Healthy Living Challenge at Element CrossFit
Coach Greg Glassman has said : “A theoretical hierarchy exists for the development of an athlete. It starts with nutrition and moves to metabolic conditioning, gymnastics, weightlifting, and finally sport. This hierarchy largely reflects foundational dependence, skill, and to some degree, time ordering of development. The logical flow is from molecular foundations, cardiovascular sufficiency, body control, external object control, and ultimately mastery and application. This model has greatest utility in analyzing athletes’ shortcomings or difficulties. We don’t deliberately order these components but nature will. If you have a deficiency at any level of “the pyramid” the components above will suffer.”
In short, your metabolic conditioning and performance in gymnastics, weightlifting, and sport are directly impacted by and dependent on your diet. Even small changes in your eating habits can make a big difference in your health and fitness.
Starting November 1st, we’re doing a Healthy Living Challenge at Element CrossFit. Members of www.elementcrossfit.com can access recipes and other resources in the Member Resources Section to help you. It might seem like a hassle to track and measure your meals, but you get accustomed to eyeballing correct proportions of foods quickly, and it’s worth it in the end. If you don’t want to participate in the challenge, you don’t have to be hardcore about it, but if you’re taking the time and effort to improve your fitness by CrossFitting, you should at least try to incorporate some of the things we have learned from the Zone Diet and the Paleo Diet into your eating habits to improve your health. Many people CrossFit with good results and have terrible eating habits. But they don’t see results as great as those who eat well, and don’t enjoy the mental and physical benefits of good nutrition.
I’ve been reading a lot on the optimal nutrition for peak mental and physical performance as outlined by Dr Barry Sears of the Zone Diet and similar dietary prescriptions such as Protein Power. I plan to write a short summary and review on each book as I go. So far Top 100 Zone Foods by Dr. Barry Sears was the most applicable, as it gives a good introduction to the Zone Diet and interesting facts and recipes for each food. I highly recommend it for those interested in improving their nutrition, especially those concerned about diabetes and heart disease (which we all should be). More to follow, but to start, read my earlier posts on the Zone Diet and the Paleo Diet, check out the links, and read CrossFit Journal #21for the official CrossFit prescription for the Zone Diet.
I like using www.fitday.com to keep track of meals, it’s free and easy to use. Also, http://www.nutritiondata.com/ provides nutrition facts, caloric ratio, estimated glycemic load, and inflammation factor for most foods.
Keith at CrossFit Virtuosity has a great article with more guidance: http://www.crossfitvirtuosity.com/blogs/articles/18-articles/135-how-to-start-your-meal-plan
The Palaeolithic Diet
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.
The Zone Diet
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”!
