winning massages or Anabolic Gardens vitamins. On February 1^st, plus or minus one day, one of us will be taking a few measurements of you.
Just kidding. We aren't measuring. But we will take beginning weights and please do not, I repeat, do not step on a scale for four weeks i.e. until we revisit it at the end of the month.

5. We will do a benchmark workout on Feb 1^st and will revisit it again on Feb 28^th. Should you modify any of the movements then the same modifications need to be made when we revisit that workout on the 28^th.  We want consistency. We want fairness. You know what we mean.

6. Rule 6 is big. It’s huge. It’s also one of our favorites. You will be keeping a log of everything you eat and drink. Everything? Everything. Keeping a food log, or daily food diary, can help you evaluate what foods are helping you to achieve peak performance. It can also help you evaluate what foods are contributing to certain symptoms you may be experiencing whether that is headaches, joint pain, lethargy, malaise, etc. The information you record will allow you, and us, to see patterns and identify what works and what doesn't and what is contributing to any symptoms you might be experiencing. You are working with a team of CrossFit trainers and nutritional practitioners that are highly educated in their respective fields.  Sharing this information will allow us to help you improve your workouts and your health.

You can record this in a notebook, on a piece(s) of paper or, what we really recommend is setting up an free account on fitday.com and keeping track of it there.

A saved copy of your log and your weekly nutrition info must be mailed to wayne@gardenscrossfit.com every week before the end of Monday. If you are hand-writing your food log, which is totally acceptable, bring it to the gym with you and hand it to one of us. This is non-negotiable and no mulligans, you have been warned. Failure to comply will earn you a thank you note, a high-five and a peace-out hand gesture, for donating your competition fee to the greater good. If you email it to any other address it won’t count. If you don’t keep track of your food then you probably have a really good chance of not winning.

7. Essay at the end. We want to know what you learned. What changes did you experience that you had no idea could change through diet? Did your running improve? Were you not as winded trying to string 75 double unders consecutively? Did your shoulder pain go away? Can you breathe better? Did the acne on your face clear up? Did your sex life improve? How did your relationship or thoughts about food change? No essay, no chance of winning.

8. The winner will be selected based on significant IMPROVEMENTS in performance and appearance (changes in body composition, before/after photos), HARD WORK, and of course COMMITMENT to eating “clean” for the duration of the challenge.

The prizes will be: