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Disclaimer: we are not medical professionals, registered dieticians or practitioners of any nature other than fitness. We are not attempting to diagnose conditions or give medical advice. We are citing common sense practices of what may help individuals live a better life from personal experiences of ourselves and our members.
Throughout our lives are fitness needs and goals change and evolve with the decades. What we are seeing in today’s sedentary society with healthy nutrition on the decline is that people are realizing at much younger ages that if these lifestyle trends continue their health is at serious risk.
What do we mean by serious risk? Well for one it’s quite simple; man was meant to move and eat what nature produced. With the impact of technology with devices and gadgets to make “life easier” it has done great harm. People sit more, move less and experience decline in the physical body. On the nutritional end fast foods, processed and packaged foods have replaced the real food man was intended to eat and this has caused dis ease in the body for which mainstream medicine has only pharmaceuticals to treat the largely self-inflicted maladies.
What’s the cure? Quite simply: diet and exercise; taking it back to the basics. While most of us are not willing to give up our careers we can combat the sedentary daily behavior by adding a sound exercise routine to our agenda. A minimum of three times a week is recommended and CrossFit fits the bill. Functional movements performed at high intensities and scalable to all fitness levels using a combination of free weights, body weight exercises and conditioning modalities in a systematized program geared to improve the overall fitness of the participants.
While fitness is earned in the gym the other half or closer to 80% of the equation takes place in the kitchen. Another trend of today that has led to poor nutritional intake is the reduction in home cooking. Learn to cook or pay to get your food cooked from someone that does. What you buy prepared and packaged in grocery stores and many restaurants is often loaded with poor quality ingredients, chemicals and foods not recognized in nature. Our body does not know how to process this food and many modern day maladies have resulted to which mainstream medicine’s only answer is harmful drugs to which there are many side effects – a vicious cycle best avoided with a little effort on your part.
How? Keep your nutrition simple and basic; eat meat, fish and fowl raised as nature intended combined with vegetables, some fruit and a little starch (preferably from roots and tubers) in amounts to sustain energy but not high levels of body fat.
When we first meet a prospective member one of the questions we ask is ‘what are your goals’? An overwhelming 80+% respond with some variation of “I want to tone (i.e. develop muscular definition), lose weight (i.e. lose body fat) and be/feel healthier.” Much of the time this is not coming from an older person but from a much younger demographic – typically 3-5 years post college. The decline and ill effects of their sedentary career and “no time to eat right” have already started.
Fortunately no matter the age, changing your exercise and nutritional habits can reserve the ill effects and have immediate improvements in both body composition and health. Don’t wait until you have a serious problem – be proactive through prevention. A member recently told us “sitting is the new smoking”. That is an accurate way of putting it.
If your exercise and nutritional habits are not where they should be give CrossFit a try now – if only for the health of it!