Yikes...Prepare your own food.

https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2022/04/18/restaurant-update-flies-in-the-cheese-ants-in-the-sugar-and-moldy-ribs/?fbclid=IwAR1vTTUQ2MbgVJRJiGD6HJVLDV71Ahdgj4N4MckzExCdFYVu3Qxkc0iChQM

What you eat plays an enormous part in your health. You all know that, or know that now. It plays a role in your day to day and long term health. As a crossfitter it should be your number 1 priority. It is the foundation that you are building your wellness and fitness on. If your diet is poor, then you will struggle to see positive changes with both your health and your fitness. Preparing your own food will help you in a lot of ways. You’ll learn how to budget your money towards food. You’ll avoid all the crap that restaurants give you. You will appreciate the improvements you make with your health and fitness.

When you go grocery shopping next time, set a budget for yourself. If you’re shopping for others and you are the provider, they’ll understand because they aren’t paying for it right? Who’s calling the shots? You or your kids? As short of an attention span kids have anyway I’m sure 2 aisles later they’ll have forgotten about the bag of cheetos they saw earlier at the store. Leave the crap at the store and bring home the goods! Lean meats, fruits, vegetables. Then, when you are almost out of food and have to go shopping again, you can re evaluate if what you bought was too much, too little, or just right to sustain your health and fitness needs. TIP. put healthy snack foods in easy to reach locations. If you open your pantry door and right in front of you are the pringles, lays, Cheetos, ho-hos chips ahoy cookies and in the back out of sight is the beef jerky and almonds, which is going to be the simpler choice? Yeah no shit. Set yourself up for success. If crap is in your house in sight and in easy to reach spots, you will eat it 99.9% of the time. If it’s not in your house and not apart of your budget you are much less likely to have it regularly in your diet.

My wife and I have flipped the norm over the last 7 years. We went from thinking our cooking wasn’t as good as a restaurants to actually preferring our food over most places. And a large part of that is because we both worked in restaurants and know how food is often handled. Most of the time it is satisfactory and passes inspection but let me be the first to tell you if no-one else hasn’t, after 4 hours of grinding in a restaurant the standards come down a little and the care for your food isn’t as important as it could have been at lets say opening hour. When your food comes off the grill, oven, or stove fresh in your own home and hits your table after your preparation and you know exactly what went into it, you’ll feel it sit a little better in your stomach.

When you are consistently eating more nutritious foods, your body will adapt better to physical tasks. If the machine runs better because of the fuel then the power output will also improve. Now before you think of that one friend who is 21 and is busy as fuck and exercising all the time and eats whatever they want, chill and remember were not talking about that metabolic freight train who yeah can get away with a lot of shit and still look ripped. Most of the time, everyone else needs to clean up their nutrition and avoid those habits because the bad habits have caught up or are catching up to us and catching up fast.

The food you eat creates a message and that message tells your body how to react. 250 calories of cookies will make your body react differently then 250 calories of carrots and broccoli. The reaction has more to do with your hormones. Primarily the hormone called insulin. The insulin in your body is meant to go up a little bit when you eat because that is what helps you store food. Think of this as your feast. Feasting is important. Especially for when our ancestors knew they would have to soon after fast. Now after a feast you want your insulin to come down. But if you’ve spiked your insulin really high by eating garbage IE added sugar even worse added sugar with a lot of fat-(think fries and a shake) it will be harder to bring down. Now think about the epidemic we have with people who are eating garbage more often then not and struggling to get their insulin down. They run into insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Bad bad ordeal. So, let your body fast for a while. It is how we use the energy we have stored. But we can’t fast and use or body fat for energy if were always FEASTING. Now depending on your goals you may have to ensure that you are feasting a lot… for example a performance athlete that needs calories for fuel and recovery purposes. This may come off as confusing and that is okay. If you want more help with your individual nutrition plan, let’s set something up. -Aus