Compliant

I used to work with a nutrition coach. I think working one-on-one with a coach is helpful, especially when you are new to flexible dieting and need someone to prescribe you some macros. My biggest frustration with coaching was that I didn't feel accountable. I either hit my macros each day or I didn't. The most important part of any diet is consistency and so most of the time I didn't have much to say during my check-ins. By the end I was getting frustrated because it felt like I was becoming a guinea pig for things she learned about, such as carb-cycling. I got this email about intermittent fasting and carb-cycling the first week of the 2016 CrossFit Open. The last thing I wanted to do before 5 weeks of competition was fuck around with my carbs. Ultimately, I decided to part ways with my nutrition coach because she started posting about "upleveling her business," which I think means she automated most of her content. My best advice to internet entrepreneurs is to avoid sending emails to your current clients about how you changed your program so that it can be mass-produced, ultimately undermining the very product your clients originally purchased.

Anyway, I kicked around the idea of getting a new coach. I tried to map out my own reverse diet and freaked out because I felt I was getting fat. I was researching coaches because of this freak out when I happened to listen to a podcast with Layne Norton, PhD, aka Biolayne. He talked about his company Avatar Nutrition and the cost of $10 a month seemed more than reasonable. About a month later, I signed up.

For the first time since I started tracking food (back in 2009), I feel like I have a system of being accountable because I weigh in each week AND I have to check a box saying if I was compliant or non-compliant with my macros during that week. I wasn't compliant for the first three weeks of using AN, and then I started feeling pretty dumb about that. I'm really good at weighing and tracking food. I'm really good at eyeballing portions. Why did I keep saying fuck it and ruining my progress? Well, I had gotten myself into a habit of just moving on to the next day. And if you have more fuck it days than compliant days, you're not moving towards your goals.

144.8 lbs on August 2, 2017

My boyfriend, who I treat as my own guinea pig, ate a relatively healthy but low calorie diet when we met. He ate lean meats, fruits, and vegetables but almost no starchy or complex carbs. (He ate like I used to eat.) He ran and did Bikram yoga. (Sound familiar yet?) He enjoys vodka. (Just a little familiar?) He tried CrossFit and fell in love with it. (You caught me. I somehow managed to date myself but in the attractive 6'2" with blue eyes model. Thank you Jesus.) I have tried to share my flexible dieting/macro knowledge with him because I love him... and because I am really interested in finding out what happens when a person goes from under-eating "healthy foods" and doing cardio to doing CrossFit but skips the whole OMFG I love bacon and eat it at every meal stage. Unfortunately trying to teach him how to track alcohol as carbs or fats or both during our third date didn't go over so well. (Shocking, I know.) Recognizing that he thought I was full of nonsense, I signed us up for an Own Your Eating nutrition seminar at my box. As we sat together enjoying tacos afterwards, I felt validated when he told me they didn't teach us anything that I hadn't already told him. Except now he actually believes me.

I liked the Own Your Eating people, but their formula is probably the least personalized method of calculating macros that I have come across. What I really like about Avatar Nutrition is that it uses your data to recalculate your macros every week. Depending on your goal setting and your compliancy, you will keep the same numbers for another week, receive a decrease, or receive an increase. Today I got to hit compliant again and I got an increase in my both my fats and carbs. It's a great way to start off the weekend, especially with tonight's CrossFit Games viewing party.

Avatar Nutrition followers use a scorecard to determine if we were compliant that week. Game changer. I usually go out to dinner with my Mikes on Friday nights. Think boozy steak-filled dinners. I hit my protein but go over my fats and carbs. I have to be really diligent about hitting my prescribed numbers the other six days, and I've occasionally had to shave off some fats from Sunday to compensate. But this is okay because I am doing it intentionally. I'm not punishing myself for overeating. And the scorecard has shown me that I don't have to reduce that much to still be compliant. Goodbye binge and restrict cycles!

Avatar Nutrition scorecard for this past week.

I don't receive any compensation for referring people to Avatar Nutrition. I'm just extremely happy with the service and highly recommend it.