Digestion and your brain

Joel Zayas • April 15, 2020
Assorted fresh, healthy foods: onion, spinach, avocado, egg, nuts, ginger, beans, sardines, broccoli.

When you think about digestion, where is the first place you believe it occurs? I’m sure a majority of guesses would assume that the process of digestion begins in the stomach or the mouth. All good guesses, but digestion actually begins in our brains , before we even begin to enjoy the first bites of our meal. 

Let’s think for a moment on why that is…

First, let’s analyse how our brains play a role in our workouts. Have any of you ever felt the feeling of “butterflies” in your stomach before coming to class? Maybe you read up on the workout of the day beforehand and you know you’re in for a doozy! Or maybe, you’ve had a long, exhausting day at work and you try to get yourself psyched up to come to class by playing Beyonce radio on spotify. Think of the transformation that occurs with your body’s energy. You went from 0 to ~100 in a matter of minutes and now you’re ready to pump some iron! 

During that time, your autonomic nervous system (ANS) has signaled to your brain two sensory phases known as the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS aka our “rest and digest” system) and sympathetic nervous system  (SNS aka our “fight or flight” system). Our ANS and its two branches play a vital role in regulating internal, involuntary organ functionality for things like breathing, our heart rate and even digestion. In other words, it signals to our bodies when it’s time to rest or when it’s time to go to work!

Now let’s compare this with how we eat and how digestion begins in our brains. 

Hunger begins to activate areas in our brains which trigger the age old reaction to seek food, regardless of the cost (could be safety, comfort or even curiosity). When we see or think of food, the brain signals to our bodies to get ready for consumption by salivating in the mouth, to the stomach beginning to release digestive enzymes. Both PNS and SNS systems can be triggered depending on what we think and feel (internal factors), or what we see or smell (external factors) and both have an effect on hunger and digestion. 

Now think about how many times during the day that can occur subconsciously, especially today when we’re bombarded with food advertisements constantly!

Take away challenge:

Take a moment to reflect on how much influence our brains have with the digestive process and also with hunger stimulation. Think of how often that can be exploited by what we see, smell, think or do.

To combat the problem is to recognize the issue. Try writing down a list of five ways you believe hunger is stimulated most in your life. Is it at the office during random birthday parties/events? Is it from food advertisements on TV? Is it from friends, family, or people you socialize with? From there, identify if any of these scenarios are within your control and what you can do to oppress false signals of hunger. Obviously if your co-worker wants cake for their birthday, he/she is going to have some damn cake!

Be realistic with your responses. You shouldn’t suppress your desires but you can learn to control them. In the case of birthday cake, perhaps drinking 2 cups of water before your slice will help you feel fuller, thus allowing you to eat less? 

What other ways can you come up with?

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Apex Training Cycle

By Derek Saffold • December 26, 2025
Hey R3VIVE Athletes, The Apex training cycle, going from January 5th to April 3rd, is our next training cycle! This will be the firt training cycle of the new year! this is a chance to refocus and get in some good work to help you reach your goals! lets all work together to crush this training cycle! Functional Fitness: The Apex Cycle is designed to make your year-long strength work truly functional, focusing on controlled, powerful movements, complexes under fatigue, and mandated touch-and-go reps to prepare you for mixed-modal workouts. Our strength culminates in the classic CrossFit Total and the "R3VIVE Other Total," while conditioning features a wide variety of time domains, movement volume builds (like wall balls, toes-to-bar, and burpees), and regular Friday retests of past workouts to track your progress and ensure you perform your absolute best. Build: Designed to bring together all your training from the past year and prepare you for your strongest performance yet. Our strength work will focus on controlled, powerful movements, building you up to test your limits with both the classic CrossFit Total and the "R3VIVE Other Total," which challenges your skill and strength balance. Expect a well-rounded program including unilateral strength, skill work, and core stability, with dedicated days for deadlifts, squats, gymnastics, and varied accessory work to keep you healthy and constantly progressing. For conditioning, we're tailoring the work to challenge you in new ways, featuring a wide variety of time domains and movements, and a specific volume build on common movements like wall balls, toes-to-bar, and burpees. Instead of a standard test/retest, we'll be performing regular retests of past workouts on Fridays, allowing you to easily track your progress and see how far you've come. Our weekly template balances intensity—with short, fast metcons on Mondays—with recovery, incorporating lower impact endurance work on Thursdays, and a strategic taper toward the end of the week to set you up for success on Friday! Partner workouts will wrap up your week every Saturday, bringing the whole community together.

Ultimus Training Cycle

By Derek Saffold • October 30, 2025
Hey R3VIVE Athletes, The Ultimus training cycle, going from November 10th to January 2nd, is our next training cycle! Functional Fitness will be launching into a blend of olympic lifts and diverse strength progressions. Including more intense conditioning and gymnastic strength and skill development. Functional Fitness: We're taking the solid foundations from all our Machine work (which we know you loved) in the Persist Cycle and launching into a blend of olympic lifts, foundational strength, and diverse strength formats. Prepare for tough but fun challenges, gymnastic strength and skill development, and an intensified focus that will push your limits and build your confidence further than you ever imagined! Build: This Build cycle is your blueprint for forging general strength with a rock-solid, consistent split. While we will have linear progressions of Front Squats, and Bench Press, we will also be embracing varied, dynamic strength orgressions. That will not only keep delivering results but also keep our strength fun. Our gymnastics focus will be on pure, raw strict strength, helping you build capacity with both external loads and the incredible power of your own bodyweight. Prepare to feel incredibly stable and powerful! Conditioning will focus on unleashing your engine, that we built in the Persist Cycle . We will Shift gears to a fastermore intense "for time" AMRAP and Chipper style workouts, moving beyond simple interval work and aerobic base building. These conditioning workouts will rotate dynamically throughout the week to maintain variety and deliver a fun and powerful exeriance. our cycle test, "Super Bario Bros.", is a chipper that will progressively challenge your kettlebell/dumbbell and gymnastics movements, demanding peak intensity and absolute confidence in your strength.

Persist Training Cycle.

By Derek Saffold • September 22, 2025
Hey R3VIVE Athletes, Our next programming cycle runs from September 15th to November 7th. It's an 8-week cycle that will continue to see strength progression carrying from what we did last cycle in Functional fitness. While Pump will begin working unilateral strength progressions. Functional Fitness: This cycle will continue our progression from the skill and lifts from last cycle, while trying to integrate them into more of our conditioning. We will do this by focusing on different portions of the lifts during our strength portion then performing smaller sets of gymnastic skills in our conditioning. You will also see conditioning that is purely focused on our aerobic capacity and working mainly on monostructural elements, such as running, rowing and biking. Build: This A-B week cycle is designed to build foundational strength through consistent progression, with a strong focus on Back Squats and Strict Presses, including variations for balanced weekly training. Conditioning will have some longer aerobic pieces and begin to include more skills like strict Toes-to-Bar, and Pull-ups from last cycle. See the chart below for details.
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