Nutrition/WOD Accountability Scores:
Nutrition – Bullshit Score 87.1%, Real Adjusted Score 64%
WOD – 93.2%
Surveys Completed – 637
At first glance these scores look pretty damn good right? Well let me tell you, looks can be deceiving. I will be the first to admit, these scores are total bullshit. First off, these scores are artificially high due to the fact that participants are given credit for rest days and cheat meals. If a individual's goal was to workout 3 days a week and they are doing 2 days a week, their score should be 66.6%. Because they are getting credit for their rest days as well, they actually are showing an inflated score of 86%. I did not carefully think this out before setting up the scoring system. We should have set up the survey program so rest or cheat days did not artificially inflate the accountability scores. My bad #1!
Next, we are 35 days into our accountability program now which started with 25 participants. If everyone was keeping up with the 8 week commitment there should be 875 surveys complete. With only 637 surveys complete, the participation rate has fallen to 72.8%. Doesn't sound too bad does it? Things are still even worse than they appear.
For purposes of this analysis, I will consider participants who currently have less than 25 surveys complete to be dropouts. Of the original 25 participants, 13 participants fell into the dropout category within the 1st month. The fact that these participants are no longer participating should be counted against the group score for the remainder of the 8 week program. The individual scores for the dropouts should be going down for each day they fail to complete their surveys. As it is they are just getting credit for the days they did complete without penalty for non-participation. Another flaw in the scoring system. My bad #2.
I think it is a safe assumption to say that participants who stopped doing their daily survey, are no longer in compliance with the goals they set at the start of the program. With this assumption, the adjusted nutrition score would drop to approximately 64%. Not looking so good now. If no other participants quit, the final predicted nutrition score after 8 weeks will be about 41%. 41%!!! WTF? I consider our members to be generally highly motivated, goal oriented, successful individuals. If you weren't, you wouldn't last more than 2 or 3 months in this gym. I knew it would be hard to eat right for 8 weeks, but wow.
All of the participants who are under 25 responses to the survey have still been working out regularly, we know because we have seen them all in the gym. So I assume people aren't dropping out of the accountability program because working out regularly is a problem. Generally, we are failing in our nutrition goals.
These numbers speak volumes to us about the current state of health and fitness in our country. It is obvious that working out is the easy part of the fitness equation. Nutrition is too bothersome for us. We don't put enough effort in to see the results we are after. For years I have witnessed many clients step into the gym overweight and out of shape. I have watched most of them gain great physical ability in terms of strength, endurance and work capacity with little to no change in body composition (body fat %). We pride ourselves on getting our workouts in, as we should. Because proper nutrition is more cumbersome, we bury our heads in the sand and fail to recognize that nutrition is even more important to our health and fitness than working out is. Let's be honest with ourselves here, the truth is most of us workout because we want to be attractive to the opposite sex (or the same sex for some of you). It really has nothing to do with wanting to live longer and be healthier… although that's what you'll tell us. Health and longevity are honestly secondary to our physical appearance to most people, being healthy is just a bonus. If you dispute with this statement, you are either highly exceptional, you are liar, you are in denial, or you have just plain given up on looking good. You will never make significant body composition changes with good workout habits alone. Furthermore, no matter how good you might look, you will not be truly healthy without proper eating habits.
So what do we do? Gain some more discipline, get your shit together, and start eating right. Don't give up on yourself. In psychology, they say it takes 3 months to change a behavior. It is going to be a rough 3 months, so get out your big boy pants, put them on and start following some sort of structured plan to proper nutrition. Stop making excuses for yourself and justifying your bad habits. The two most common excuses I hear for improper eating are work and family. We all have a job and we all have a family, so get real and stop trying to justify your bad habits. Your family needs proper nutrition too. Start teaching your children good habits now so they won't have to go through the struggles of weight, body image and health that many of us do.
You don't have to be perfect all the time. If you can be on target 80% of the time, you can enjoy food, wine, or whatever the other 20% of the time and still look and feel like a machine. We are seeing this with the participants who have managed to stay in the program. Most everyone has 2 cheat days or 6 cheat meals throughout the week and they are still losing fat, gaining strength, and looking better than they have in years. Great job to all of you who have managed to pull it off this long, you are doing yourselves a great service.
Post thoughts to comments.
5 Rounds For Time:
5 Power Snatch 135/85
10 Chest to Bar Pull Ups
Pic of the day. How did the hell did he get up there? I bet you a dollar Dave can dunk.
The CrossFit movie is comming out April 22nd. It features some of the top athletes in CrossFit on their paths to the CrossFit Games 2008. We are going to get a projector and have a screening at the Gym as soon as we can get our hands on this.
"Every Second Counts" Movie Trailer
