Whole30 Challenge at CrossFit Apogee
To help our members recover from the holiday season, prepare for the CrossFit Open, and set the state for a year of goal crushing and PR-setting, we are excited to announce that we will be doing a Whole30 Nutrition Challenge!
What is the Whole30?
Certain food groups (like sugar, grains, dairy, and legumes) could be having a negative impact on your health and fitness without you even realizing it. Are your energy levels inconsistent or non-existent? Are you having difficulty losing weight no matter how hard you try? Do you have aches and pains that can’t be explained by overuse or injury? Do you have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep or waking up in the morning without hitting the snooze button? Do you have some sort of condition (like skin issues, digestive ailments or seasonal allergies) that medication hasn’t helped? These symptoms may be directly related to the foods you eat – even the “healthy” stuff. So how do you know if (and how) these foods are affecting you?
Strip them from your diet completely. Cut out all the psychologically unhealthy, hormone-unbalancing, gut-disrupting, inflammatory food groups for a full 30 days. Let your body heal and recover from whatever effects those foods may be causing. Push the “reset” button with your metabolism, systemic inflammation, and the downstream effects of the food choices you’ve been making. Learn once and for all how the foods you’ve been eating are actually affecting your day-to-day life, and your long-term health.
The most important reason to participate?
The next 30 days will change your life. It will change the way you think about food, it will change your tastes, it will change your habits, and your cravings. It could, quite possibly, change your emotional relationship with food and your body. It has the potential to change the way you eat for the rest of your life.
The Whole30 Program Rules
The bottom line: Eat. Real. Food.
Meat
Seafood
Eggs
Vegetables
Fruit
Good fats from oils, nuts, and seeds.
Eat foods with very few ingredients, all pronounceable ingredients, or better yet, no ingredients listed at all because they’re totally natural and unprocessed.
AVOID
Sugar, real or artificial: Maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, coconut sugar, Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet, xylitol, stevia, etc. Read your labels, because companies sneak sugar into products in ways you might not recognize.
Alcohol and Tobacco
Grains. This includes (but is not limited to) wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, bulgur, sorghum, amaranth, buckwheat, sprouted grains, and all of those gluten-free pseudo-grains like quinoa. This also includes all the ways we add wheat, corn, and rice into our foods in the form of bran, germ, starch, and so on. Again, read your labels.
Legumes. This includes beans of all kinds (black, red, pinto, navy, white, kidney, lima, fava, etc.), peas, chickpeas, lentils, and peanuts. No peanut butter, either (peanuts are actually a legume… not a nut). This also includes all forms of soy – soy sauce, miso, tofu, tempeh, edamame, and all the ways we sneak soy into foods (like lecithin).
Dairy. This includes cow, goat or sheep’s milk products such as cream, cheese (hard or soft), kefir, yogurt (even Greek), and sour cream… with the exception of clarified butter or ghee.
Carrageenan, MSG or sulfites. If these ingredients appear in any form on the label of your processed food or beverage, it’s out for the Whole30.
Do not try to re-create baked goods, junk foods, or treats* with “approved” ingredients. Continuing to eat your old, unhealthy foods made with Whole30 ingredients is totally missing the point, and will tank your results faster than you can say “Paleo Pop-Tarts.” Remember, these are the same foods that got you into health trouble in the first place—and a pancake is still a pancake, regardless of the ingredients.
Also, Ditch the Scale.
You are not allowed to step on the scale or take any body measurements for the duration of this challenge. This is about so much more than just weight loss, and to focus on your body composition means you’ll miss out on the most dramatic and lifelong benefits this plan has to offer. So, no weighing yourself or taking comparative measurements during your Whole30. (You will, however, weigh yourself and take photos before and after so you can see one of the more tangible results of your efforts when this challenge is over.)
This Sounds Scary and Impossible!!!!
I can hear you now… so what the heck CAN I eat?! Let me assure you that Whole30-compliant food can be anything but boring! There are thousands of mouth-watering recipes available and I will be sharing many of them with you throughout the program and guiding you on how to eat and actually enjoy your food while making drastic changes to your body. In fact, I’d make a bet that the ranch dressing that I will be sharing will be one of the best ranch dressings you’ve ever tasted in your life!
Also, I recognize that Whole30 is rather stringent… but it’s not meant to last forever. Look at these 30 days as an elimination period during which you will eliminate the foods that the scientific literature and clinical experience have deemed the most commonly problematic in one of four areas- your cravings, metabolism, digestion, and immune system. This elimination period will leave you with a “new normal”- a healthy baseline where, if you take this challenge seriously and stick with it, you will look, feel and live better than you ever imagined you could. At the end of the 30 days, you then carefully and systematically reintroduce those foods you’ve been missing and pay attention to any changes in your health, habits or mindset. This period will help you identify specific foods that are having a negative impact on you and which foods make you feel and look less than your best. Then, you will be able to create the perfect diet for YOU, eliminating the foods that aren’t serving you and learning how to incorporate the problematic-but0still-worth-it foods into your diet in a way that feels balanced and sustainable but still keeps you looking and feeling as awesome as you know you can look and feel.
Are you ready to make this commitment to yourself and your health?
Click HERE:
to sign up. If you have any questions, feel free to text Coach April at 813-503-4091.
Important Dates:
Monday 1/2- Sunday 1/ 8: Prep Week. You’ll receive all of your materials, guidance on getting your environment ready to ensure success, grocery shopping guides, and get all of your questions answered. There will also be a Zoom seminar going over everything that week (date TBD)
Monday 1/9: Day 1 of your Whole30!
Tuesday 2/7: Day 30!
Thursday 2/16: The CrossFit Open begins and you’ll be in amazing shape to get those PR’s!!