Interpreting the nutrition label

A magnifying glass over a nutrition label on a yogurt container, emphasizing the listed values.

Admit it, you’ve had a moment where you’re at the grocery store, walking down the baking aisle, looking for bread and you come across the cookie section. You try not to look because you’re trying to maintain the progress you’ve made with dieting and training. But you stop, curiosity hits you and you decide to read the nutrition label on that box of Oreo’s, just to find out what the damage actually is. You think to yourself, “Wait, only 100 calories! That’s not that bad…”, as you toss that box of oreos into your cart and move on, guilt free (at least for the moment).

One of the best ways to improve your health is by learning how to read a nutrition label. By understanding the value of the ingredients used, the serving sizes and the caloric breakdown of macronutrients, you’ll be able to make smarter choices when reaching for that next box of sugary snacks or anything else for that matter.

Ingredients list breakdown

One of the first steps you should take when reading a nutrition label is to take a look at the ingredients list. A good general rule of thumb to follow is the fewer ingredients, the better.

You should also read the list of ingredients. Ask yourself, “can I even properly pronounce some of these ingredients listed?”. If not, I would highly recommend researching what that ingredient is used for. Generally, the ingredients with harder pronunciations are used for preservatives to increase shelf life, keeping those products in the store and in your cabinets longer.

When reading the ingredients list, amounts used are listed from prominent to least. So if sugar, high fructose corn syrup, cane syrup or canola oils are listed first, you should probably put whatever you have in your hand, back on the shelf.

Don’t overlook the serving size

Understandably, most people only ever look at the calories listed. It’s usually the largest printed value on the label and in some cases, it’s even marketed on the front of product packaging.

Don’t be fooled by that number!

Instead, be sure to check the serving size first before throwing that product in your shopping cart. You’ll be surprised with how much you can actually have after reading the serving size.

Determining calories

It is important to understand where calorie values come from and how they’re factored, especially for individuals who track their macronutrient intake when dieting.

Macronutrients or macros, are a large collection of molecules that make up the food we eat. They are divided into three main groups; Fats, Proteins and Carbohydrates. Each of these macros contain energy units (aka calories), which when added together, account for total calories per serving.

On some nutrition labels, a caloric breakdown for each macronutrient can be listed. Each gram of fat is 9 calories; each gram of carbohydrates is 4 calories and each gram of protein is also 4 calories. You can easily calculate the total calories per serving, by multiplying the total grams per serving for fats, carbs and protein; by its caloric unit per gram. Try doing the math for yourself.

While the total calories calculated may not be 100% what is printed on the label, keep in mind that the total is generally rounded up and other factors such as fiber (which can reduce calorie totals), are also considered.

Summary and challenge

We understand that sometimes you just want a damn cookie, and that’s ok! If you’ve worked with us, you know how hard training can be and it’s ok to occasionally reward yourself for your efforts. With that said, here’s a challenge for you: Rather than reaching for those sugary snacks before bed, or when watching TV, consume those snacks during or immediately after a workout.

Think of sugars as an ally, as opposed to an enemy (we’ll discuss this some more in a future post).

The sugars in those snacks are fast metabolising and when combined with a post-workout protein shake, you can aid the delivery of protein to assist with repairing broken muscle fibers from a workout. Just be sure not to over eat and stick to one serving size of your snack of choice.

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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.