Thursday, March 31, 2011

5 rounds for time of:
45 pound barbell Overhead walking lunges, 50 feet
21 Burpees

Let trailing knee gently kiss the ground on each lunge

Games Competitors:
Open WOD #2 for record

OR

MEBB:
Push jerk
1-1-1-1-1-1-1
establish new 1 rep max

METCON:
For Time:
Row 1000 meters
85 pound Thruster, 21 reps
15 Pull-ups
Row 750 meters
85 pound Thruster, 18 reps
12 Pull-ups
Row 500 meters
85 pound Thruster, 15 reps
9 Pull-ups

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Thursday's WOD



Sean tearing up WOD #2 from the Open!

Push press
3-3-3-3-3

Games Competitors:

REST DAY!!

Great job on the WOD Sean! For all those competing - you will need to do the WOD for record on Friday, as most of the box will be at Mudquest in Waco on Saturday. Let's shoot for 1300 after the noon class. If you cannot make it then, please coordinate a time with either Jenn or me.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Wednesdays' WOD

AMRAP in 15 minutes of:
9 Deadlifts (155# / 100#)
12 Push-ups
15 Box jumps (24" / 20" box)

This is the second WOD from the CrossFit Games Open!

Games Competitors:

AMRAP in 15 minutes of:
9 Deadlifts (155# / 100#)
12 Push-ups
15 Box jumps (24" / 20" box)

OR

CF E:
Run – 1 mile Hill climb, Incline between 6-12%. First 1/2mile, Run backwards,2nd 1/2 mile Run Forward

METCON:
AMRAP in 12 minutes of:
10 Dumbbell Snatches - 5 with each hand (35# / 25#)
1 Rope Climb

Monday, March 28, 2011

Tuesday's WOD

Hang Squat Cleans
3-3-3-3-3

Games Competitors:
For time:
400m uneven farmers carry (1 pood / 1.5 pood)
100 box jumps
25 Wall balls
75 double unders
50 GHD sit-ups
50 GHD back extensions
75 box jumps
25 Wall balls
100 double unders
400m uneven farmers carry


T M-u:
Pick two goats and and do a 4-minute tabata on each – 2-minute rest between goat tabatas

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Monday's WOD

"Kelly"
5 rounds for time of:
400m Run
30 Box jumps (24" / 20")
30 Wall balls (20# / 14#)

Games Competitors:

MEBB:
Overhead Squat
1-1-1-1-1-1-1
Establish new 1 rep max

METCON:
8.7.6.5.4.3.2.1 reps of Hang Squat Cleans (155# / 105#)
30 Double Unders

Saturday, March 26, 2011

How Western Diets Are Making The World Sick



In an essay published last November in Canada's Maisonneuve journal, physician Kevin Patterson described his experiences working as an internist-intensivist at the Canadian Combat Surgical Hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

One detail he noticed: The Afghan soldiers, police and civilians he treated in Kandahar had radically different bodies from those of the Canadians he took care of back home.

"Typical Afghan civilians and soldiers would have been 140 pounds or so as adults. And when we operated on them, what we were aware of was the absence of any fat or any adipose tissue underneath the skin," Patterson says. "Of course, when we operated on Canadians or Americans or Europeans, what was normal was to have most of the organs encased in fat. It had a visceral potency to it when you could see it directly there."

In a conversation on Fresh Air, Patterson tells Terry Gross that the effects of urbanization are making people everywhere in the world both fatter and sicker.

"Type 2 diabetes historically didn't exist, only 70 or 80 years ago," says Patterson. "And what's driven it, of course, is this rise in obesity, especially the accumulation of abdominal fat. That fat induces changes in our receptors that cells have for insulin. Basically, it makes them numb to the effect of insulin."

For a long time, the human body can compensate — the pancreas secretes even larger amounts of insulin, which regulates blood sugar levels. But over time, the pancreas begins to fail to secrete enough insulin, and that is when diabetes develops.

He explains that the increase in abdominal fat has driven the epidemic of diabetes over the last 40 years in the developed world — and that he's now seeing similar patterns in undeveloped regions that have adapted Western eating patterns.

Patterson explains that in his Canadian practice, where he takes care of indigenous populations near the Arctic Circle, there is a marked increase in the number of diabetic patients he sees.

"The traditional Inuit culture of relentless motion and a traditional diet consisting mainly of caribou, Arctic char, whale and seal has been abandoned over this period of time for Kentucky Fried Chicken and processed food and living a life very similar to ours," he says. "[They're] spending a lot of time in front of a glowing screen."

Part of the problem, says Patterson, is that it's so much cheaper for processed food to be flown into the Arctic Circle than fresh food.

"There's no roads or rail access to any of those communities," he says. "So a 4 liter jug of milk can cost you $10 or $11. But there's a very clear parallel between that and the inner city. In poorer neighborhoods in North American cities, fresh food is either not available or extremely expensive compared to — on a calorie-by-calorie basis — compared to fast food available on every street corner."

And the diabetes epidemic correlates to a strain on health care systems around the globe, says Patterson.

"No country in the world has the resources to continue to treat diabetics the way that they're being treated now, if the prevalence rates increase at the rates that they're increasing for much longer," he says. "I worked in Saipan, which is in the Marianas Island in the Pacific, and there, the dialysis population was increasing at about 18 percent a year, all as a consequence of diabetes and acculturation — exactly the same process as what's going on with the Inuit.

"When you look at the curves, it's clear how unsustainable it is. In 20 or 30 years, everybody on that island will either be a dialysis patient or a dialysis nurse unless something fundamental is done about the rise in diabetes. That's no less true in Canada and in Samoa and Hawaii, and even in Omaha and Toronto. We all have exactly the same problem when we plot out those curves."

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Friday's WOD

For Time:
Run 400m
50 Wall balls (20# / 14#)
Run 400m
40 GHD sit-ups
Run 400m
30 KB swings (1.5 pood / 1 pood)
Run 400m
20 double unders
Run 400m
10 Burpees

Games Competitors:

MEBB:
Push press
1-1-1-1-1-1-1 (establish a new 1 rep max)

METCON:
Run 400m
50 Wall balls (20# / 14#)
Run 400m
40 GHD sit-ups
Run 400m
30 KB swings (1.5 pood / 1 pood)
Run 400m
20 double unders
Run 400m
10 Burpees

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Thursday's WOD

Overhead Squat
5-5-5-5-5

Games Competitors:

REST DAY!!

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Wednesday's WOD

"Annie"

50-40-30-20 and 10 rep rounds of:
Double-unders
Sit-ups

Games Competitors:

CF E:

Run 5k

METCON:
Five rounds for time of:
45 pound barbell Overhead walking lunges, 50 feet
21 Burpees

Tuesday

Clean and Jerk
1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Monday

Five rounds of:
5 Dumbbell deadlifts
5 Dumbbell hand cleans
5 Dumbbell push press
5 Dumbbell squats

Increase the load each round. Think of it as a strength WOD.

Friday, March 18, 2011

The Open

Games Competitors - if you are planning on competeing and having the affiliate validate your scores, please email me at: centurioncrossfit.forthood@gmail.com so I can compile a list.

We will be hosting the WOD from 1230 - 1400 at the box. If you are planning on competing, please lend a hand and assist your fellow athletes and the judges with getting everything set up to facilitate the competition.

Also, you need to join the affiliate team, when you register. This does not mean you have to compete on the affilaite team or anything, it just means I can track your scores better.

Jenn is running this week's event so please assist her and make this a great event for everyone.

Also, don't forget we have the CrossFit Endurance seminar 16 - 17 April and The Greg Amundson Goal Setting seminar on 23 April. Registration links for each are at the top of the page.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Thursday

Just found out today that the gym will be closed Thursday and Friday for a training holiday. It will be open Saturday from 10-2. If there are athletes that need to do the Games WOD I will be around the gym from 12:30-2 for judging or to help record.

If you are following our programming and have a location to WOD in, Thursday's WOD is

Back Squat
1-1-1-1-1-1-1

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Wednesday

"Wittman"
7 Rounds for time:
15 KBS (1.5/1 pood)
15 Power Cleans* (95/65)
15 Box jumps (24/20)

*Power cleans: Start from the ground, end in the front rack position, no squat.

Great article on gluten sensitivity: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576200393522456636.html

Clues to Gluten Sensitivity

Lisa Rayburn felt dizzy, bloated and exhausted. Wynn Avocette suffered migraines and body aches. Stephanie Meade's 4-year-old daughter had constipation and threw temper tantrums.

Some people claim that eating gluten products can cause health problems like body aches and chronic fatigue -- and even some behavioral problems in children. WSJ's Melinda Beck talks with Kelsey Hubbard about a new study that sheds light on what may be going on.

All three tested negative for celiac disease, a severe intolerance to gluten, a protein found in wheat and other grains. But after their doctors ruled out other causes, all three adults did their own research and cut gluten—and saw the symptoms subside.

A new study in the journal BMC Medicine may shed some light on why. It shows gluten can set off a distinct reaction in the intestines and the immune system, even in people who don't have celiac disease.

"For the first time, we have scientific evidence that indeed, gluten sensitivity not only exists, but is very different from celiac disease," says lead author Alessio Fasano, medical director of the University of Maryland's Center for Celiac Research.

The news will be welcome to people who have suspected a broad range of ailments may be linked to their gluten intake, but have failed to find doctors who agree.

"Patients have been told if it wasn't celiac disease, it wasn't anything. It was all in their heads," says Cynthia Kupper, executive director of the nonprofit Gluten Intolerance Group of North America.

The growing market for gluten-free foods, with sales estimated at $2.6 billion last year, has made it even harder to distinguish a medical insight from a fad.

Although much remains unknown, it is clear that gluten—a staple of human diets for 10,000 years—triggers an immune response like an enemy invader in some modern humans.

The most basic negative response is an allergic reaction to wheat that quickly brings on hives, congestion, nausea or potentially fatal anaphylaxis. Less than 1% of children have the allergy and most outgrow it by age five. A small number of adults have similar symptoms if they exercise shortly after eating wheat.

At the other extreme is celiac disease, which causes the immune system to mistakenly attack the body's own tissue. Antibodies triggered by gluten flatten the villi, the tiny fingers in the intestines needed to soak up nutrients from food. The initial symptoms are cramping, bloating and diarrhea, similar to irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS, but celiac disease can lead to malnutrition, osteoporosis and other more serious health problems that can result in early death. It can be diagnosed with a blood test, but an intestinal biopsy is needed to be sure.

The incidence of celiac disease is rising sharply—and not just due to greater awareness. Tests comparing old blood samples to recent ones show the rate has increased four-fold in the last 50 years, to at least 1 in 133 Americans. It's also being diagnosed in people as old as 70 who have eaten gluten safely all their lives.

"People aren't born with this. Something triggers it and with this dramatic rise in all ages, it must be something pervasive in the environment," says Joseph A. Murray, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. One possible culprit: agricultural changes to wheat that have boosted its protein content.


Gluten sensitivity, also known as gluten intolerance, is much more vague.

Some experts think as many as 1 in 20 Americans may have some form of it, but there is no test or defined set of symptoms. The most common are IBS-like stomach problems, headaches, fatigue, numbness and depression, but more than 100 symptoms have been loosely linked to gluten intake, which is why it has been so difficult to study. Peter Green, director of the Celiac Disease Center says that research into gluten sensitivity today is roughly where celiac disease was 30 years ago.

In the new study, researchers compared blood samples and intestinal biopsies from 42 subjects with confirmed celiac disease, 26 with suspected gluten sensitivity and 39 healthy controls. Those with gluten sensitivity didn't have the flattened villi, or the "leaky" intestinal walls seen in the subjects with celiac disease.

Their immune reactions were different, too. In the gluten-sensitive group, the response came from innate immunity, a primitive system with which the body sets up barriers to repel invaders. The subjects with celiac disease rallied adaptive immunity, a more sophisticated system that develops specific cells to fight foreign bodies.

The findings still need to be replicated. How a reaction to gluten could cause such a wide range of symptoms also remains unproven. Dr. Fasano and other experts speculate that once immune cells are mistakenly primed to attack gluten, they can migrate and spread inflammation, even to the brain.

Indeed, Marios Hadjivassiliou, a neurologist in Sheffield, England, says he found deposits of antibodies to gluten in autopsies and brain scans of some patients with ataxia, a condition of impaired balance.

Could such findings help explain why some parents of autistic children say their symptoms have improved—sometimes dramatically—when gluten was eliminated from their diets? To date, no scientific studies have emerged to back up such reports.

Dr. Fasano hopes to eventually discover a biomarker specifically for gluten sensitivity. In the meantime, he and other experts recommend that anyone who thinks they have it be tested for celiac disease first.

For now, a gluten-free diet is the only treatment recommended for gluten sensitivity, though some may be able to tolerate small amounts, says Ms. Kupper.

"There's a lot more that needs to be done for people with gluten sensitivity," she says. "But at least we now recognize that it's real and that these people aren't crazy."

Monday, March 14, 2011

Tuesday

Power Cleans
3-3-3-3-3

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Monday

"Ledesma"

AMRAP in 20 minutes of:
5 Hand stand push ups
10 Toes through rings or toes to bar
15 Med ball cleans (20/14)


Don't forget that there will be NO trainers leading classes this week. Classes will resume next week!

Sleep is More Important than Food


Great post on sleep - definitley heed the advice as sleep is key to recovery and well being. if you really want to delve into sleep, read Lights Out: Sugar, Sleep and Survival by T. S Wiley Bent Formby: http://www.amazon.com/Lights-Out-Sleep-Sugar-Survival/dp/0671038680

Let's cut to the chase.

Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for a week. At the end of seven days, how would you be feeling? You'd probably be hungry, perhaps a little weak, and almost certainly somewhat thinner. But basically you'd be fine.

Now let's say you deprive yourself of sleep for a week. Not so good. After several days, you'd be almost completely unable to function. That's why Amnesty International lists sleep deprivation as a form of torture.

Here's what former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had to say in his memoir White Nights about the experience of being deprived of sleep in a KGB prison: "In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep ... Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it."

So why is sleep one of the first things we're willing to sacrifice as the demands in our lives keep rising? We continue to live by a remarkably durable myth: sleeping one hour less will give us one more hour of productivity. In reality, the research suggests that even small amounts of sleep deprivation take a significant toll on our health, our mood, our cognitive capacity and our productivity.

Many of the effects we suffer are invisible. Insufficient sleep, for example, deeply impairs our ability to consolidate and stabilize learning that occurs during the waking day. In other words, it wreaks havoc on our memory.

So how much sleep do you need? When researchers put test subjects in environments without clocks or windows and ask them to sleep any time they feel tired, 95 percent sleep between seven and eight hours out of every 24. Another 2.5 percent sleep more than eight hours. That means just 2.5 percent of us require less than 7 hours of sleep a night to feel fully rested. That's 1 out of every 40 people.

When I ask people in my talks how many had fewer than 7 hours of sleep several nights during the past week, the vast majority raise their hands. That's true whether it's an audience of corporate executives, teachers, cops or government workers. We've literally lost touch with what it feels like to be fully awake.

Great performers are an exception. Typically, they sleep significantly more than the rest of us. In Anders Ericcson's famous study of violinists, the top performers slept an average of 8 ½ hours out of every 24, including a 20 to 30 minute midafternoon nap some 2 hours a day more than the average American.

The top violinists also reported that except for practice itself, sleep was second most important factor in improving as violinists.

As I began to gather research about sleep, I felt increasingly compelled to give it higher priority in my own life. Today, I go to great lengths to assure that I get at least 8 hours every night, and ideally between 8 ½ and 9, even when I'm traveling.

I still take the overnight "redeye" from California to New York, but I'm asleep by takeoff — even if takes an Ambien. When I get home at 6 or 7 a.m., I go right to bed until I've had my 8 hours. What I've learned about those days is that I'd rather work at 100 percent for 5 or 6 hours, than at 60 percent for 8 or 9 hours.

With sufficient sleep, I feel better, I work with more focus, and I manage my emotions better, which is good for everyone around me. I dislike having even a single day where I haven't gotten enough sleep, because the impact is immediate and unavoidable. On the rare days that I don't get enough, I try hard to get at least a 20-30 minute nap in the afternoon. That's a big help.

Here are three other tips to improve the quantity and quality of your sleep:

•Go to bed earlier — and at a set time. Sounds obvious right? The problem is there's no alternative. You're already waking up at the latest possible time you think is acceptable. If you don't ritualize a specific bedtime, you'll end up finding ways to stay up later, just the way you do now.
•Start winding down at least 45 minutes before you turn out the light. You won't fall asleep if you're all wound up from answering email, or doing other work. Create a ritual around drinking a cup of herbal tea, or listening to music that helps you relax, or reading a dull book.
•Write down what's on your mind — especially unfinished to-do's and unresolved issues — just before you go to bed. If you leave items in your working memory, they'll make it harder to fall asleep, and you'll end up ruminating about them if you should wake up during the night.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Friday

"Karen"
For time:

150 Wall Balls (20/14)


Reminder!! There will be NO trainers available next week over Spring Break. We will still offer WODs that you can do on your own. Have a great weekend and Spring Break!!!! See you after the break.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Thursday's WOD



Push Jerk
3-3-3-3-3

Game Competitors:

Rest Day!!

I have registered the affiliate as a place to conduct WODs during the Open qualifiers and I have also registered as the team captain so athletes can register under the Centurion CrossFit Fort Hood team.

Each week we will host the Open WOD for that week and validate athletes' scores.

Wednesday

AMRAP in 15 minutes of:
5 Box jump burpees (20in)
10 Sit ups

Monday, March 7, 2011

Tuesday's WOD



I am headed to Disney World, see everyone in a couple of weeks!! Don't worry, we are carrying kettlebells, rings and jump ropes - the WODs will continue!

Overhead Squat
1-1-1-1-1-1-1 reps

Games Competitors:

METCON:
For time:
15 Handstand push-ups
1 L Pull-up
13 Handstand push-ups
3 L Pull-ups
11 Handstand push-ups
5 L Pull-ups
9 Handstand push-ups
7 L Pull-ups
7 Handstand push-ups
9 L Pull-ups
5 Handstand push-ups
11 L Pull-ups
3 Handstand push-ups
13 L Pull-ups
1 Handstand push-up
15 L Pull-ups

T M-u:
Pick two goats and and do a 4-minute tabata on each – 2-minute rest between goat tabatas

Are Carbs More Addictive Than Cocaine?

Your body is virtually defenseless against a dependency on carbohydrates—the substances that really make you fat—and it's time for an intervention.

March 2011 Issue From www.details.com

I'm sitting in a comfortable chair, in a tastefully lit, cheerfully decorated drug den, watching a steady line of people approach their dealer. After scoring, they shuffle off to their tables to quietly indulge in what for some could become (if it hasn't already) an addiction that screws up their lives. It's likely you have friends and family members who are suffering from this dependence—and you may be on the same path yourself. But this addiction is not usually apparent to the casual observer. It has no use for the drama and the carnage you associate with cocaine and alcohol. It's slower to show its hand, more socially acceptable—and way more insidious.

I'm in a Panera Bread outlet. The company is on Fortune's 2010 list of the 100 Fastest Growing Companies and earned more than $1.3 billion in 2009, mainly from selling flour and sugar by the railcar. Last year, Zagat named it the most popular large chain in the United States and ranked it second in the Healthy Options category. The company responded by touting its "wholesome" food. Sure, Panera sells a few salads. But why do the scones, pastries, baguettes, and bear claws get all the good lighting? Why are the grab-and-go packs of cookies and brownies next to the register? What need is fulfilled by serving soup bowls made of bread, with a mound of bread for dipping, and then offering more bread on the side? How come it's noon and the couple behind me are eating bagels while the guy to my right is sawing into a cinnamon roll with a fork and a knife like it's a steak?

The answer is that fast-burning carbohydrates—just like cocaine—give you a rush. As with blow, this rush can lead to cravings in your brain and intrusive thoughts when you go too long without a fix. But unlike cocaine, this stuff does more than rewire your neurological system. It will short-circuit your body. Your metabolism normally stockpiles energy so you can use it as fuel later. A diet flush with carbohydrates will reprogram your metabolism, locking your food away as unburnable fat. When you get hungry again you won't crave anything but more of the same food that started you down the path to dependency. Think of this stuff as more than a drug—it's like a metabolic parasite, taking over your body and feeding itself.

You aren't supposed to talk this way about carbohydrates. According to USDA dietary recommendations, they are not only healthy but are supposed to make up the majority of the food we eat—45 to 65 percent of all calories. Carbs, which are classified as starches and sugars, make up the essence of bread, cereal, corn, potatoes, cookies, pasta, fruit, juice, candy, beer, and sweetened drinks—basically anything that isn't protein or fat. Our government's recommendations were established in the 1970s and have since been accompanied by an explosion of obesity and diabetes. The advice came about as early nutrition scientists rallied around a misguided maxim that remains embedded in the fabric of our attitudes toward food to this day: Eating too much fat makes you fat. But science never bore out this pre-Galilean view of nutrition. What is now clear is this: At the center of the obesity universe lie carbohydrates, not fat.

"You could live your whole life and never eat a single carbohydrate—other than what you get from mother's milk and the tiny amount that comes naturally in meat—and probably be just fine," says Gary Taubes, the award-winning author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, which is helping to reshape the conversation about what makes the American diet so fattening.

If all you knew about food is what you read in the USDA guidelines, you'd think our bodies conveniently come into the world seeking the one nutrient that is cheap and amenable to commercial mass production: carbohydrates. "Sugars and starches provide energy to the body in the form of glucose, which is the only source of energy for red blood cells and is the preferred energy source for the brain," says the latest edition of the guidelines. Wrong, says Taubes, who just released Why We Get Fat, a layman's version of his influential scientific tome. In the absence of carbs, your body will burn fatty acids for energy. It's how you sleep through the night without eating for eight hours. "The brain does indeed need carbohydrates for fuel," Taubes says, "but the body is perfectly happy to make those out of protein, leafy green vegetables, and the animal fat you're burning." As a pair of Harvard doctors (one an endocrinologist and one an epidemiologist) wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association last summer, carbohydrates are "a nutrient for which humans have no absolute requirement."

•••
The Diets That Work

You wouldn't know it from reading the latest dietary headlines, but all of the popular diets—from Atkins to Dean Ornish (Bill Clinton's weight-loss plan) to the diet-of-the-moment, Paleo—are successful because the most important change they advise is the same: stop eating refined carbohydrates. This only reminds us of what had been the conventional wisdom in medicine for hundreds of years before the USDA stepped in: that sugar, flour, potatoes, and rice are what make a person fat, not meat and milk.

Forty years into the low-fat, high-carbohydrate way of eating—we can thank it for "diabesity," shorthand for the societal prevalence of type II diabetes paired with obesity—it seems clearer than ever that our problem lies not simply in carbohydrates, but in their fundamental addictiveness. They sidestep our defenses against overeating, activate brain pathways for pleasure, and make us simultaneously fat and malnourished. They keep us coming back for more, even as they induce physical decline and social rejection. They achieve this more effectively than the controlled substances that can get a guy thrown into jail. Maybe the question isn't whether carbohydrates are addictive, but whether they are the most addictive substance of all.

In 2007, researchers at the University of Bordeaux, France, reported that when rats were allowed to choose between a calorie-free sweetener and intravenous cocaine, 94 percent preferred the sugar substitute. The researchers concluded that "intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward. . . . The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction." Nicole Avena, an expert in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Florida in Gainesville, has spent many hours analyzing the behavior of rats enticed into sucking up sugar. She says that feeding on sugar can, like snorting coke, lead to bingeing, withdrawal, and craving. It does this by lighting up the same circuitry within the brain triggered by cocaine and amphetamines, the dopamine center.

But a carbohydrate addiction is potentially more destructive than an 8-ball-a-day habit, because it hijacks your metabolism. If you eat a low-carb diet, you are able to remain satiated between meals, because the body will burn its fat stores. But eating carbs, especially refined varieties like sugar or flour, sweetened drinks, or starches, causes the body to release the hormone insulin. The body secretes insulin as a response to high blood sugar—a serious, even potentially lethal health risk over time. The hormone directs cells to extract sugar from the blood and store it as fat, and what's worse, in order to get sugar out of the blood as efficiently as possible, insulin makes it extremely difficult for the body to burn its fat stores. Over time, the presence of insulin in our carb-heavy diet causes diminishing returns. As our cells become resistant to the effects of insulin, our bodies frequently release even more of it to compensate. The result is a blood-sugar vacuum: The body craves more of what the hormone feeds on and triggers our hunger mechanism, which works subconsciously, to direct us toward the nutrient causing all the problems in the first place—carbohydrates. You get fatter and your body craves even more carbs in order to maintain your increasing weight. Drug cartels can only dream of a narcotic with an addiction cycle this powerful.

Once hooked, can you quit your carb addiction? It's not like there's a carb-cessation program at Promises, after all. Taubes says it won't be easy, but given the alternatives, you simply have to try. And cold turkey is as good a method as any. "Anecdotal evidence suggests that the craving for carbs will go away after a while," he says, "although whether a while is a few weeks or a few years is hard to say." And frighteningly like an addict in recovery, you're unlikely ever to be totally cured, and you'll always be tempted to relapse when the opportunity arises. Be warned: The number of Panera Bread outlets is 1,421 and counting.

•••
How You Get Hooked (Over Time)

1. When you take in carbs, like Gatorade or whole-wheat bread, you secrete the hormone insulin. Even thinking about carbs causes this to happen.

2. Refined carbs spike blood sugar, and this is a big problem. The first result is that your body immediately stops burning its existing fat stores.

3. Too much blood sugar is a dangerous situation, and in response, insulin, a hormone, rips it from your blood and tells the body to store the energy as fat (in men this first happens around the waist).

4. Normally your liver controls blood sugar, but because you eat so many carbs you have a constant supply of insulin circulating. This turns out to be bad—very bad. This causes you to become resistant to insulin.

5. Insulin resistance means your body pumps out more insulin to make up for the deficit. Now you're getting fat, but what's worse is that your body desires even more carbs as fodder for the excess insulin.

6. You get fatter and fatter and your body craves more carbs to feed your increasing girth. This destructive cycle is why Americans are so overweight (the process doesn't happen overnight).



Sunday, March 6, 2011

Monday's WOD

3 Rounds for time of:
400m run
25 wall balls (20# / 14#)
15 Kettlebell swings (1.5 pood / 1 pood)

Games Competitors:

MEBB(T):
Deadlift
1-1-1-1-1-1-1
Establish new 1RM

METCON:
3 rounds for time of:
Run 800 meters
Rest 2 minutes

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Friday's WOD

For time:
20 inch Box jump, 50 reps
Rope climb, 5 ascents
1.5 pood Kettlebell swing, 50 reps
50 sit-ups
40 pound dumbbell Hang power clean, 50 reps
800 meter Run
50 Back extensions

Games Competitors:

Ok, the ropes are back up so the Wednesday WOD is back on for Friday:

4 Rounds for time of:
25 Wallballs (20#/14#)
100ft Walking lunges
3 rope climbs (15’)

CF E:
Run – 15 rounds for distance of:
Sprint 20 seconds
Rest 40 seconds
Start each round at previous round's end point

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Thursday's WOD

I will not be at the noon class so take it as a rest day or you can execute a WOD of your choosing. Class will be back on for Friday and you won't want to miss that WOD - it will send you into the weekned right! (Jenn, Kristin - I am talking to all you chipper lovers....)

Games Competitors:

Rest day!!

Since it's a rest day - check out Jenn's new blog!! One of our most talented trainers is putting out wisdom for all - take advantage! http://kruseline.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Wednesday's WOD

3 rounds for time of:
10 Deadlifts
400m run or 500m row

Games Competitors:

METCON:
4 Rounds for time of:
25 Wallballs (20#/14#)
100ft Walking lunges
3 rope climbs (15’)
(the ropes are suppossed to be up in the box, if they have not been replaced, this WOD can be postponed until later in the week until they are)

CF E:
Run – 15 rounds for distance of:
Sprint 20 seconds
Rest 40 seconds
Start each round at previous round's end point