Holiday Gluttony Season is Over!!

Well, it's that time of year, when I no longer have any valid excuse for eating carbs and fat till I think I'll puke and drinking beer/wine/liquor till I do, every day. Erin and I have committed to at least one month 'In the Zone,' after which we'll assess our progress and determine if it's worth all the trouble to proceed. We're still working out our block goals exactly, but the good news is, we haven't been too far off on the kinds of food we're eating for breakfast and lunch, just need to adjust the ratios a bit. As for dinner, we have some changes to make. After about 7:00pm, we tend to go into a spiral of carbohydrate consumption.

I'm currently rationed out for 16 blocks daily and Erin's rationed for 8. I don't know if this is a sufficient amount of nutrient, though, so I'm thinking about upping myself to 19 or 20 and erin to 10. We'll see how we feel.

FYI, the block breakdown works like this:

3 grams fat - 1 fat block

6 grams protien - 1 protien block

9 grams carbohydrate - 1 carbohydrate block

This works out to 40% of your calories coming from carbohydrate (preferrably complex) and 30% each of fat and protien. The block system makes it much easier to keep track of the macronutrient breakdown and stay in the 40-30-30 zone.

Anyhow, if you're interested in reading up on The Zone diet, especially with regards to crossfit, here's a few links (stolen from Crossfit Flagstaff:)

• The Zone Diet - An Overview of the Weight Loss Program
  Read about the Zone diet and how it works.
  
• The Zone Diet for CrossFit
  Document compiled from the CrossFit Journal issue 21 and Barry Sears' Zone books. Courtesy Front Range CrossFit.
  
• CrossFit Journal Issue #15
  Food, The Deadly Quartet, Responsible Diet Books, Cholesterol Myths.
  
• CrossFit Journal Issue #21
  Describes the Zone, breaks foods down in measurements, provides meal plans.
  
• Zone Books
  Order Enter the Zone, Zone Meals in Seconds, and other Zone books from Amazon.com.
  

Note: The Zone is very much a weighing and measuring diet. It's a lot more involved than "just trying to eat better," but I'm told that after a while, you get to be able to judge volumes/weights by sight. If you're going to try The Zone, go get a kitchen scale and some easy to wash measuring cups/spoons, and get used to going to the grocery store more often, as the foods you should be eating expire quickly.