While CrossFit looks to the Zone Diet for food quantity, quality of food tends to fall under the Palaeolithic Diet: http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html

It can’t be pure coincidence that the foods that humans have developed since the first agricultural revolution (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, corn…) are the same high-glycemic foods that we must now attempt to limit in our diets in order to prevent hormonal imbalance. The first humans weren’t clearing the rainforest to grow Big Macs, they were hunters and gatherers. The Zone Diet reflects this emphasis on simple, whole foods; the Paleo Diet takes it a step further: eliminate everything that a hunter/gatherer would not have access to… anything processed. That leaves you with: lean protein (wild game, fish), vegetables, fruits, berries, nuts, and seeds… sound familiar?! The Paleo Diet is easy to do in conjunction with the Zone Diet: forget about grains, limit or eliminate dairy, and love those vegetables! It’s the easiest way to exponentially improve your health.

Think you’ll be hungry or bored of eating the same food? Try my favourite 4 block Paleo-Zone meal: a giant spinach salad made with 2 cups spinach, 3 oz chicken, 1 hardboiled egg, 6 chopped mushrooms, ½ yellow pepper, ¼ cucumber, ¼ cup carrots, ⅓ cup onion, as much celery and alfafa sprouts as you want, ½ apple/orange, ⅓ cup raspberries, ¼ cup blueberries… (literally any combination of veggies/fruits you find in your fridge!), and a couple olives or a sprinkle of sunflower seeds, with a dressing made from olive oil (3 tsp) and lime juice and garlic (both freebies!) to taste. Yummy!!! You can choose how strict you want to follow the many versions of the Paleo Diet… and you certainly don’t need to measure everything exactly, these are just to give you an idea of the portion sizes provided by the Zone Diet. For example, I often replace 1oz of chicken with 1.5oz of feta cheese in my salad and throw on some balsamic vinegar (also free!), and I love peanut butter, though legumes are dismissed by many Paleo followers. What you eat is up to you, but try to understand what you’re choosing to eat, and why.

CrossFitters typically follow the Zone Diet by Dr. Barry Sears (www.zonediet.com) because it has demonstrated measurable, observable, and repeatable results, which is the only reason why CrossFitters do anything. Hormone levels, specifically insulin and glucagon, are balanced by eating lean protein and low-glycemic carbs (choosing vegetables and fruits over grains such as rice, pasta, and bread) and consuming healthy fats with every meal (Think Mediterranean diet!). When carbs and protein are eaten in the right proportions, your body will be hormonally stable, unlike that see-saw effect you feel when you carb-o-load or go more than a few hours without eating. Further, if your body is used to receiving energy from healthy (unsaturated) fats, it will stop storing fat from the energy in carbs. The Zone Diet gives us the prescription for that balance by telling us how much of each protein (30%), carbs (40%), and fat (30%) to consume in each meal, and how many meals to eat each day (5-6). Calculate the number of “blocks” or units of food you personally will need to support your lean body mass: http://www.zonediet.com/BodyFatZoneBlockRequirementCalculator/tabid/159/Default.aspx

The excess weight is not being fed, and will come off… with exercise, of course! Weighing your food isn’t as bad as it sounds, and you only have to do it for 2 weeks before you get a feel for appropriate portion sizes. If you don’t feel up to weighing your food, that’s fine, but you should be aware of food quantity and food quality. In terms of carbs, 2 cups of broccoli is equivalent to ¼ of a bagel… not to mention the obvious nutritional difference. Plus, you do get 3 cheat meals a week, and all it takes is one meal to get back in the Zone! If you do start “blocking” your meals, you’ll soon find that veggies go a lot farther than high-glycemic carbs, and that you probably aren’t eating enough protein or good fats. For example, when you get a multi-grain bagel with cream cheese from Tim Horton’s, you’re getting 4 blocks of carbs, 4-8 blocks of fat depending on how much cream cheese you get, and no protein. The new Starbucks banana chocolate protein smoothie isn’t too bad at 3 blocks of protein, 4 blocks carbs, and 3 blocks fat… I’ll leave the nutritional quality aspect for a separate article. The bottom line is: you will feel an enormous improvement in your health and well-being, mood, even sleeping habits, once you get your body “into the Zone”!