CrossFit Bristol: Nutrition

“We are digging our graves with our teeth.” Moffett Thomas

Bristol's Official Affiliate

The single most important thing you can do to live a long, happy and healthy life is eat a varied, healthy diet.

Dieting and Weightloss

There is a huge and highly profitable market selling rapid weight loss through some new program – diet or even herbal teas. They all cash in on a simple human desire; “I want it and I want it right now !”

Rapid weightloss programmes are notorious for delivering fast,  short term weightloss, followed immediatly by even faster weight gain. They typically focus around a short 4, 8 or 12 week program.

The main reason for this is that they are unsustainable. Weightloss is temporary it’s also short lived and tails off quickly – to be followed by rapid weight gain. The companies writing the programes know this. But dramatic weightloss makes great marketing, great images and even greater profits. Even if its temporary.

A Prescription of healthy living

Your body composition should be controlled by your diet.  Not by methods compensating for a bad diet.  In otherwords the key to long term health is not exercise alone. Its certainly not a gym membership – a training tool – a herbal tea – miracle herb etc.  It’s a combination of a well balanced diet and intelligent exercise prescription.

CrossFit is unique in that its not just a workout – we educate – support and coach for long term health.

The CrossFit Diet Prescription

Crossfit provides the following simple dietary prescription.

Protein should be lean and account for approximately 30% of your total calories.

Carbohydrates should be predominantly of the low glycaemic type, and account for around 40% of your daily calories.

Fat should be predominantly mono unsaturated fats and account for around 30% of your daily calories.

What should I avoid?

Basically, high glycaemic index  and processed foods. Think McDonald’s, microwave meals, chips, sweets, chocolate cakes, fizzy drinks, in fact most of the processed foods we serve up to our children today. A diet based around food such as this is a sure prescription for type II diabetes, cancer, heart disease, strokes and of course obesity.

It’s not just the calories in the food that is the problem, it’s your body’s response to it.

Processing carbohydrates, greatly increase blood sugar levels and in time this creates an enhanced and excessive glycaemic response to these foods.

What should I eat?

In simple terms, garden vegetables, green vegetables, nuts and seeds. Avoid starch and sugar. Avoid ALL processed foods, like a plague! All those chemicals and preservatives and those E numbers!

What about the paleo or caveman diet?

Genetically, we simply are not suited to eating a diet a Western Europeans diet. Our body is still geared up to exist a lifestyle more suited to someone in the region of 8000 BC that today. As a result of this we simply are not able to live healthily on a modern Western diet. Compared to our ancestors we are less muscular, fatter, lethargic, weak and more disease prone.

The vast majority of life threatening conditions experienced by Westen Europeans including many cancers, heart disease, strokes and diabetes can be avoided by a healthy diet with an intelligent exercise prescription.

There are a number of authors writing great books on these diets, including work by Barry Sears and his book called ‘the zone’,there  is also a great book called the primal blueprint by Mark Sissons. These offer different versions of the paleo diet. Alternatively look at Google for paleo diet, you’ll probably be overwhelmed by the information.

Over the next few weeks we will start to post a range of articles on nutrition. Given that good crossfit regime should be based on good nutritional principles, our aim is to offer those freely for our clients and interested parties alike.

Enjoy!