CrossFit Auckland | Forging Elite Fitness, Established 2008

That is the question:

As we’ve just had over 50 members complete a 28 day CrossFit and Paleo Challenge (Congratulations!), I’m posting about Milk (or dairy derived products). Some of you will right now be considering whether you want to, or even should, reintroduce dairy to your diet.

Essentially a 30-day Paleo challenge is a detox period allowing your body to eliminate the effects of foods less healthy for our body, and reset it’s set point based on your new nutrition and healthful habits such as improved hydration and sleep, post workout meals/recovery and so on. Immediately after a period of strict adherence to new ways, it’s socially expected that you’ll go right ahead and re-introduce and even binge on these foods and habits that you eliminated from your life. Friends will even sell you this idea as your post challenge “reward”.

Many of us buy into this despite the tangible evidence that your new lifestyle and nutrition has done you a wealth of good; increased your energy, improved your sleep, improved your physical performance, made your eyes brighter, eliminated bloating and water retention. reduced or eliminated inflammation, improved skin conditions and/or asthma, increased muscle growth, allowed you to shed unwanted fat… and all the other good stuff you’re enjoying.

I’d like you to consider why you took on the challenge in the first instance, or perhaps even more importantly what you personally achieved and how you benefited from these changes in your lifestyle. Consider:

• Are you better off now than you were before?
• How has it changed your life?
• What does it mean to your future if you continue with the new habits you’ve worked so hard to embed over the past four weeks?

Now that you’ve reflected on that, are there foods that you believe you just cannot live without; foods that have tested your resolve throughout the 28-day challenge?

If you feel you must re-introduce any foods to your diet, we recommend that you ‘test’ each food exclusively over a period of two weeks. Reintroduce the food and pay attention to how your body feels and responds for a week. Notice how your gut feels, your energy levels, your exercise performance and whether your sleep is affected. Did any symptoms return? In week two, eliminate the food once again, and notice how your body responds. During this period – do your research!  Do you understand why this food is not healthful for your body?

A common question for people during a paleo challenge is, “should I reintroduce dairy?”

World renowned Paleo expert Professor Loren Cordain says “No, you should not”. Professor Cordain is adamant that after human infants are weened from their mothers milk, drinking of cow’s milk or other species’ milk by children and adults is an unhealthy practice that increases the risk of many chronic diseases and adds no micronutrients to the diet that cannot be obtained from fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, seafoods and nuts. Humans have no nutritional requirement for cow’s milk.

Want to know why?

Click through to read a Q&A with Loren Cordain on MILK.

I was researching on my fav sites for some meaty reading about the importance of taking active recovery and rest days.

I wanted to post on this subject because it’s pretty common for folk who’ve caught the active lifestyle bug, particularly CrossFitters full of passion and enthusiasm, to naturally want to train everyday. As you love working out so much, you often fail to realise your nervous system is fried, your muscle glycogen is depleted, and the muscle soreness is still lingering from the workout you did 4 days ago. Sometimes these factors show up in obvious ways, for example you can’t squat a fraction of your regular weight or other times the body sends more subtle messages like not being able to smoothly co-ordinate your Snatch, or OHS … things just feel a little off.

So you know what I’m talking about here?

I was looking for words of wisdom to share with you, and came across these improving recovery tips; same subject but different topic. Thanks Charles Poliquin and your editorial staff for churning out sooo many quality articles for coaches and athletes!

By GARY TAUBES Published: April 13, 2011

On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

The number of viewers Lustig has attracted suggests that people are paying attention to his argument. When I set out to interview public health authorities and researchers for this article, they would often initiate the interview with some variation of the comment “surely you’ve spoken to Robert Lustig,” not because Lustig has done any of the key research on sugar himself, which he hasn’t, but because he’s willing to insist publicly and unambiguously, when most researchers are not, that sugar is a toxic substance that people abuse. In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us.

This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says it is?

Grab a drink, steal 15 minutes … and read on. The New York Times: Is Sugar Toxic?