Strength
Continue your 5-3-1 program or see the board for a supplemental strength workout.
then:
15 Minute AMRAP of:
7 OH Squats (95/65)
15 Double Unders
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
Samuel Johnson
Overeating doesn’t make you fat. The Paleo Diet explained.
Okay, overeating does make you fat, but only if you’re eating the wrong foods. But what are the wrong foods? The wrong foods are the processed, fatty (admittedly yummy) foods that we’re used to eating. The ones that spike our blood sugar causing unhealthy side effects.
Since the Paleo Diet was introduced it has gained momentum as a healthy framework for choosing the foods we eat. The best part about it is, if you eat within this framework, you can eat as much as you want and you will not get fat. It works.
The premise of the Paleo Diet is to eat the way our ancestors from the Paleolithic Period ate because the diet they consumed is what our bodies evolved to consume to efficiently process and digest the nutrients we need. Shortly after this era our ancestors began cultivating grains and eventually eating processed, fake foods, which unfortunately have led to weight gain and disease in our population.
Paleo promotes the consumption of lean meats, vegetables, healthy fats, some fruit, nuts and seeds, and healthful oils. Our ancestors ate this way because that food was what was available to them. Let’s be honest, if one of them had found potato chips or ice cream laying around they would have been all over it… yum! Advocates of Paleo eat this way because it allows our blood chemistry to remain in balance, creating a healthy, lean individual.
Grains, beans, legumes, other foods generally known as bad carbohydrates, and highly processed foods and sugars all spike your blood sugar, encouraging your body to produce more insulin to counteract the influx of sugar in your bloodstream. (Important note: bad carbs, grains, and beans convert to sugar as your body breaks them down.) If this happens every once and a while, if you have these bad carbs occasionally, it’s not going to hurt you. Still, it is important to mention that this process does happen with all carbs including those healthy ones in the Paleo Diet (fruits and veggies); that said, the big difference is that fruits and veggies contain fiber which slows the absorption of sugar into the blood stream and significantly reduces the insulin spike.
Consider how many of bad carb-rich foods and sugars we eat in a day. Go through your typical day and list how many of those foods contain carbs and sugar. At these quantities our blood sugar becomes chronically elevated. This is what physicians call insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome and this is when we gain fat and are at risk for many serious diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
The Paleo Diet works because the foods it recommends maintain even blood sugar levels; it does not cause that spike or subsequently the weight gain or risk for serious disease.
Further, the foods in the Paleo Diet are rich in nutrients that grains, bad carbohydrates, processed, and sugary foods are lacking. Grains contain an inhibitor, phytic acid, which prevents effective absorption of the few nutrients they contain. Beans spike your blood sugar too high to be worth eating them for the nutrients they contain. Processed foods and sugar don’t contain notable levels of nutrients at all. Eating lean meats, vegetables, healthy fats, some fruit, nuts and seeds, and healthful oils will provide you with the protein, fiber, vitamins, and other nutrients you need to lead a healthy life.
Here’s another way to think about it: the Paleo Diet affords us a way to fuel our bodies to allow for the highest performance possible both in output and longevity. You wouldn’t put standard fuel in a Ferrari!
