Hi all,
Last week we talked about E.C. Synkowski’s 800g challenge: in addition to what you eat normally, eat 800 grams of fruits and vegetables, by weight, every day. I love the simplicity, the flexibility, and the fact that it’s focused on adding, not trying to cut things that I enjoy.
It works because you’re eating a lot of food volume, but not many calories. You feel full and more healthy which in turn helps avoid ultra processed foods that are easy to overeat. You can still eat pizza and ice cream, but we want to fill up on nutrient-dense, whole foods first.
If you haven’t started tracking how many fruits and vegetables you eat, give it a try over the next week. They can be cooked or raw (just weigh it after it’s cooked), and any kind of fruit, veggie, or legume counts. When I started, I found that despite eating healthy, I was still only getting around 300 grams per day. Very surprising! As I worked my way up to 800, here is what helped the most:
1. Start with eating more of what you enjoy: You don’t need to only eat vegetables, and you don’t need to overcomplicate the variety. Volume is most important to start, and if that means 800g of potatoes (not fried), apples, melon, etc. that’s a great first step. Once you’re consistent, you can start adding variety. One cup of mashed potatoes as a side is ~200 grams!
2. Make it easy: Pre-portioned, ready to eat fruits and veggies are my go-to snacks. They’ve got the grams already labelled on the packaging making it easy to track, they are easy to carry around, and they’re cheap and flexible. Canned or frozen fruits are great because they are packed at the peak of ripeness and generally much cheaper than fresh. Just look for the ones packaged in water or juice, not sugary syrup.
3. Get comfortable estimating: Perfect is the enemy of good. 800 grams is roughly six fist-sized portions. With the exception of salad greens (which unfortunately weigh almost nothing), you’ll probably get close enough. As you get more experience, you’ll also find rules of thumb like a medium banana is ~100g, a medium apple is ~150g, or a cup of roasted broccoli is ~100g, depending on how small you cut it.
4. Prep ahead of time: The morning is busy enough, don’t add more hassle with chopping. I like to pre-cut and package some fruits and veggies into a tupperware and write the grams on the lid with a dry erase marker. A successful day starts the night before.
That’s all for now. If you have any questions or suggestions for our next blog, reach out at info@crossfitwestseattle.com.
See you around the gym,
Erik