Fueling Your Workout: Lessons Learned from a Strong Chic in Training

I have a confession to make, and this confession may sound silly considering I am a fairly educated person when it comes to nutrition. After all, I AM a Beyond Organic Health Coach and primal/paleo diet nerd. But alas, I must admit that yours truly was suffering from a bad case of under eating over the past week and a half. To be honest, I didn’t even realize I was under eating until I matched my workouts with my food logs and noticed that my macronutrients across the board had to be doubled. Yep, DOUBLED!

In this blog post you’re going to see how I have been eating over the past two days to give you an idea of how absolutely essential it is for you to INCREASE YOUR FOOD INTAKE when it comes to the INCREASE IN YOUR DEMANDING WORKOUTS (emphasis added to make a VERY STRONG POINT! :-p) Before I show you my food logs, let me first show you the two workouts I have done this week that were designed by mastermind RKC II, Kerry Swick of Pittsburgh Kettlebells. 

WORKOUT A

 1. C lean and press ladder 12 kg single arm 1-4 rep each side for 10 min

(1,1, 2, 2, 3,3, etc)

2.  12 kg – snatch and hold lockout for 5 seconds.  Do 3 rep on each side

3. Regular snatches – intervals:  snatches for 45 sec, rest 15, change hands. Do this for 5 min if you can then work your way up to 7 or 8 min.

Note: on this workout I completed 7 clean and press ladders per arm which translated to 70 clean and presses each arm (140 total). Also, I did 6 minutes of snatches and totaled 125 snatches at the end of six minutes. 

WORKOUT B

 1. Get-ups just to sitting 3-5 rep each side.  Take a second at elbow then at sitting to make sure KB arm is locked and shoulder is still packed.  Do as much as you can for 10 min.  Rest as needed.

 2.Front squats – 2-12kg 6-8 reps. Alternate with rows 16 kg 6-8 rep for 15 min

 3.One hand swing intervals:  12-16 kg

R hand 30 sec, rest 30 sec

L hand 30 sec, rest 30 sec

Work up to 10 minutes

Note: On this workout I did 4 reps of half get ups each arm and did a total of 8 rounds per arm. That equals 32 half get ups each side (total of 64 half get ups). I also did 7 front squats per set followed by 7 rows. I did 12 rounds of this, totalling 84 double 12kg front squats and 84 16 kg rows per arm. Finally, I did 8 minutes of one arm 16 kg swings and did a total of 164 swings (82 per arm). 

Might I add, what you are looking at above is a RKC certification workouts. These routines ARE NOT EASY! And that’s real talk, ya heard?

Now, enter ye nutrition. Last week I had done the above routines and started feeling what I like to call “funky in the head.” I was getting incredibly fatigued after my workouts (a little fatigue is normal, but feeling completely zonked isn’t good) and started noticing myself becoming noticeably anxious (which is really odd for me). Not to mention I was waking up at odd hours of the night with an interesting bit of hunger. Not good. Not good at all. And this whole issue had me looking back over my food logs. At first, I thought it was not enough protein, Then I thought not enough carbs. I shot off my food logs to a trainer friend of mine who pointed out I wasn’t eating enough fats. So what was it?

EVERYTHING!

I realize that there are people out there that will say that the body functions better on less of a caloric load, and I will most certainly agree with the fact that the average american eats far too much of the wrong calories 90 percent of the time (this is my opinion at least). However, there comes a point in time when you have to start fueling your body to sustain demanding workloads. Yours truly has learned this lesson the hard way.

So, after realizing my mere 1600 ish caloric intake (give or take 100) of not so balanced eating, I decided to incorporate the dietary recommendations from the athletic performance section of “Pracitcal Paleo” by Diane Sanfilippo (P.S. if you are a hardcore athlete who is a paleo enthusiast, PLEASE GET THIS BOOK! It has helped me immensely this week with regards to my training. I cannot speak highly enough of it. Changes in how good you will feel can happen within DAYS). Here’s what my food totals look like now.

Food Totals for Workout A

Food Totals for Workout B: