CrossFit East Bay Rest Day 091110 - A month in the Zone

When I first pitched the idea of a monthlong dietary experiment with the Zone Diet to my highly dubious wife, here was my basic angle:  "It'll just be thirty days.  We'll do it as strictly as we can and we'll completely blow it out on Halloween."  As it turns out, this is exactly what happened.  So how was it? 

Well, I can pretty safely say it was an unqualified success for both of us, well beyond anything we were expecting or hoping for.  Frankly, it has been astonishing to me.  The most noticeable change has been much higher energy levels, which has translated to much greater intensity in workouts, shorter rest requirements and far better times on the metcons (I knocked 2:30 off the Fran time I set in June).  This has come at no noticeable detriment to strength (Rebecca just matched or exceeded all of her previous strength PR's in this week's OT and CFT) or body composition (we both lost a couple pounds, but nothing dramatic).

There was a period of adjustment.  While I did ok with my 16 blocks, Rebecca started out too low with 11 blocks.  We were both feeling hungry a lot, but her hunger was more intense than mine: it affected her mood powerfully, and she was feeling underfueled in her workouts.  Bumping up a block and doubling her fat blocks fixed the problem right up, though, and her performance took off almost immediately.  The first couple weeks were also annoying with all the weighing and measuring, but (just as everyone said would happen), once we established a stable of recipes we really like that fit zone proportions, it got much easier.  And we've found some really delicious meals.

Halloween was interesting.  True to the original plan, we completely threw the diet out the window for the day.  We went to Rudy's for lunch and had french fries, french toast, and a shake.  We indulged in chocolate, candies, cookies and alcohol throughout the day and evening.  I had anticipated that I might pay a price for this indulgence, but just as I didn't appreciate how beneficial the Zone would be, I also did not appreciate how bad it would be to stop.  I felt awful.  My entire digestive system was in painful revolt, my head was thick and achey, my breathing felt shallow.  By the end of the day, I couldn't believe how eager I was to go to sleep so I could wake up and just eat some...oatmeal.  Lesson learned.

Looking forward, we are definitely staying on this path.  We still cook from our menu of zoned meals, and still come up with new ones.  Maybe with a bit less OCD about the weighing and measuring in the meals we cook, but we both have gotten pretty good about estimating and assembling zone meals of the right size in our heads, even when eating out.

And as always, the emphasis is on quality of ingredients.  Side story:  at some point last month, we went for a hike with my parents that we realized we were underprepared for - we only had a two-block snack of jerky, nuts and fruit in our packs for a full-day hike.  So we stopped off at a Whole Foods and picked up a couple Clif Builder bars, which (as it happens) are just about a perfectly-proportioned 3-block meal.  The trouble was, they didn't feel at all satisfying, compared to the jerky snacks - they just had too much sugar and other bad ingredients.  Another lesson learned.

So now Gita's happy, because the month is over and I'll finally shut up about the Zone after this post (no promises, man), but my final word is this:  try it.  Quit putting roadblocks and silly excuses in your way and just do the damn thing for a month.  Everyone's different, so I can't promise that it will work miracles for you, but I do know that the risk is so low and the potential gain is so great, that you'd be a fool not to at least give it a shot.

As always, let me know if you have any questions or need any help setting your diet up.