CHO!

CrossFit celebrity Chyna Cho (left) visiting our box in December for a Saturday WOD

As I described last week, over the next few weeks I’ll cover each macronutrient that our bodies can get energy from, their role in our lives, and the best ones to suit our goals. This week: CHO a.k.a. carbohydrates a.k.a. sugars.

Carbohydrate Catastrophe

Definitely a misrepresentation of the truth (taken at Woodland Hills Whole Foods)

What do the most deadly and common modern diseases –heart disease, type-2 diabetes, most cancers, alzheimers, obesity, high triglycerides—of modern man have in common? They’re all associated with chronically elevated insulin levels and associated states of inflammation. What is the main contributor to the chronic elevation of insulin levels? Diet. What part of the diet is the main contributor to chronically elevated insulin levels? Carbohydrate. What type of carbohydrate? High glycemic-load (high GL = insulin-spiking), nutrient-poor carbohydrate.

How is this a modern problem? For ~99% of our genetic evolution as homo sapiens, our bodies adapted to environmental factors—diet and lifestyle—that resulted in insulin levels and overall inflammation remaining very low. How so? During this time, humans evolved on a diet characterized well by the good ol’ ancestral diet/paleo diet/CrossFit nutrition soundbyte “Base your diet on a variety of garden vegetables, especially greens, lean meats, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar”. The outcome of experiencing environmental factors that are dramatically altered from how we are best adapted to encounter them, namely sleep, high refined carbohydrate intake, and high intake of low-quality fatty acids high in omega-6, can be seen in the rise of modern diseases.

At a very high summary level this is the explanation that supports part of nutrition strategies such as ‘paleo’, that aim to make people healthier by altering the source and composition of food intake from modern to ancestral. The Paleo Diet (Cordain), Protein Power Lifeplan (Eades & Eades), Lights Out: Sugar, Sleep & Survival (Wiley), Good Calories Bad Calories (Taubes), The Primal Blueprint (Sisson), and (most likely) Robb Wolf’s upcoming book The Paleolithic Solution (preorder), among others, explain why and how exactly this works to achieve better performance, longevity, and higher quality of life.

The common sense behind modern food creating modern disease seems intuitive, but there are booming industries profiting from propagating other, misleading nutrition concepts that are alluring for their simplicity as well. Macronutrients (carbohydrate, fat, protein) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) are shamelessly abused by the food industry to get you to eat their packaged goods. The made-up roles, implied ‘facts’ and incarnations of carbohydrate and fat in nutrition recommendations and food industry media are by far the most twisted from their evolutionary place in our diet and role in improving health and longevity.

Most diets stray from the common sense ancestral approach (including the USDA recommendations, as well as most fad diets) and are a far stretch from the ancestral diet. These diets and recommendations are alluring and successful because they reinforce the status-quo: a modern lifestyle that revolves around widely available, non-ancestral foods (micronutrient-poor, macronutrient-skewed) and non-ancestral levels of sleep, stress, and activity levels. Not only is the food industry against you and grocery stores across America stocked with the stuff, but refined carbohydrate is also physically and psychologically addictive.

CHO from nutrient-dense foods

If you answered it from an ancestral perspective, “How much?” CHO is largely a function of what was available (where you lived, what time of year it was). From a biochemical perspective, you don’t need much, if any, carbohydrate to survive. If you’re trying to find the conditions under which your body operates optimally, fuel your crossfitting, and achieve a health and body composition goals, then you should be looking at CHO not as your primary source of fuel – that’s the role of fat (next post). You should be looking for sources of CHO that are very dense sources of the micronutrients—vitamins and minerals—that your body requires to utilize fuel (fat primarily), operate efficiently, and stave off diseases (cancers, immune, and others).

The parts highlighted from the 10 sacred words are sources of CHO: “Vegetables, meats, nuts/seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar.”

Notice there’s no grains, legumes (beans), or dairy in there. I’m going to defer to some excellent summaries of why these are non-optimal and in some cases detrimental sources of energy: Grain Manifesto, Dairy Manifesto, Peanut/Legume Manifesto.

This is what a batch of paleo food prep should look like

Daily DLG’s & Colorful Vegetables

Every day your consumption of CHO should be a base of dark leafy green vegetables (DLG’s, recall?) and a variety of different colored vegetables. This ensures a daily intake of all vitamins and minerals and plenty of antioxidants because lots of color = variety of vitamins/minerals. The GL or insulin-spiking effect of DLG’s is almost none.

DLG’s are: Extremely nutrient-dense, tasty, varied, versatile, delicious multivitamins in the form of plants. The most nutrient-dense and important of the DLGs are: turnip greens, bok choy, collard greens, kale,  parsley, mustard greens, broccoli, brussel sprouts, and asparagus (in decreasing order of calcium content). Other DLG’s that contain oxalates (inhibit absorption of the calcium they contain, but still important) are: chards (swiss, rainbow) and spinach. There are many others not listed here, but these are the ones most available and nutrient dense.

Combine this with the hundreds of colorful other vegetables, herbs and spices, recipes and your creativity, and the options are literally limitless. Every trip to the grocery store should include 1-2 types of DLG’s and 2-3 different colors of vegetables, and a new vegetable or herb/spice you haven’t tried. The only area to watch out for would be nightshades. When introducing or eliminating a food, always do so one at a time and for 2-3 weeks at least to be sure it’s that food causing a problem.

Avocado is a low-GL fruit packed with micronutrients and high-quality fats. You can top almost anything with avocado to make it taste better.

What about ‘starch’ and fruit?

‘Starch’ in the paleo sense means starchy vegetables. These include squashes (butternut, acorn, yellow, spaghetti, delicata, pumpkin, kabocha), zucchini (Italian squash), roots and tubers (parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets, sweet potatoes, radishes). Squashes are very easy to make delicious (bake at 400F until oozing sugar and very soft ~45-5 5min; pre-glaze with herbs/oil optional).

If you haven’t yet achieved the body composition you want, or if you have signs of insulin-resistance-related disease, you’ll want to eat fruits in moderation, especially high-GL ones which tend to be tropical varieties of fruit. Check out Cordain’s summary of fruit and its role with insulin.

How much?

If you haven’t yet achieved the body composition you want, or if you have signs of insulin-resistance-related disease, you’ll want to try manipulating the higher-GL foods in your paleo diet after you’ve eliminated very low-quality CHO sources (processed foods, grains, beans, rice, breads, pastas, flour-based goods). After those have been eliminated, then starchy sources and fruit intake should be manipulated (high DLG intake stays the same).  Fruit and starchy sources of CHO are often too high among most new Paleo eaters with health/body composition issues due to convenience, and taste.

Total grams CHO in the range of 50-100 grams (with plentiful DLG’s and variety colorful veggies) will significantly aid fat loss. Once you’ve achieve body composition goals, 50-150 grams/day is the maintenance range depending on your own personal chemistry (insulin-sensitivity, blood-sugar control) and activities (endurance activities require slightly more pre- and PWO intake).

A key strategy for body fat loss is reducing high-GL CHO intake and/or shifting it into your post-workout (PWO) meal. Eat starchy vegetables (sweet potato, squash, root/tuber vegetables) PWO for better recovery regardless of body fat goals. Use starchy vegetables and fruits during and post-sport or activities lasting longer than 1 hour. Here’s a PWO reference based on body fat % created by OPT that I copy/pasted into an old PWO post.

Try reducing high-glycemic-load fruit intake outside the PWO window or replacing it with lower-GL sources of fruit for a while. It should go without saying that packaged, concentrated sources of carbohydrate (e.g. Larabars, dried fruit, honey, agave, molasses, etc.) are included in this category and are usually far inferior sources of vitamins/minerals. Also, especially once you’ve weaned yourself from the low-quality CHO, beware of the carb binge; check out Whole 9′s guide to cheating.

Examples

To give you an idea of how many grams CHO a standard paleo meal amounts to, here’s an example of a PWO meal for a female with 18% body fat using OPT’s PWO meal recommendations:

1 c raw kale (you’d massage w/oil/herbs for flavor) ~ 7 g CHO
1/4 c cubed baked sweet potato ~ 8 g CHO
4.5 oz grass-fed beef ~ 0 g CHO

Here’s a simple recipe I use when I need something tasty to take in a container on the run:

CHO on the go

CHO To-go
Steam on low for 5 mins (until *just* wilted): 1 bunch DLG leaves (my favorite is kale), 1T lemon juice + 1tsp dried herbs (chives, oregano), sprinkle lemon pepper, melt 1t raw goat butter (my newest obsession – get it at Sprouts),  1t coconut or olive oil over it. If you have more time, first sautee onions/zucchini/peppers/carrots/other colorful veggies first in oil with crushed garlic and herbs before adding the above ingredients.

Egg/Veggie Quiche recipe variation:

A slice of easy-to-make veggie-loaded egg quiche with no-sugar-added salsa

WOD 6/2/2010

A. Bench Press 5-5-5

B. For time:

35 Pull-ups
5 Slam ball
200M Run
25 Pull-ups
15 Slam ball
200M Run
15 Pull-ups
25 Slam ball
200M Run
5 Pull-ups
35 Slam ball
200M Run