This gorgeous piece of art was Dallas’ birthday gift to me. It is the only thing hanging on a huge brick wall in my office, and I get to look at it all day, every day. I’m pretty good at following directions, and this little piece of communication from him to me is as clear and concise as it gets.
My “Zone Gone Bad” article was published in the CrossFit Journal today. In the article, I cop to some pretty serious confessions about me and food. To be honest, I can’t believe that no one is talking about this – the link between women (and men) with a history of disordered eating habits, and how the rigidity and rules of the Zone diet can bring those habits right back out. I’ve seen it personally, and I’ve talked at least a handful of other women about this same issue.
In the article, I describe how I had a serious flashback to some of my messed up eating patterns when I first started to Zone more than a year ago. Luckily, I didn’t travel too far down that path before I reigned it in and started eating for performance, as I should have been all along. Now food and I are tight. I still have my off days – when I get stressed or busy, meals are the first thing to fall to the wayside. But that doesn’t happen often, and when it does, I make up for it by taking an extra rest day or two, and eating like an NFL linebacker for the rest of the week.
I’ve had a lot of requests from people to see exactly what I eat. I don’t weigh, measure or track any more, but once in a while, I FitDay my food intake to make sure I’m still on the right path. I did that one day this week – and things are looking good. This is exactly what I eat in a typical day. (Like, very typical, considering I pretty much eat the same foods all the time.) A few key points to my diet…
- I eat a lot. More than any other girl I know. More than a lot of dudes I know. And Justin Lascek STILL sends me an email every day telling me I need to eat more.
- I eat a lot of fat. A LOT.
- I eat a lot of protein. Probably more than I need, but I have to get my calories in somewhere and I’m still trying to put on muscle.
- I don’t eat a lot of carbs. And my energy is consistent, and my performance in the gym has never been better. This week, I hit a dead hang pull-up PR, took 3:00 off my Grace time and put 10# on my hang power clean. All on under 150g of carbs a day.
- I am still not eating enough, because there still ARE days when I slack on my intake.
Now my situation is probably different than a lot of people. I’m TRYING to put weight on, and if I slack in my food intake for a single week, I lean out to the point where my performance suffers. That’s probably not typical. So maybe don’t think so much about how much I eat, but take from my diet that you probably can afford to eat more. And that fat is good. And that you judge how well your diet is going by how you are performing in the gym. Period.
If I’m a little obnoxious standing on this particular soapbox, it’s only because I came from a pretty unhealthy view of food, health and body image. I don’t want to see other women – and men – make the same mistakes I did – eating too little, training too hard, and experiencing the same frustration, discouragement and burnout that I did. I hope posting some of my food stuff helps, and please let me know what you thought of the article. Finally, I’m always available to answer diet questions – just email me, or post to comments.
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I need to get one of those for Rebecca for when she’s working – she skips lunch when she gets busy. She probably wouldn’t look at it, though. These days, I mostly just pester her via IM.
Great article Melissa. Your experience is EXACTLY why I have been extremely hesitant to start using Fit day. I have some real OCD tendencies and I think I would just get lost in there. Fortunately, the “learning curve” to start using it – programming it with all the foods you eat that aren’t already there – is so steep that I tried it for a couple days and got frustrated that I couldn’t keep accurate data without spending a huge amount of time I didn’t have.
I do much better about eating these days than I used to – thanks in large part to my fabulous husband who takes such great care of me – and I’ve seen fantastic performance gains because of it.
I suspect that many people will find your article helpful. Thank you for writing it.
Wow. Great article, Melissa. There are lots of articles that sound much like another one that came before in the Journal. Yours stands out as unique and, in hindsight, was an obvious need. I expect you’ll get lots of personal thanks for this one and deservedly so. It’s a serious contribution to the CF community.
Since this is CrossFit and we have to compete in everything…I have to say that I have you beat in calories consumed per day AND grams of fat. But, it’s a close one (as far as calories go…i still whoop your butt in the fat department). Isn’t it awesome to eat more than most boys you know!
I told one of my female clients (who weighed about 190) to double her caloric intake for a week. I found out she was only eating about 1500 calories a day. WTF? Doubling her caloric intake, along with going gluten free, allowed her to DROP 15 pounds in 1 month (holy mackarel) and she just got her first pullup!!!! She continues to eat a ton of food, and now she has a waist!
Can’t wait to read the article – always looking for good information on nutrition. Oh, btw, I’m gonna link to your article on my http://www.bridgercrossfit.com tomorrow, if that’s okay :)
Dammit, Jenna…
Now I KNOW I’m not eating enough, because you are a bad-ass, affiliate owning, muscle-up having CrossFit chick. And I want all of that too.
Funny you mention your female client… every time I’ve hit a plateau with respect to fat loss or performance or anything else fitness related, eating MORE has ALWAYS broken me out of it. I take the same approach with my clients and friends too. I’m going to start adding, “P.S. You need to eat more” to the end of all my emails.
Thanks for sharing, and linking!
Melissa
Congratulations on the article my dear Diesel !
Couldn’t agree more, EAT.
Richard “CF 603, what else ?” Vanmeerbeek
Thanks for following my blog – just dropping by to say hi!
As someone who has always struggled with food issues, I appreciate this post.
Also, I have always been fascinated by crossfit.
Your article was the shit. I have experience much of the same food drama and it’s nice (not nice that other women go through it, but nice to create support systems) to hear that other CrossFitting women deal with the same body image/emotional issues. I admit though, I am not at the point yet where you are, but you are inspiring me to stop counting and switch my focus to what really matters! Life and training. Muscle Up, here I come. Thanks sister..
~Laney
Great post… I have to say, Im on about 20g's of carbs a day and my energy is great as well. My strength has been down a bit, but mainly because I am dropping body fat and also have this injury thing going on in my hip/groin area, and its really driving me to the point of insanity.
I get what you are saying about having some f'ed up eating patterns. Im an all or nothing type person myself. Im a classic binge eater, but when I eat well, I take it to extremes as well, one of the reasons why I've never really attempted the zone for more than a few days. Im doing well right now with eating as much protein and fat as I want with limiting my carbs to <20 grams. Now if I can just get myself better and injury free Ill be accomplishing something.
Thanks Melissa, I’d been hoping for a nutrition post for a while!
P.S. I just realised that on an average day I eat less than you do. Hmmmm….
melissa – i’ve been mulling over what to write because i have so much to say with regard to your article and this post.
one of the reasons i fell in love with crossfit was because of the focus on performance and not the globo gym skinny-ness! however, that being said, i too come from a background of some disordered eating and it’s a monster in the closet that can still rear it’s ugly head.
i was GLUED to your article on friday night – made my husband read it immediately upon walking in the door! thank you for writing it and for the sigh of relief that came knowing this issue was being brought into the light.
crossfit is a community filled with integrity and honest people. thank you for putting yourself out there in the way you are – you have a very important voice and are making a great impact on the women in CF.
hope to meet you one day!
karianne
http://www.mpowercrossfit.com
Nice job, Byers. I remember your days of “why can’t I get stronger”/”because you don’t eat enough!”
You’ve come a long way, and it looks like you’ve helped some folks (I assume since I don’t get CFJ).
The Zone, as prescribed, using the .7 multiplier, is a step away from a full blown eating disorder. Couple this with the addictive personalities of some CFers, especially the massive metcon crowd, and you have potential for problems.
The key to gaining or losing is often a little more olive oil.
As Jay would say, chow on.
Good post and one I will look back at again later. Motivated me to do a day on FitDay. Should be interesting to see what numbers filter out as I struggle to make any body comp changes.
AWESOME post melissa.
I am so sick of hearing about women who are at a perfectly healthy weight, “Doing 10 blocks” and such.
And people saying – hey, sure you feel like you are going to pass out NOW, but wait two weeks and your body will adjust to starvation mode! etc.
Thank you for being the voice of reason.
Laura K
The article was great. I think people get too caught up in trying to be perfect and that just is stressful and unnecessary.
One thing I think is extremely important for those of us that have kids, is to take caution not to display obsessive and destructive food habits in front of them, especially girls. It is important to maintain a healthy relationship with food and not be too over critical in an unhealthy manner in front of them about what they are putting in their mouths. What I mean is not to say “all those carbs are going to make you (or me) fat”… etc. because these early perceptions and images can lead to eating disorders in our kids later in life. My kids (8y/o boy, 5 y/o girl) ask me questions about things – is this bad for me, is this going to give me diabetes, and things of that nature. In general, I try and teach them everything is moderation is fine. They like to joke about “what Dr. Barry Sears would say about that”, or “Rob Wolf – he just knows everything.” Its fun. They are learning good habits and that is important at such a young age.
Angie M
Sounds like the words that should me coming out of my mouth …
great post melissa. and it inspired me to do a day on fit day yesterday. i crossfit 4-5 times a week and i have recently started to alter my diet to be more primal. i ate very well yesterday, but perhaps a little too well because if you think you eat a lot then i am a serious chow hound cos i ended up with almost 3,000 calories [it includes my scotch rinse martini with several big jumbo olives!]. it was a typical day for me and i am also 5’10”, although i weigh about 142 lbs right now. maybe the 3,000 cals a day is why i weigh that much :)
not sure if i am happy i did the experiment or not but one thing i don’t want to do is keep living life through a scale [neither the one in the kitchen nor the bathroom]. i think i have been doing that for far too many years now.
love your blog btw, i feel a special kinship as i too wear the tall socks.
I might describe you and you (dallas) bean-pole ilk as still ‘skinny’ but seeing as how I only weigh about 20 more pounds, I am on pretty thin ice myself.
:)
Let’s talk. Now that you have my telephone number I think I can be of more use in your misunderstanding of Box Jumps.
Also, I am an arrogant prick.
:)