To Crossfit or not to Crossfit ?

Hey There!

I think that almost everyone has heard of Crossfit once in a while? For me it seems like everybody is following this hype, especially here in Luxembourg where this sport is still very new! 

But I asked myself the question if Crossfit is really good for you or not? 

Before I give you my opinion about Crossfit, you need to know what we are talking about. You can do Crossfit as a sport or as a training modality to achieve various individual goals.

If you do Crossfit as a sport, you might be using it to achieve an aesthetic goal or to improve your health. Usually you have worked your ass off and earned certain skills so that you can make it to the Crossfit Games. 

You might also be a 'weekend warrior' who is searching for a new challenge on the weekends to escape the monotony of daily life. So you only want to switch off the world for a while and don't even think about competing in Crossfit games.

Here are some of the benefits of Crossfit:

• Program led by a trainer:

The workouts are led by a certified coach providing individual instructions and personalized goals. This is a good alternative for people who don't have enough money to pay for a personal-trainer at the gym for example. So it's not only coached but money-saving too!

• Total Body Improvement:

A lot of people don't know how to train to get a full-body fitness, so they hit the gym by hopping on the treadmills and stair-masters or by doing circuits around the machines. But they will end up missing some component of fitness : Flexbility, muscular power, balance and agility. Crossfit programs are designed to hit every area of your body and enable participants to become an all-around athlete.

• Social benefits:

Another advantage of Crossfit is that you stick to the group and get to learn the people working out there, which improves your motivation and makes it easier for you to stick to your program. While you develop friendships at your Crossfit Club you also develop rivalries, unconsciously, which will push you to work harder and you keep showing up at the Club. I've heard some people even talk about their ,,Crossfit Tribe''.

But Crossfit also has some disadvantages, let's have a look:

• Almost everyone can become a Crossfit coach:

Unfortunately, I've read this alot. Not every Crossfit trainer is created equally. You can become a Crossfit Trainer by attending a two day certification and passing a test , but without having a well-developped background in training nor coaching. Once you've been certified, you are free to open up your own affiliate with no quality control enforcement. So get to know your trainer at your local club before signing up and ask him or her about his certification , experience and background in sports and ask to get a free-testing-class before you commit to a membership.

• Overtraining:

Another problem with Crossfit is that you easily get 'addicted' ,which is usually a good thing. But if you already feel guilty about missing one single workout and you feel that you get real obsessed with this kind of sport, take a step backwards. Workouts should fuel your life, but your life shouldn't fuel workouts. You should get a balance between all this to get a full picture of health. ( You may checkout my post about over-training HERE) 

• Risk of injuries:

As you may know, competition breeds injuries, in most cases. One of the biggest disadvantages about Crossfit is that it easily leeds to injuries. The problem is not that the movements performed during Crossfit are 'bad' , it is just that many of the movement require a baseline level of strength, flexibility and power.  I know that every movement or exercise can be personally scaled to a person's fitness level, but it gets hardly realized. If there are a lot of people having a very high fitness level, well then logically the weaker ones try to keep up with them and are likely to hurt themselves, because they lack in correct form due to the set time limits.

On one hand I think that Crossfit is not only a good way to keep yourself in shape or get the hot body you want, as you are training every single part of your body, but it is also very money-saving as you don't have to pay a personal trainer. You are surrounded by people with whom you easily get in touch and even start to develop friendships because you have the same passion, which makes it easier for you to stick to the program.

But on the other hand I have to say that you can hurt yourself easily if you push yourself too much , or if you want to compete with others of your club who might have a higher fitness level than you. Furthermore I think that if you are new to fitness and weights you shouldn't start with Crossfit as a lot of exercises require a baseline level of strength, flexibility and power and the risk of hurting yourself is just too high as the trainer has to watch over the whole team and can't always keep an eye on every individual.

Good vs. Bad Fats

Good Morning everyone!

How often have you been told that a low-fat diet is the key to losing weight, managing cholesterol or preventing health problems? I bet more than once, right? But it is not only the amount of fat that you eat that matters, it is also the type of fat that matters. 

Bad fats increase cholesterol and the risk of certain diseases, whereas good fats actually protect your heart and support your overall health. Some fats are essential for physical and emotional health. In today's post I want show you the difference between good fats and bad fats.

Let's start with some common myths about fats:

• All fats are the same and are therefore bad for you:

FACT: The only fats which are bad for you are trans fats and some saturated fats because they raise your cholesterol and increase the risk of heart diseases. Whereas monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are good for you. They lower your cholesterol and reduce the risk of getting heart diseases.

• What matters the most is lowering the amount of fat you eat:

FACT: What matters most, when it comes to cholesterol and health, is the MIX of fats you eat, not the actual amount. The key is to eat more good fats and less bad fats.

• Healthy is equal fat-free:

FACT: Many fat-free foods are high in sugar , refined carbs and calories. So eating a lot of 'fat-free' products doesn't mean that you can eat as much as you want, if you care about your waistline.

• The key to weight-loss is a low-fat diet:

FACT: The only key to weight loss is cutting down on the calories you don't need. And since fats are filling, they can even help to curb overeating.

• Body fat is equal body fat:

FACT: Not every body fat is bad.What matters is where you carry your fat The health risks are bigger if you have body fat around your abdomen. A lot of belly fat, which is stored below your skin, and surrounding the abdominal organs like the liver , which is closely linked to insulin resistance and diabetes.

Here a list of the GOOD FATS:

• Monounsaturated fats:

- Olive oil

- Canola oil

- Sunflower oil

- Peanut oil

- Sesame oil

- Avocados

- Olives

- Nuts like almonds, peanuts, macadamia, hazelnuts , pecans and cashews

- Peanut-butter

• Polyunsaturated fats:

- Soybean oil

- Corn oil

- Safflower oil

- Walnuts

- Sunflower,sesame and pumpkin seeds

- Flaxseed

- Fatty fish like salmon, tuna , mackerel, herring, trout and sardines

- Soy milk

- Tofu

These fats are GOOD for you as they protect and improve your heart, your cholesterol and your overall health. 

Here a list of the EVIL FATS:

• Trans fats:

- Commercially-baked pastries, cookies, donuts, muffins, cakes, pizza dough

- Packaged snack foods like crackers, microwave popcorn and chips

- Stick margarine

- Fried food like french fries, fried chicken, chicken nuggets or breaded fish

- Candy bars

And a list of rather QUESTIONABLE FATS:

• Saturated fats:

- High-fat cuts of meat from beef, lamb or pork

- Chicken with the skin

- Whole-fat dairy products like milk and cream

- Butter

- Cheese

- Ice cream 

- Pam and coconut oil

How many fats do you actually need?

This actually depends on your lifestyle, your weight, your age and most of all the state of your health. This is what the USDA recommends:

- Keep your total fat intake to 20-35% of your calories

- Limit saturated fats to less than 10% of your calories, which would make 200 calories for a 2.000 calorie diet.

- Limit trans fats to 1% of your calories, this would make 2 grams per day for a 2.000 calorie diet.

Now if you want to cut down on the bad fats, I got some good alternatives for you.

- Butter             ->               Olive oil

- Cheese            ->               Low-fat or reduced-fat cheese

- Red meat        ->               White meat (chicken or turkey)

- Cream            ->                Egg whites, and egg substitute or tofu

- Ice cream        ->                Frozen yogurt or reduced fat ice cream

- Whole milk    ->                Skim or 1% milk

- Sour cream     ->                Plain or non-fat yogurt

Fitspiration

Hey you!

Who doesn't know this situation: You are looking at your calendar and realize that not even half of the week is over but you already feel so tired that you want to switch to the weekend immediately. I feel like this today and I thought  scrolling a bit through Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr certainly helps to motivate myself and of course you. Here's some fitspiration and motivational quotes by my favorite lifters.
When reading quotes by Arnold Schwarzenegger, ' The Rock' , Jason Statham and many others, I am getting so motivated that I could get in the car immediately and lift some heavy sh** at the gym!

Let's see if I can motivate you too with these quotes:

What is your source for your daily fitspiration?

Lifting Myth Nr.2

2. The more and the longer you workout, the better:

I know that if you work more and harder in your career, you will grow your business and earn promotions, if you spend more time with your friends and family you will build stronger relationships and if you practice longer and more intense on your golf swing well you will probably shave strokes off your game.

But this doesn’t work with exercise and weight lifting. If you over train your body it is rather counterproductive. Most people are aware of this concept, but they are not aware about how fast overtraining can happen.

When I am at the gym, I see people overtraining all the time. The guys who pump up their muscles for about 2 hours, the girls that go to every Zumba and body attack class in one evening. They wonder why their muscles don’t grow bigger or stronger or why they don’t lost the weight they want.

They may be thinking that the longer they workout and the more classes they take the faster they will reach their goals. But that’s not how it works.

Overtraining is the result of an imbalanced Work/Recovery relation. When you put too much stress on your body and don’t give it the needed rest-time then various undesirable things can happen.

Some of the common side effects are:

• Chronic fatigue
• Depression
• Underperformance

But they are not always that extreme or obvious. Some of them aren’t that heavy :

• You simply can’t finish a proper workout:

When your body is over trained, you can’t lift the weights you usually lift, because you don’t have enough energy. You will feel progressively weaker, slower and more lethargic.

• You are getting fatter despite training hard:

Your hormones get thrown out of whack. Testosterone levels plunge and cortisol levels rise, which causes catabolism (the breakdown of muscle tissue) and increases insulin resistance and fat deposition. The result: you train harder and harder but get fatter instead of more fit.

• You are training hard everyday of the week:

Unless you have Wolverine’s gift of regeneration I recommend to take at least 2 days off weights per week and schedule at least 1 day of absolutely no exercising at all.

What I like to do is lifting weights from Monday to Friday and doing some cardio on Saturday, which leaves Sunday as a complete rest day.

You can play with this as much as you want so long as you take two days off weights and have one day of complete rest.

• You are restless at night and have trouble sleeping:

If you do a lot of aerobic exercise and are over trained, your sympathetic nervous system can remain excited at all times, which leaves you restless at night and causes a disturbed and broken sleep.

• You have pains in your joints, bones or limbs:

That’s one of the first things I notice when I approach the point of being over trained. My back starts to ache, then my knees and then my hip. Actually it takes 8 to 10 weeks of intense training before repetitive stress happens and that’s the moment where I take a whole week off to let my body recover.

• You get sick more often than usual:

If you take care of you immune system, don’t eat too much sugar and give your body the vitamins it needs, but still get little coughs, sniffles sinus pressure or headaches, you may be overtraining. Take a rest week and let your immune system recover.

• You feel drained and crappy after what normally would be a good workout:

Normally I feel so good after working out, but when I get closer to the point of overtraining I feel more and more miserable after every workout. Working out should increase your mood. If you are feeling bad instead, well you may be overtraining and you should take some rest.

If you only experience one of the symptoms I listed, it won’t be an indicator of over training. But if you notice several of these symptoms, then chances are pretty high that you need to take a rest week and give your body the recovery it needs.

Getting a proper amount of sleep could help (7 to 8 hours per night) as well as a proper diet which provides your body with everything it needs to repair itself.

Listen to your body to avoid the incredibly frustrating and discouraging trap of overtraining.

Sincerely, your Lifting Fairy