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Nutrition is the foundation of our daily lives.  Everything we do throughout our day is influenced by what we eat.  There is an old adage, “garbage in—garbage out”. This in essence means that if we fuel our body with junk food we will perform, well, like junk.  When looking at a theoretical hierarchy of training an athlete, nutrition is the foundation.  Our workout routine can be absolutely the best constantly varied, functional fitness program designed to push you towards your peak performance, but if you do not integrate a proper nutrition plan you will be missing a vital component.  In essence, your nutrition plan lays the groundwork for your training, and synergistically works with your training to help you achieve your goals.

So where do I begin? Greg Glassman, founder of CrossFit, summed up nutrition succinctly with, “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.”  This simple statement is the basis of many diet books and constant debate.  This is a prescription that I have found to work extremely well for me and my family, so let’s break this down into smaller parts and hopefully gain a bit more understanding.

We begin with, “Eat meat…” Approximately 30% of our diet should be based on meat.  Meat is a protein and we should look for lean meats. Chicken and Turkey usually stand out as great sources of lean protein.  Another excellent choice is wild caught fish.  Beef and pork are great sources of protein but some cuts can be very fatty.  When choosing a protein source try to be cognizant of how the meat was raised.  The vast majority of commercially raised meat is full of antibiotics and growth hormones. The animals are also raised on a diet usually consisting of 100% corn which can cause a host of other problems for the animal which will then work its way into your system (garbage in—garbage out).  If you have the opportunity, search out local farmers raising grass-fed, antibiotic-free, meat.  A great resource to find local farmers is www.eatwild.com.  I highly recommend A1 Heritage Breed Farms www.heritagebreedfarms.com  in Russia, Ohio.  Brent and Beth Schulze have an amazing farm where they raise beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb, and goat, as well as offering eggs, honey and other locally grown products.  My family and I visited Brent and Beth on their farm happily showed us around as we excitedly learned how they raise the animals.

Protein—check!  Next are vegetables.  Vegetables are carbohydrates, and carbohydrates should encompass approximately 40% of our diet.  When choosing vegetables we should predominantly look for low-glycemic veggies. The glycemic index is a scale that measures how quickly blood sugar levels rise after eating a certain food. Foods higher on the scale will quickly spike your blood sugar levels where as foods lower on the scale will only cause a gradual rise in blood sugar.  The problem with a quick spike in blood sugar is that it is immediately followed by a drop in blood sugar—this is the typical “crash” after satisfying your hunger with a Snickers bar then 20 minutes later feeling the need for a nap. Here is an article from the CrossFit Journal with a great list of good and bad vegetables http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/cfjissue21_May04.pdf.  If you have the opportunity buy locally grown organic produce in season.  This will give you the best quality vegetable with optimum nutritional value.

Next comes “nuts and seeds”, nuts and seeds are considered fats.  Fats should round out our diet comprising approximately 40% of our diet. Along with nuts and seeds we should look to other sources of fat to round out our diet.  A few great choices are: avocado, olives, olive oil, coconut oil, almonds, and cashews.  It is a common misnomer that fat on the plate will equal fat on our waist, but this is absolutely incorrect.  We need fats and the essential nutrients they provide to allow growth and recovery, especially brain development.  One thing to keep in mind is that fats are very high in calories therefore you will not need to eat very much fat to comprise 40% of your diet.

This takes us to, “some fruit, little starch and no sugar.”  Fruit and starch are high in sugars.  Yes, they are natural sugars, but in the end (chemically speaking) sugar is sugar.  Fruit, starch, and sugar are all sources of carbohydrates.  That being said most are higher on the glycemic index than vegetables.  There are some fruits that are better than others, meaning they have less sugar.  If weight loss or elite athletic performance are your goals it would behoove you to limit the amount of fruit you consume.  Starch becomes a tricky subject; potatoes are a starch, as well as bread and pasta.  For this article I will not delve into this subject but just realize that starch is something you should limit due to them being high on the glycemic index.

Greg Glassman goes on to say, “Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.”  This can be broken down in so many different ways.  This statement is the essence behind so many fad and crash diets, however this simple statement when executed properly is genius at its core.  What Coach Glassman is suggesting here is portion control.  He is suggesting that we eat what we need to be able to train and recover from training, but not to eat to excess so that we gain body fat.  A great resource on this is Dr. Barry Sears’ book, The Zone.  In this book, Dr. Sears breaks down how much an individual should be consuming based on their current lean mass and levels of exercise.  The Zoneis a wealth of knowledge and if implemented can make drastic differences in your energy level, athletic performance, body composition, and so much more.

Really to sum things up, as Greg Glassman stated, “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.” 

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