It’s not to get ridiculously fit (although that happens) or improve strength to body weight ratio and cardiovascular capacity (which happens too). No no, it is something much more basic and primal than that.

It’s to look good naked. Based on the overwhelming amount of evidence we have now, CrossFit does in fact help us look good naked. So in my books, it’s a pretty good reason.

But here is the crux of it. When someone decides on this and they walk into an affiliate off the street and tell the head coach they’d like to look good naked, I mean try a class, they are actually doing the easy part. CrossFit is the easy part of this equation. The much more difficult side of it is nutrition. It’s not actually that hard to go to a gym and do some strength work and a metcon every day. It takes about an hour and then you’re off to the office for the day or back at home watching the latest season of Shameless.The other 22.5 hours are hard.

It is hard to stop eating junk food. Especially if you are accustomed to eating it. Junk food for our purposes can be defined as any hyperpalatable food item that lends itself to over consumption. These foods usually contain high amounts of both carbs and fats and can be highly processed or not. Two good examples might be a donut (highly processed carbs and fats) or a loaded baked potato (less processed, still high in carbs and fats). When we incorporate these types of foods into our routine frequently, we start to have strong cravings for them when they go away.

I remember when I worked a summer internship at a lab about 30 minutes from my house. I made a habit out of stopping on the way in every day to get a chicken and egg biscuit (yes that is a thing). When the summer internship ended and I was back to my normal routine, I found myself having wild cravings for this specific biscuit, so much so that on a number of occasions I went out of my way to get one.

We are wired as animals in a very specific and very effective manner that ensured our survival for many thousands of years. Like all animals, our motivation comes from three things.

1. Avoid Pain (watch out for things that can kill us).

2. Seek Pleasure (eat, drink, and procreate).

3. Conserve Energy (maintain homeostasis, try to not burn off what we just ate).

These are strong neural pathways and they feed on repetition. Our senses are what tell us if we are doing a good job managing all of these. Fear protects us from pain, satisfaction tells us we are doing a good job finding pleasure, and feelings of tiredness and lacking motivation prevents us from overexerting ourselves.

All of our senses operate on a scale and calibrate based on what we are exposed to repeatedly. This happens acutely and chronically. An acute example would be what we experience when we turn a bathroom light on in the middle of the night and then try to return to our beds in the dark. All of a sudden, the room we could see perfectly well before our trip to the toilet is pitch black. More chronically, think about your sense of smell. Have you ever walked into someone’s house and noticed immediately a strong scent that is unfamiliar or off to you? It could be something cooking or perhaps a fresh Christmas tree. After a period of time in that house, you stop noticing the smell. This is called “sensory habituation” and is an example of the way we calibrate to what we are repeatedly exposed to.

We are going to focus on what happens with our pleasure seeking behavior when we are repeatedly exposed to an intense stimulus that is outside the bounds of normal stimulation.

The Standard American Diet is one that includes a large amount of highly processed, hyperpalatable convenience foods that lend themselves to over consumption. This diet is the definition of an intense stimulus that is outside the bounds of natural and normal dietary stimulation.

When we consume those foods intermittently, we experience an enhanced amount of temporary pleasure thanks to the dopamine release in our brain, before returning to a baseline of normal sensation. Our brain will start making neural connections to ensure that we get more of this type of hyperpalatable food, because in the old days that would increase our chances for survival.

Many people consume these foods on a regular basis, thanks in part to our environment but also those new neural connections, which means that the same foods that were once highly pleasurable and released large amounts of dopamine start to taste normal and release normal amounts of dopamine. We get used to this level of stimulation. Our senses become dull. I would argue that this is most people who were raised in the United States. This type of neuroadaptation and habituation is at the root of a lot of obesity related chronic disease. This is clearly the wrong way to eat but it feels so right!

Now, when people make a shift back towards a whole food, plant-based diet because they’ve smartened up and want to improve their health and fitness, something really interesting happens. Subjective pleasure drops from normal to subnormal pleasure and dopamine production falls off. Put another way, you will probably really hate all your food. Unlike before, when doing the wrong thing felt right, now doing the right thing feels wrong. The motivational system we rely on, which is to seek the most pleasure for the least amount of effort is completely spun around.

Fortunately, if we stick with a whole food, plant-based diet, this period of subnormal pleasure only lasts a few weeks. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t make it through this period of time and start reintroducing more palatable food. When you are in this phase, your brain will be playing all kinds of tricks to try and get you to eat junk food again, because on some level, it believes you might be starving and because dopamine is a powerful motivator.

What we know is true is that the best way to return sensitivity to any system is to deprive the system for a period of time. If we can make it through this phase of deprivation, the continued consumption of whole, natural, unprocessed foods results in a recalibrated “normal” and a returned pleasure (and dopamine release) in eating normal foods.

This concept is called “The Pleasure Trap” and was coined by behavioral psychologist Douglas Lisle. It has been widely researched and we find that the people who have the most success with their fitness and nutrition are the ones who can get out of the pleasure trap, at least with regards to the foods they eat. It’s easy to see how this same concept might at least, in part, explain a lot of the addictive behavior that we see in humans. But when looking only at nutrition, a simple solution to overhauling your diet in order to see your efforts in the gym rewarded might be to gut it out on a bland diet for a few weeks to help re-establish the bounds of normal stimulation.

Does this mean you can never ever have that chicken and egg biscuit or meat lover’s pizza? No, but those foods will no longer be the standard of flavor. Which means that on the rare occasion you do have them, they will be extra delicious! All the while you will be making massive gains in the gym in your effort to achieve your true goal. To look good naked.

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This is a great article I read this week and just needed to share it’s wisdom with you.  Keep working on getting rid of that junk food and be aware of why you keep craving it.  Those short term cravings undermine your long term goals.  Keep working on them and find good substitutions.  We can help with that, too.  Ask about our One on One Nutrition Coaching.