In a world of confusion, fads, and temptation sometimes it s best to just keep things simple. Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, boiled his fitness philosophy down to 100 words, and his recommended nutritional advice to two sentences. Follow these two sentences. Don t worry we ll clarify things for you. Keep reading!
Find an Accountability Partner Use a friend or fellow gym member! Hire a Personal Coach/Trainer Or ask one of our coaches to check in on you! Use an Online Community! Use a structure (diet) that you enjoy and are most likely to stick with! (Read on!)
Every human body is different AND everybody is different. That is part of what makes nutrition difficult. We believe that the best diet is the one that you will enjoy, fits your lifestyle and tastes, and is easiest for you to stick to. There are many paths up this mountain! Here are three models that we know work! Find the one that s best for you! This is the one that I (Matt Nehls) personally follow. Eat meats and vegetables, nuts and seed, some fruit and very little starches or sugars. In other words, just eat real food! Keep your shopping cart to the outskirts of the grocery store (not the processed aisles), and always eat with the purpose of fueling your work and life don t eat for pleasure. Overly structured diets take up too much mental energy and time (for me), and don t provide me enough flexibility so I just keep it simple and follow the words of the founder. The paleo model is the most popular diet for everyday crossfitters. The paleo model maintains that homo-sapiens (humans) should eat the way we ate during the Paleolithic Era. It maintains that the human body was not designed/evolved to eat today s highsugar, highly processed foods. Initial expressions of paleo suggested that dairy and grains should also be excluded because of potential allergens (lactose and gluten). Later expressions of the paleo model have loosened up on this restriction. The IIFYM model determines/limits the total calories you can consume in a day, and allocates those calories according to the three major macronutrients protein, carbs, and fat. This diet is both more structured and less structured than the others. It is more structured because it tells you exact quantities to eat and requires that you log what you eat every time you eat. But, it is less structured insofar as it lets you eat any food you want, so long as you do not exceed the quantity limitations. There are some great apps that can be downloaded on your phone that helps you log your food throughout the day. Does giving up bread, pasta, and some other processed foods sound too difficult for you? Use this diet!
If you do not make the choice today. If you do not have someone or something to keep you accountable. If you do not have some type of structure. If you do not have a plan. You will Fail! Make the choice. Get accountable. Use a structure. Succeed. Today! The excessive and unchecked consumption of sugar and starches is bad. No matter what structure (diet) you choose avoid the excessive and unchecked consumption of sugar and starches. The body is not created to starve. As soon as you overly limit your consumption of food, primal self-preservation will override the strongest displays of self-will. Do not attempt to hunger your way to the body you want. Eat to fuel your life and work. The results will follow! Eating large meals, especially high carbohydrate meals, before going to bed is a very bad idea. If you are very hungry, eat a small snack that consists mostly of protein (protein is the macro least likely to convert to fat). We recommend almond/peanut butter or cottage cheese! As they say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day! Breakfast is ultra-important for fueling your day and putting your body back into the muscle-building mode.
After you workout, it is very important that you re-fuel and give your body what it needs to recover from the work it just exerted. This is the one time in the day that we advocate (in fact, highly recommend) that you consume simple sugars/carbs. Drink a Gatorade, eat a banana, have bread, etc. Sugar resets the go signals to your brain, restores the fuel (glycogen) you just used, and can spike your muscle building hormones (insulin/growth hormone). You also want to consume some protein perhaps a protein shake! Within 90 minutes of your workout (after consuming the sugar and protein immediately after your workout) be sure to eat a balanced, whole foods meal. After your workout, you want to make sure you are refueling your body!
Supplements are not magical potions that solve all of your problems. The reason they are called "supplements" is because they are supposed to, merely, "supplement" your meals/nutrition/diet. Protein shakes and meal replacement shakes are a great way to have a quick meal on the go or refuel after a workout. Our recommendation here is to find a shake that you enjoy drinking and does not break the budget the supplement industry is very overpriced w/ extremely high margins you do not need the most expensive brand! We suggest taking a daily multi-vitamin to make sure you are getting all of the necessary nutrients you need during a given day. Some research has also shown that modern farming has caused our foods to be less nutritious than they once were. Multi-vitamins are not expensive and it is a known fact that the body needs a series of nutrients found in these multi-vitamins. Fish oil is said to help with joint health and reduce inflammation. We especially suggest it if you do not eat a lot of foods with naturally occurring omega-3 fatty acids (salmon, flaxseed, etc).