You are a sugar zombie and your addicted body has taken over your mind.

You are a sugar zombie and your addicted body has taken over your mind.  Quite literally, if you consume sugar in any quantity, your body has actually taken control of your mind.

If you eat sugar, your mind is not your own.  If you eat sugar, your physical needs for this drug outweigh ALL mental requirements.  So if you know you need to go to the gym and you need to eat clean and you need to avoid certain foods and you need to 'think more positively', until sugar is completely out of your system, your body will not allow your mind to succeed. 

When I started my CrossFit journey, I was eating strict paleo.  I'm not talking 80%/20%, I mean strict 100% all the time.  I ate meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, seeds and nuts.  No sugar.  No dairy.  No grains (no rice, wheat, pasta, cakes, pastry or bread). No legumes (pulses, beans.lentils etc.). I didn't drink alcohol.

I felt amazing.  All the time.  Genuinely.  I didn't ever feel like I was depriving myself.  I was full of energy, I didn't have that 2pm slump, I felt well, alert, clear-minded and happy.  Genuinely felt great all the time.

After 2 years of eating like this, I slipped into adding sugar back into my diet.  It was a gradual decline over 2 years.

I have some perspective now on those two years.  I was way more tired.  Workouts in the gym felt hard - I was sluggish, I felt heavy.  My cardio suffered.  I struggled to think clearly about things.  I genuinely couldn't think straight.  My mind felt foggy and I found it difficult to make good decisions, especially when it came to food choices but also as far as emotional responses to situations.  Things that I could have handled before then became insurmountably hard.  I wasn't depressed but I was frustrated and angry and incredibly negative a lot of the time.

I know it sounds extreme to suggest food was responsible for my state of mind but going on the evidence I have, it's the only variable that changed.

Just before Christmas 2017, I started feeling exhausted, especially after I ate something heavy on starchy carbs or sugar.  It got to the point where, if I ate some chocolate (and I'm not talking your 95% single origin Ecuadorian stuff, I'm talking cheap nasty, vegelate with double the sugar required) I would be asleep inside 10 minutes.

So, having made myself reactively hypoglycemic, 2 weeks before Christmas, I decided enough was enough.  Gave up sugar again, cold turkey, gave up most starchy carbs.  Back on the paleo.

What have I noticed?

Everything is better!  I am more alert, less foggy-minded, less tired, no more crashing on the sofa after meals.  While my performance in the gym does reflect the fact that I am 46 years old and a bit lazy, I feel so much stronger, my cardio has improved massively in that I don't feel half as out of breath mid-workout as I used to and bodyweight movements like pullups and burpees feel way, way easier. But more than that, I feel positive!

I feel mentally more cheerful about everything!

What has changed since Christmas?  My job is the same, my family is the same, the weather is the same, my nutrition is different.

Sugar is to blame for how you feel mentally.  
Sugar is to blame for how you feel physically.

You think you don't eat much sugar because you don't add spoonfulls of table sugar to your tea or cereal?  You're wrong. Starchy carbs (like cereal and bread) are converted to sugar and anyway, most cereals have added sugar!

If you eat a lot of rice, pasta, bread, pastry, beans, processed food - albeit savoury - you are addicted to sugar.

Addicts lack the ability to think clearly because their bodies are on a constant mission to stay normal (homeostasis) by getting more of what they crave, be that heroin or sugar.  

If your body has a purpose higher than yours (homeostasis) it will take control of your mind to force you onto its own path so it can get what it needs.  
Sugar makes your brain into a zombie controlled by your body.

For example - while my diet was bad, I would drive to the gym to train (my mental pathway that was good for me) and on the way stop at a petrol station to get something to eat - it was a compulsion (my body controlling my zombified mind).  I couldn't not stop at the petrol station.  It genuinely was as if I had no control over my actions and when I got to the petrol station, they didn't sell paleo things there and as my brain was literally sabotaging my efforts in order to satisfy it's physical requirement for sugar, I would get a sandwich and a sugary snack.  
I literally could not stop myself.  I could not think straight.

Now that the sugar is out of my system (it literally only takes a few days) I am quite happy to have breakfast, go and coach then drive to where I train without eating again.  It just isn't an issue.  I have control over my brain again.

Try quitting sugar for 30 days and keep a record of how you feel and what you notice.  You need to stop eating processed foods and take-aways, you need to read all the ingredients on every label (although non-processed food has no ingredients list!) and you need to eat a lot of vegetables - like triple what you think.

If you cannot do this for just 30 days but still complain about feeling down, tired, stressed, out of control etc, then you need to seriously rethink your life!


Free your mind and the rest will follow!

If you have kids, you should be making them do CrossFit!

My kids - 1BC (one year before CrossFit)

I have three children, aged 16, 14 and 12 and while the other kids who come to Teens' CrossFit enjoy it, I have to force mine to do it twice a week. I imagine this is partly due to the fact that their mum runs the class and also to do with in intrinsic streak of laziness that (honestly) comes from me.

In this series of blog posts (starting with the previous one about why feminists should do CrossFit) I want to explain how different types of people benefit from CrossFit.


Firstly, you need to understand a little about my children; they are unique, of course, just like everyone else, but I'm hoping you might see similarities in yourself or your own kids.

My eldest son is, at his own admission, a bit of a nerd.  He really likes computer games and science.  He relates strongly to the characters in The Big Bang Theory and he doesn't go out much. He has recently discovered the joys of Dungeons and Dragons... He likes routine and he isn't hugely adventurous though I wouldn't say he was a nervous kid.  He suffered a little from anxiety in his transition from junior school to secondary school but more of that later.




My daughter is the middle child and, on the whole, delightful.  She is very competitive and though not vocal about it, very feminist. She flip-flops between worrying terribly about what others think of her and not caring in the slightest.  While, like a lot of teenage girls, she likes makeup and clothes, she has a very positive body image and once weighed herself, which had me recoiling in horror until I realised it was to discover what percentage of her body weight her deadlift was.  (It was 1.5x bw!) #proudmummoment




My youngest son is a free spirit.  He has been left to drag himself up a bit so knows his own mind, has strong opinions and at the same time is the least competitive and least adventurous of the three.  He is not a fussy eater and will eat almost anything just very, very little of it.  He seems never to be hungry so is pretty thin and when he lifts weights, you worry he might snap.  He has struggled in the past to back squat 6kg...

Each of my kids gets something different from their experiences at CrossFit. 


This video of my youngest, sums up one of the reasons I make him do CrossFit.  He did not believe he could do even one rep at this weight, he put it on his shoulders and said it felt heavy.  I repeated what my coach says to me when I say exactly that: 'Yes, it feels heavy but that doesn't mean you can't do it!' and he did 3.  Even though his knees are wider than his thighs when he squats, he has got stronger - he couldn't squat 6 kg a year ago and now he can squat 22.5kg for 3 reps.  This allows him to see the big picture.  It shows him that even though he might not see the results immediately, consistent behaviour yields results further down the line.





Jake is learning that it all takes effort and commitment and showing up and doing the work.  And in an age where everything is available to our kids via a screen in their pocket, 24/7/365, this is a powerful tool to give them some perspective on their lives.




My eldest son struggled a little with anxiety for a while and CrossFit helped him control it.  Mid way through a workout, you feel hot, sweaty and out of breath.  If you aren't used to this feeling, it can be a bit scary at first.  If these feelings mimic anxiety attacks, they can be even more scary.  So initially, we had to give Zack the get-out clause that he didn't have to do the hard fast bit of the workout but he had to do some strength work instead.  Gradually over time, he became less uncomfortable with being uncomfortable and in finding ways to manage how he felt in a workout, he was able to use these strategies when he felt anxious outside of the gym.  He no longer gets anxiety attacks.



My daughter (and my boys) are growing up in a dynamic time for feminism.  There is a lot of talk in the media about what is and isn't acceptable for women to expect.  Hopefully this generation of women will have a much more equal footing in the world but it is still set amongst a backdrop of institutionalised sexism and old-fashioned ideals.  I talked about implicit bias in the previous blogpost so I won't go into it again but CrossFit goes some way to mitigating residual inequalities.

My daughter gets to be regularly surrounded by men and women whose expectations of equality are very high.  The women she spends time with are strong, competent and confident and the men treat the women with respect.  There are no mirrors in our gym.  We never talk about diets or weight loss or body image.  We talk about what your body is capable of doing.  We talk about a positive mindset, commitment and hard work.

In an age where our children have it easy, where a lot of their aspirations end at 'being famous' or 'being rich' I think that forcing my kids to do something twice a week that gives them a sense of pride in their achievements, that makes them work hard to reach a goal, that is difficult and sometimes mentally and physically painful to do, that encourages them to be supportive and work as a team, that makes them have to dig deep to get through it is an incredibly valuable thing.

This is why I force my kids to do CrossFit twice a week.

How to really leave your ego at the door.

We hear it all the time in CrossFit.  Leave your ego at the door. Don't let arrogance get in the way of good form. You're only in competition with yourself!

Why is then that some of the biggest proponents of this ideal actually have the greatest difficulty adhering to its principles?  And what does it really mean to leave your ego at the door?

In order to answer that, we need to have a look at why we do CrossFit.  What is it that motivates us?

In the ideal world, we do CrossFit to become better versions of ourselves.  To get fitter, faster, stronger (both physically and mentally) and learn and hone new skills and generally become pretty bad-ass along the way.

In a lot of people there is an element of vanity - which is perfectly OK - if you eat right and train hard and regularly, CrossFit will deliver an awesome body.


For most people the community is a huge aspect of doing CrossFit.  It's what keeps us coming back but it's also a vital part of the whole thing - we make friends who understand what we are going through.  We make pretty serious bonds with people we have sweated, sobbed, screamed and laughed with.

For many, CrossFit is about health; improving or maintaining health for some, life-saving for others.

If we take all that together, CrossFit is just about making us better.  Better athletes, better people, or just making us more well.

So with that in mind, how does ego get in the way of that?

Choosing a weight that is inappropriately heavy for the wod because someone you are chasing went heavier.  Miscounting reps deliberately to get a better score.  Not going through the full range of motion because it's harder and takes longer. Picking a weight that is inappropriately light for the task in order to get more rounds and reps.  Faking or exaggerating an injury to get out of a wod or movement you hate. Working only on your strengths so you don't look rubbish at something in front of other people.

But mostly....worrying about the numbers on the board.

Let's take a look at the numbers on the board...You know what? They genuinely don't matter!

The sooner we can get that into our heads the better. They just don't matter.  Sure, it's nice to see that you went heavier than a rival or that you beat your score last time you did this wod but you just aren't ever comparing apples with apples. You are not the same as anyone else in the gym and you never will be. Someone else has more or less experience than you, weighs more or less than you, trains more often or less than you, has better or worse coordination than you, has more or fewer injuries than you, eats better or worse than you, slept better or worse than you....You are never going to ever look like or train like Rich Froning because, do you know what? You aren't Rich Froning.  All you have is you!

When you know the guy or girl who is always pretty strong in workouts didn't do as well as you expected in a wod, you don't think any less of them.  You might, for a fleeting moment, wonder if they were having a bad day or hadn't slept or eaten well or had a sore shoulder or were just taking it easy that day but you certainly don't consign them to the rubbish heap.  So why would you feel that way about yourself?  One bad workout does not make you shit.  Even a month or year of bad workouts doesn't make you shit.

Sometimes life gets in the way. 

Now let's start looking at the purpose of your workout.  Every day cannot be a test day, which means that the vast majority of the workouts you do are just a workout - just...
your training! 

Remember that!  The workouts you do on a daily basis are your training!


That means deviating to poor form just to get the reps in is idiotic because it won't make you stronger or fitter or faster - it will just hone your skills at being a bit shit.

The way to leave your ego at the door is to stop comparing and stop testing and 
start training!