Nick Hanson
07-21-2008, 04:23 PM
Ok, sorry Greg, this doesn't really belong in this thread, but I didn't know where else to put it because the other two nutrition areas are too specific. Plus this applies to fitness and GPP anyway. Here is the review I just posted on the CF boards:
So this weekend I attended the day long Nutrition cert at San Francisco Crossfit. Before I get into my review of the cert I thought I would talk about my nutrition background a bit as it gives some perspective.
I am currently 6 feet tall 173 lbs. I have been crossfitting about 8 months and in that time have lost about 30 lbs. For the first two months of crossfit I did not change my diet, but did start to eat more salads. In early January I went to the zone, and about a month later I was zone paleo. In the April time frame I had leaned out to where I wanted to be (and was also tired of counting nuts, so I became a little more lax with the zone. I now eat about 17 blocks of protein, 10 blocks of carbs and a ton of fat on a daily basis. I cook 4 out of my five meals of the day and get the majority of my meat from grassfed sources. Generally I am on track with the diet about 80% of the time.
The Review:
So I am not going to get into everything but I will just highlight what I liked, and where I thought they could improve a bit.
Likes -
-Robb is extremely intelligent and really cares about this subject. You could tell that this is what he loves. He is actually more impressive in person in terms of his knowledge on the subject.
-Paleo - Robb considers this the base of everything. If you are going to do one thing, go Paleo. He went into all of the reasons why, as well as some of the technical things surrounding Paleo. He also gave examples of various Paleo food sources.
- Neolithic - Robb explained the Neo foods and why they are so bad for you. Biggest thing I got from this was that bread has to be eliminated. It is the number one cause for most inflammatory diseases. Interestingly enough he actually likes wheat bread the least. If I remember correctly, this is because the wheat germ is especially destructive on the GI and just causes more irritation. Point taken was if you are going to eat bread, eat white bread.
He also talked a bit about legumes and why they are so bad for you as well. Also, Quinoa, even though its technically a fruit, has the same side effects of bread, so you also shouldn't eat that.
- Paleo cultures - Robb spoke a bit about various cultures. Interesting notes, Indians on the plains who ate primarily Buffalo, blueberries and tubers were on par in health with Olympic athletes and most males had a 2.5-3x BW deadlift. Also, on average native culture's diets are 25-30% Protein, 20-25% carb and 30-40% fat.
- Testimonials - Robb had pictures and bloodwork of a couple of his folks. I didn't really look into all the data too much (because I am not a trainer) but the basic idea was that if people just went Paleo, most markers of ill health in bloodwork improve dramatically and over a very short period of time.
- Demos - He and Nicki demoed a couple of meals. Pretty simple stuff that was easy to cook. You can find them on his website.
- The zone - He went into a ton of depth about the zone which I am not going to do here. He gave a bunch of information about how to make the zone work best for you. This included how to sub out fat for carbs and also how to weight gain on the zone (you need to increase your blocks a ton).
This was by far the most interesting part for me, because I realized that the diet I have moved to recently is a zone meal with fat subbed for carbs. Definitely cool for me.
- He also talked a bit about dairy and looked at some folks food logs. Then he took questions for about an hour.
Things I didn't like -
- The only thing I didn't like was how we would sometime get off topic. Robb knows so much, and people will inevitably ask questions, however most of the questions were going to be answered at some point or another. This is even more difficult because things are so interrelated. I am not sure how to fix it but thats the one thing that was sorta annoying. However, I am biased because I have also read a ton of this material on my own.
Closing Thoughts -
Overall this is a great cert. However I would think this would be pretty overwhelming if you don't have a good idea about your nutrition already. I know some folks from SFCF were going into this without much knowledge on that, and I think that they were pretty overwhelmed. I have a pretty in depth knowledge of this stuff over the last six months, so for me it was a great refresher and was also excellent at giving me more of the technical side of things.
I would definitely say this is worth it for any trainer that wants to improve their client's nutrition, or any crossfitter who wants to improve their own.
So this weekend I attended the day long Nutrition cert at San Francisco Crossfit. Before I get into my review of the cert I thought I would talk about my nutrition background a bit as it gives some perspective.
I am currently 6 feet tall 173 lbs. I have been crossfitting about 8 months and in that time have lost about 30 lbs. For the first two months of crossfit I did not change my diet, but did start to eat more salads. In early January I went to the zone, and about a month later I was zone paleo. In the April time frame I had leaned out to where I wanted to be (and was also tired of counting nuts, so I became a little more lax with the zone. I now eat about 17 blocks of protein, 10 blocks of carbs and a ton of fat on a daily basis. I cook 4 out of my five meals of the day and get the majority of my meat from grassfed sources. Generally I am on track with the diet about 80% of the time.
The Review:
So I am not going to get into everything but I will just highlight what I liked, and where I thought they could improve a bit.
Likes -
-Robb is extremely intelligent and really cares about this subject. You could tell that this is what he loves. He is actually more impressive in person in terms of his knowledge on the subject.
-Paleo - Robb considers this the base of everything. If you are going to do one thing, go Paleo. He went into all of the reasons why, as well as some of the technical things surrounding Paleo. He also gave examples of various Paleo food sources.
- Neolithic - Robb explained the Neo foods and why they are so bad for you. Biggest thing I got from this was that bread has to be eliminated. It is the number one cause for most inflammatory diseases. Interestingly enough he actually likes wheat bread the least. If I remember correctly, this is because the wheat germ is especially destructive on the GI and just causes more irritation. Point taken was if you are going to eat bread, eat white bread.
He also talked a bit about legumes and why they are so bad for you as well. Also, Quinoa, even though its technically a fruit, has the same side effects of bread, so you also shouldn't eat that.
- Paleo cultures - Robb spoke a bit about various cultures. Interesting notes, Indians on the plains who ate primarily Buffalo, blueberries and tubers were on par in health with Olympic athletes and most males had a 2.5-3x BW deadlift. Also, on average native culture's diets are 25-30% Protein, 20-25% carb and 30-40% fat.
- Testimonials - Robb had pictures and bloodwork of a couple of his folks. I didn't really look into all the data too much (because I am not a trainer) but the basic idea was that if people just went Paleo, most markers of ill health in bloodwork improve dramatically and over a very short period of time.
- Demos - He and Nicki demoed a couple of meals. Pretty simple stuff that was easy to cook. You can find them on his website.
- The zone - He went into a ton of depth about the zone which I am not going to do here. He gave a bunch of information about how to make the zone work best for you. This included how to sub out fat for carbs and also how to weight gain on the zone (you need to increase your blocks a ton).
This was by far the most interesting part for me, because I realized that the diet I have moved to recently is a zone meal with fat subbed for carbs. Definitely cool for me.
- He also talked a bit about dairy and looked at some folks food logs. Then he took questions for about an hour.
Things I didn't like -
- The only thing I didn't like was how we would sometime get off topic. Robb knows so much, and people will inevitably ask questions, however most of the questions were going to be answered at some point or another. This is even more difficult because things are so interrelated. I am not sure how to fix it but thats the one thing that was sorta annoying. However, I am biased because I have also read a ton of this material on my own.
Closing Thoughts -
Overall this is a great cert. However I would think this would be pretty overwhelming if you don't have a good idea about your nutrition already. I know some folks from SFCF were going into this without much knowledge on that, and I think that they were pretty overwhelmed. I have a pretty in depth knowledge of this stuff over the last six months, so for me it was a great refresher and was also excellent at giving me more of the technical side of things.
I would definitely say this is worth it for any trainer that wants to improve their client's nutrition, or any crossfitter who wants to improve their own.