Easy Healthy Tips & Tricks

It's mid January and  by now you have settled in to your new routine of eating healthly, getting to the gym on a regular basis and sleeping for eight hours a night, right?  With the winter weather in Powell, Ohio, it can certainly be easy to completely derail your goals. At ChalkDust CrossFit we value nutrition and want to help you reach your fitness and nutrition goals.  Here are some tips to help you keep in check:

Hide the Scale-At least for a little while.  The scale is an objective measure of progress but using it everyday can be counterproductive. Here's why: society has an obsession with the number on the scale.  You don't want your mood for the day to be tied to the bathroom scale.  Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is a process and one bad day can derail your progress.    We don't need to know our weight if we know how we feel.

Write down what you eat and be honest about how many calories you burn with your workouts.  Many of you have been doing a fantastic job of journalling your food at ChalkDust.  It has allowed us to provide feedback into your eating habits and triggers.  It is easy to over or underestimate the amount of food we are consuming.   Many of you are using journals or apps to help track your meals and sharing this information. Remember when adding in exercise, most of us are not elite athletes or large males so our actual calorie burn may be a little less then we think. 

Plan ahead. Food prep is essential for any nutrition plan.  The bottom line is hunger can lead to poor food choices.  Here in Powell, Ohio we are busy parents who work and manage a household full of children.  This can lead to drive-thru syndrome.  Don't succumb to it.  Prep your food for the week and make sure you always have a plan, especially for post workout meals.

And of course, variety is the spice of life.  That's the beauty of CrossFit.  Our bodies like routine and will adapt quickly to one.  For weight loss, it is better to keep your body challenged.  This helps keep your body and mind engaged in your goals.

-CHALKDUST