Workout of the Day:
Complete every two minutes for as long as possible:
150 Meter Sprint and
10 Sumo Deadlift High-Pulls (95/65 lbs.)
 

A Month With No Dairy, Part 2
Written by Mark Riebel 

In part one of this post, I showed some of the objective results from my month-long experiment of no milk or dairy products. In this post, I’d like to share some of my subjective findings and offer my conclusions.

The hard part of recording anything subjective is that it’s, well, subjective. Did I feel really good, or was it just a little better than yesterday? Was that the strongest I’d really ever felt? Maybe I actually slept worse three nights ago. Regardless, here are some of the things I noted. 

My sleep seemed to be of a little better quality, in that I feel like I need less caffeine to make it through the work day, and I drag my heels a little less. Granted, my back is finally starting to feel normal, so it may just be that I’m not waking as much in the middle of the night with pain. My workouts seemed about the same, with a little improvement in how I felt. I didn’t feel particularly energized or smoked during my WODs, though my performance seemed to tick up a bit. I think my body fat may have dropped slightly, though I didn’t have a measurement before and after to really check. I did notice that my food choices when eating out were a little limited or had to be modified at most restaurants. Dairy just seems to creep up all over the place. 

Despite these small changes in my feelings and measurable qualities, it often can be a bigger shock to the system on reintroduction of the substance, much like what I’ve noticed with grains and alcohol. The body gets used to a low-level of crappiness that you don’t notice until it’s been gone for a while. So that’s what I had to find out with dairy. So what happened when I reintroduced it? Nothing significant. I was hoping for something, but I felt just the same. My smoothies tasted a hell of a lot better now that I had put the milk back in, but other than that, it was pretty much static. I have noticed that I get very dehydrated when I eat a few pieces of cheese, though that’s more due to the significant amounts of salt typically in cheese that I don’t have on a regular basis due to the Paleo diet.

So the experiment ended with no earth-shattering results, but that’s often how experiments end. I think dairy has a place in one’s diet, particularly if you’re looking to gain a little mass or are looking for convenience and taste. If you’re having trouble dropping a few stubborn pounds, cut out the dairy and see how it affects you. I don’t consume quite as much dairy as I used to, but it still represents several of my daily protein blocks, my performance has stayed up, and I no longer have to refuse the creamsicle dip.  That’s a winning situation all around.

Workout of the Day:
Complete for time rounds of 15, 12 and 9 repetitions of:
225 lb. Back Squat
Handstand Push-Ups

A Month With No Dairy, Part 1
Written by Mark Riebel

As you may remember, I wrote a blog post in January extolling the benefits of milk and other dairy products, followed by a well-written rebuttal from Calvin. While I had done a good deal of reading about the role of dairy in diet, I had no personal experience with a dairy-free diet. I had consumed dairy regularly since I was a child, so I didn’t know what it was like to go dairy-free and felt that made me a bit one-sided. If I recommend personal experimentation to clients and members, I have to do the same. With that, I decided that for the month of February I would consume no dairy products.

I tend to eat a pretty similar day-to-day diet, and this dropped me from an average of 8 to 10 servings of dairy a day to zero. I went strict Paleo/Zone at 25 blocks and 5X fat, kept my vitamin intake the same with the exception of a daily vitamin D supplement (as per Cordain’s suggestion), and my training was typical CF hard work. For the whole month I ate dairy only twice—once at a restaurant on an omelet that I ordered with no cheese (I was half way done before I noticed), and once with a serving of Michele’s creamsicle dip (it was worth it). I took notes on how I felt and had some blood work done to try and get an objective look at it rather than just my opinion.

I’ll start with the objective numbers. My body weight stayed exactly the same. I’m pretty much 200±2 pounds like clockwork, but that’s to be expected when you’re eating the same number of blocks every day. My performance was about the same, with a little improvement. Thinking back now, I should’ve performed a specific benchmark WOD before and after, but hindsight is always 20/20. The cost of food did go up a little, but only because of my use of egg protein powder in my smoothies vice whey. If you do the numbers, just buying meat and eggs is actually a bit cheaper than milk and other dairy. Time in the kitchen did go up quite a bit, as I had to prepare more meat, sweet potatoes, and yams instead of just grabbing some milk. Here are my blood results:

                                                Zone                          Paleo/Zone
Blood marker                22-Oct-09                       26-Feb-09            Change
Glucose                                 82                                      41                         -41
Triglyceride                           23                                      42                          19
Cholesterol                           147                                     127                      -20
HDL                                      57                                       57                          0
LDL                                       86                                       62                       -24

My fasting glucose went down by half. I think this is explained by my upping my fats slightly, which shifted me over to lipids as the bulk of my body’s fuel. I believe this also explains the increased trigylcerides. The cholesterol numbers are a bit more along what I would expect from a lower saturated fat intake, and may represent the most significant measurable change that I experienced. I’m not a blood specialist, so these assessments may not be as simple as I’ve made them.

In part two, I’ll discuss my subjective, or less measurable, results as well as my conclusions.

Workout of the Day:
Complete two power cleans on the minute, every minute, for 25 minutes. Record and report the total amount of weight you clean during the 25 minutes.
The challenge:  Can you clean 10,000 lbs. in this workout?

Alcohol and Recovery
By Calvin Sun

The weekend is finally here. With another week of intense training under your belt, it’s probably time to have a hard-earned beer. Or not. Besides leaving you hungover, fat, and in a potentially regrettable sleeping arrangement with a complete stranger, alcohol can severely impact your body’s ability to recover from the beating you have dealt it during the week. 

In addition to hindering your ability to make good decisions, alcohol can inhibit the repair processes that occur at the cellular level. Penn State’s College of Medicine conducted a study that found acute alcohol intoxication can severely inhibit protein synthesis in both muscle tissue and the liver. Protein synthesis is essential to biological functions and plays a critical role in the growth and repair of your muscles. Compared to a placebo, protein synthesis was decreased by 39% in skeletal muscle and in the liver it was decreased by 21%. They also found that alcohol consumption caused “myocyte degeneration, loss of striations, and myofilament dissolution.” In other words, it means alcohol causes muscles to deteriorate. 

You don’t have to become intoxicated in order to achieve such results either. Researchers at Penn State also found that chronic consumption of alcohol can lead to decreased protein synthesis as well as a condition known as myopathy. Myopathy is a general term for a class of muscular disease which includes rhadomyolysis. Myopathy causes muscle tissue dysfunctions, common symptoms include cramps, stiffness, and weakness, none of which are beneficial to a serious athlete. There are actually case reports of people who have been admitted to hospitals for alcohol-induced rhabdo. I have seen several cases of localized rhabdo in experienced CrossFitters that consume alcohol during intense training cycles. If you are serious about your performance, I would not recommend consuming any alcohol. If you really must drink, consume in moderation and try limiting your alcohol consumption after workouts that involve high-volume rep schemes or heavy eccentric loads.