Food Logging
We’ve got about 30 people enrolled in the 8-week nutrition challenge, which requires participants to log and track everything they eat and drink in order to hit their target macros (protein, carbs and fats) each day.
For those of you who aren’t enrolled in the challenge, you may want to consider tracking your food in order to determine if you are over or deficient in calories and certain macronutrients. Tracking your food intake can be an eye-opening experience. Here are some tips:
- I like the app MyFitnessPal for food tracking. The free version is fine and it even allows you to scan barcodes so that the nutrition facts go directly into the app. (Note: use this app as a tracking tool only. Don’t use their daily recommendations as to what your totals should be.
See below for that calculation.)
- Weighing and measuring will give you the most precision and will educate you on what serving sizes look like so you can guesstimate in situations when you can’t weigh/measure, like eating out.
- Don’t forget to log supplements. Most greens powders, pre-workout, etc. have some carbs and protein, so make sure you include them to get the most accurate totals.
- Make sure you drink enough water. Even if you don’t log it into your
tracking app, use some sort of measurement. For instance, I know how many
times I need to fill my shaker bottle with water each day to meet my goal, so I just mark down each time I refill.
Determining your daily intake/macro distribution is very personal and based on things like metabolism, activity, BMR, etc. Here’s a guide to get you started with an example of a 150-pound person wanting to lose fat.
- Determine calories per day.
- If you are a CrossFitter and want to lose fat, multiply your body weight by 12-14; to maintain weight multiply by 15-16 and to gain weight multiply by 17 or more. (Example: 150 lbs and want to lose weight (x12)
= 1800 calories)
- If you are a CrossFitter and want to lose fat, multiply your body weight by 12-14; to maintain weight multiply by 15-16 and to gain weight multiply by 17 or more. (Example: 150 lbs and want to lose weight (x12)
- After calculating your calories, determine protein. This is simply your body weight x 1 gram. (Example: 150 grams protein. Each gram of protein is 4 calories, so you will be eating 600 calories of protein.)
- Next, determine fat. CrossFitters should have approximately 30% of their calories from fat. (Example: 30% of 1800 is 540 calories. Since a gram of fat is 9 calories, divide by 9 to arrive at your fat goal. 540/9 = 60 grams fat)
- The remaining calories determine carbs. (Example: 600 calories from protein + 540 calories from fat = 1140 calories. Subtract 1140 from
your daily allowance of 1800 to arrive at 660 calories from carbs. A gram
of carb has 4 calories so 660/4 = 165 grams of carb).
- In the example above, the 150-lb person wanting to lose fat would eat 150 grams protein, 60 grams fat and 165 grams of carbs per day.
Note: this is a very general calculation. If you use it, stick to it for a few weeks, then re-evaluate. If you are someone doing multiple workouts in a day, your carb ratio may need to be higher. If you are currently eating way less than what is recommended, you will want to gradually increase calories, not necessarily add all of them right away.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BONNIE B!
Workout of the Day
:05
2 rounds for time:
50 calories Row
600m run
50 calories air bike
600m run
time cap 30 minutes; heats of 10 with 10 min stagger start
:40
Midline:
3 sets of:
20 abmat sit ups
:30 plank
:50
Mobility:
2 sets of:
2:00 each side pigeon stretch
2:00 each side couch stretch
2:00 box stretch
Post your scores to the Whiteboard.