Food, food and more food.

It has been a few weeks now of intuitive eating with non structured meal timing. Things are getting a little easier, I miss the security of being told when to eat and how much that I had with my zone blocks but I see now that in the long run it was only to my detriment that I clung so tightly to the notion of a magic ratio of macro nutrients. 40/30/30. That was the world according to Zone, 30% protein, 40% carb, 30% fat all wrapped up in a tidy bundle of blocks allotted to you daily. I had 12 in the beginning. It all amounted to 84 grams of protein, 108 grams of carbs, and 18 grams of fat. That's it, that's all, even after heavy WOD days or Murph, 8 hour day or 12 hour day, didn't matter. I told myself I was not hungry when I was, blamed my "carb" craving on insulin ( even if all I wanted was more veggies or a frackin sweet potato) and if I lost myself for a moment and had extra coconut butter I would mope to myself for defying my blocks. In the beginning the insulin control and the adequate nutrition was great, when it became not enough though as I built lean body mass and increased my activity level I could not let go of my " rx" of blocks. This is not a Zone bashing post, I think its great for people who need it, for those of us paleo inclined CrossFitters, it doesn't fit, Zone doesn't think so either which is why they dropped the block method from their site. I spent years ignoring what my body said and now I find it hard to trust the right signals. now there is Cortisol to consider which either makes you overly hungry for salt, fat and sugar or not hungry at all in the most crucial meal times ( in my case morning and post WOD) which only sets you up for failure causing more stress to your body. I find I have to choke down breakfast because if i don't, I end up totally behind for the day and I start the decline process that will end with me crashing and sleeping all day faster than we can say deep fried Twinkies. Training in a hypo caloric state, which I had become accustomed to, is the biggest Cortisol trigger of them all and skipping a WOD is like asking for a limb! My point here is that simply listening to your body sometimes can be tricky if you have ignored it long enough, mistreated it for awhile or are over thinking whats best. It feels like a handicap now having spent so much time weighing and measuring and restricting in the name of performance and body composition, neither of which are satisfactory to me at the moment so square one here I am...I learned alot of insulin and its role in metabolic derangement and disease but somewhere along the path I picked up a derangement of another sort where it became okay to try manipulate biology for an ideal of myself, well, biology spoke up and told me to take a flying leap by shutting me down almost a year ago this month. I share this with you in hopes of making a difference in the way you will think of food, what your goals are and how you go about achieving them through your nutrition. We are not smarter than our bodies, we cant out think being hungry or make ice cream healthy, we can however try to listen and learn to ask why, to make an effort not to be vain and realize that sometimes doing the right thing means letting go, eating more ( of the right stuff) and stop making excuses for all of it. Fall off, get back up and try it again. I went back to those blocks so many times it would make Ike and Tina the picture of domestic bliss. Many of you have the tools you need to succeed, you just need more practice in using them. Like your snatch or hspu, practice makes perfect and one of these days well all be winners.
Meredith