Posted on

Plan Your Fitness Success With Crossfit Nutrition

crossfit nutrition

Making the choice to become fit, and incorporating exercise into your daily routine is a good start to a healthy lifestyle. However, exercise alone cannot help you achieve your goal of total body fitness, and healthy living.

You also have to take into consideration what you put into body daily, how much you ingest and how these foods you choose to eat affect your body and fitness goals.

The truth about fitness is, it’s not for the faint hearted, or the undetermined. Fitness is for those that are willing to change their lifestyle, consciously consider what they put into their body, and help their body be the best it can be.

Crossfit has helped a lot of individuals achieve their goal of healthier and better living, with a community of fellow Crossfit participants encouraging and providing the support you need to make your goals a reality.

If you’re new to Crossfit training, or simply just looking to maximize your body’s gain from the intense hard work, then we’re here to give you some helpful tips about Crossfit nutrition.

When we mention Crossfit nutrition, there are two major diet plans that come into mind:

I. The Paleo Diet
II. The Zone Diet

These are the two diets that most Crossfitters use as a baseline to determine what goes into their body, and the proportion in which it is to be ingested.

I. The Paleo Diet

The paleo diet is the diet plan that revolves around food that was available for hunter-gatherer humans in the paleolithic era. The pioneers of this diet plan believe that humans in this era lived longer healthier lives without the risk of diseases that most humans are exposed to these days, because of the quality of food they ate then.

The paleo diet mostly consists of fruits, vegetables, lean meats, seafood, nuts and seeds, and healthy fats. It excludes any other food that isn’t within this group such as dairy, grains, legumes, starches, alcohol, and processed foods. The idea behind the paleo diet’s disapproval of dairy is the fact that animals do not ingest milk past the age of infancy.

This theory probably counts for the reason why a good number of humans are currently lactose intolerant.

The paleo diet does not really require you to count the amount of calories, however you do have to watch your volume intake. It simply works on the principle “eat when you are hungry, and don’t if you’re not”, and also eat only the food types that were available in the paleolithic era.

II. The Zone Diet

The zone diet, unlike the paleo diet focuses more on the proportion of food being ingested into the body. The standard recommended food ratio for the zone diet is 40% carbs : 30% protein : 30% fat. The principle is planned healthy eating, constantly throughout the day.

You are not required to starve yourself, or restrict yourself from eating, but choosing to eat healthy options throughout the day. You are required to have breakfast, lunch and dinner, with snacks an hour or two between each meal. All means have to be weighed to ensure that the food ratios are kept to, and you are eating every food type in the adequate proportion.

Basic Of Crossfit Nutrition

When To Eat?

It is mostly advised to combine both the paleo diets and zone diets together for the best results. Utilizing the Paleo-Zone diet ensures you have all the nutrients you need for a proper workout, and your muscles have the right supplements to heal and recover faster and get bigger and stronger.

It is ideal that you get your three square meals a day to keep your body constantly fuelled. If it’s not a rest day, and you are required to workout that day, eat 1 – 3 hours before you have to workout. Eating less than an hour before your workout begins is a sure-fire way to feel nauseated mid workout, and end up puking during a very tasking routine.

Choosing The Right Ingredients

It is important that we all understand that food is a drug. As we are all not keen on ingesting low-quality, bad or unhealthy amounts of drugs, we should also approach food with that same mindset. When choosing the ingredients to work with, try to go for the highest possible quality, such as grass fed beef, or wild seafood.

If you cannot afford to do so, then you can compromise a little but, try to keep your ingredients as fresh, and nutritious as possible. This helps you body function optimally, and your muscles will be all the better for it.

Supplements

Including supplements into your Crossfit nutrition is allowed, as long as you’re not replacing food with supplements. Supplements are to provide your body with specific nutrients and hormones which will improve your workout outcome, and cannot be easily gotten through food. Supplements such as Omega-3 rich fish oil, and creatine can be considered.

Posted on

Strawberry Banana Smoothie

smoothie-strawberry-banana

strawberry banana smoothieTry this deliciously satisfying, fruity drink that is perfect after a hard training session orfor any time of the day,

Ingredients

  • Handful of fresh or frozen strawberries
  • 1 Banana
  • 1 Cup Ice
  • Splash of Orange juice

Method

  1. Add all the ingredients to the Tall Cup or party Mug and twist on the Cross Blade
  2. Lock on and mix until smooth.
  3. Drink up.

Tip: You can leave the tops on the strawberries, that’s where a lot of the nutrients are.

Posted on

Having Crossfit Diet Plan To Help You Be Successful

crossfit diet plan

Are you planning to start a crossfit diet plan? Well, before jumping it, you must understand that nutrition is just not about following a diet, nutrition is a lifestyle. Although there is no magic bullet to it, but only proper awareness and persistent sound choices daily will give you a lifestyle of good nutrition.

It should also not become an obsession that impedes your every day life. The most valuable tool for Crossfiter’s is that they must understand how to balance the intake of proteins, carbohydrates and fat.

Crossfit Diet Plan Basics

A decent crossfit diet plan follows the mantra “eat to perform”. The science behind this is that for an athletic performance, you need to fuel to power the body and the suggested diet plan is “the zone diet“.

So if you are serious about your fitness goals, you must also be serious about both your exercise and diet. A recommended rigorous 30 minute physical exertion is a must everyday. This can include a mixture of physical movements such as rowing, climbing rope, weightlifting along with the use of equipment’s such as gymnastic rings, kettle bells, pull up bars. barbells etc.

The zone diet will give you the healthy diet, coupled with exercise to go along well with your Crossfit regime.

Zone Diet Principles

  • Follow a balanced nutrition where every single meal should maintain the 40-30-30 ratio for the intake of carbohydrates-fat-proteins.
  • It is recommended to eat food 5 times in a day with 3 balanced meals and 2 healthy snacks.
  • Try to plan your meals well in advance.
  • In order to keep track of what you eat, use the “block system”. This allows you to measure and keep you on track with the 40-30-30 ratio. A block is basically 9g of carbohydrates, 1.5g of fat and 7g of proteins.
  • It is suggested not to spend more than 5 hours in a day without eating anything.
  • It is recommended to limit your calorie intake to 100 for snacks and 500 for regular meals.
  • It is advised to drink at least 8 glasses of water everyday.

Foods To Be Consumed

The zone diet requires you to add garden vegetables to your meals, especially green leafy vegetables, seeds, nuts, lean meat etc. If you are in the first few weeks of your Crossfit diet, it is suggested to eat at the earliest after you wake up. You can consume energy foods in the morning that keep you boosted all day long. Foods like omelettes, scrambled eggs, protein smoothies etc make a good breakfast choice.

Lunch must include large servings of proteins such as cold chicken, salad with shrimp or chicken breast, meat strew etc. For some extra energy and fullness, you can also include high fiber carbohydrates such as nuts, fruits etc.

Dinner should majorly focus on proteins. Most people tend to burn less calories during the evening. If you do not exercise after your dinner, try to restrict the intake of carbohydrates.
Snacks can be consumed at a gap of 3 hours. You can include a mixture of both carbohydrates and proteins for each snack.

Foods To Be Avoided

The foods that include high glycemic carbohydrates should be strictly avoided as they increase the insulin levels in the body which further leads to hyperinsulinism, which is directly connected to high cholesterol, obesity, blood pressure and mood dysfunction.

Therefore the Crossfit diet plan allows a decreased calorie intake and yet still focuses on high nutrition for meticulous activity.