Technorati Tags: Crossfit diet, Palaeolithic diet, paleo diet, slow carb., the zone diet plan, zone diet

So let’s start with what seems to be the current main contender for the title of CrossFit diet. The Palaeolithic diet. You may have also heard it referred to as the caveman diet or perhaps the hunter gatherer diet. In a nutshell adherents of the paleo diet hold to the idea that humanity hasn’t evolved to eat the diet that that the vast majority of people in the civilised world currently do.

We are pretty much the same make and model of human that was wandering the Earth fifty thousand years ago. Our lives may have changed beyond measure but our basic biology remains the same. We are pretty much adapted to eat the same sort of foods as our distant ancestors ate.

The birth and spread of agriculture saw the introduction of food stuffs that we simply haven’t evolved to eat. Grains, legumes, dairy, sugars are amongst the ­­­foods that would never have featured in the diets of Palaeolithic hunter gatherers.  The argument goes that as our biology is essentially the same the optimal diet for modern Humans should be similar.

There is actually some evidence to support this. There are still populations that subsist on similar diets to our ancestors. These groups are comparatively free of many of the diseases that beset people in the developed world. Obesity, diabetes and heart disease are noticeably less prevalent in communities that eat a diet similar to humans who lived in pre agrarian societies.  Enthusiasts of paleo insist that it’s the prevalence of cultivated foods in the modern Human’s diet that cause these diseases of affluence.

So, assuming that we buy the argument how exactly do we go about adapting our diet so it mimics that of our ancestors?  The key here is to think like a hunter gatherer. The diet should be comprised of food items that can be hunted or fished (quite easy those two) or gathered. The latter would consist of eggs, vegetables, nuts, fruit and mushrooms. It’s highly recommended that all meat come from grass fed animals or wild game and ideally all should be lean cuts due to the fact they contain higher levels of omega 3 fats when compared to grain fed animals.

In paleo though, more so than most diets it’s what you don’t eat that’s significant. Grains and everything ultimately made from grains are out. So that’s no bread and no pasta. Legumes (peas, beans and peanuts) aren’t eaten and neither is dairy. Any processed oil, sugar and salt are excluded as are alcoholic beverages.  Some simple points to remember are:

• Eat a LOT of protein. As much red meat as you like, poultry, pork, fish, eggs. Ideally as discussed the meat should be sourced from grass fed stock. Anything up to 30% of your calories should be derived from protein.




• Be prepared to eat a lot of fat. Far more than your currently use to. This is often the hardest concept to embrace. It seems counter intuitive. But adherents of the diet argue that there is confusion between the dietary fat that we consume and body fat. There isn’t necessarily a connection between the two. 
• Eat plenty of vegetables. Fresh or frozen is OK. 
• Eat fruit sparingly. While fruits are excellent source of vitamins and anti oxidants they are also high in sugar. The recommended fruits are berries.  
• Incorporate nuts into your diet. 
• Cut out all grain, cereal and legumes from your diet. This means no wheat, flour, oats, barley, rice, corn, soy, peas, beans and peanuts. And obviously all the products derived from them. So that’s no bread, beer, pasta and breakfast cereals.
• Cut out the dairy. No milk and cheese…….however some adherents of the diet do recommend butter.
• NO SUGAR. Not surprisingly processed sugar and everything that contains processed sugar is a big no. So that’s all soft drinks (this includes fruit juices), sweets, candy, cakes and biscuits.
• Olive oil is fine to include in the diet as is avocado and macadamia oil. But stay away from vegetable oils, sunflower oil, corn oil, canola and peanut oil.

It’s not necessarily that straight forward though. The diet does have its critics. There are those that questions the wisdom of such a high intake of protein and fat. There is the possibility that excessive protein consumption could potentially stress the kidneys. There are also concerns expressed by some that the relatively high fat intake could have adverse health implications. Conventional wisdom has always associated the consumption of fat with obesity and heart disease.

The exclusion of grains and legumes are also questioned. The diet of many Asian and Mediterranean peoples feature these foods prominently and the health and longevity of these populations have often been accredited to their diet. There is also a question about the sustainability of the diet. Given the increase in the Earth’s population the widespread adoption of the diet would be impractical given the finite resources we now possess.

When all is said and done visit most boxes and this is the diet you’ll more often than not find being discussed and recommended. If there is such a thing as a CrossFit diet this approach is a front runner. However there are a few other credible alternatives for us to look at.

Technorati Tags: Crossfit diet, Palaeolithic diet, paleo diet

Another diet that’s has recently begun getting some serious exposure in boxes is Tim Ferriss’s “slow carb” diet, which appeared in his book the “4 Hour Body”.  This is a relatively simple diet to follow which starts with the following rules:

·         Don’t eat white carbs: Like the paleo diet all grains and cereal are out. Along with potatoes, pasta and rice.

·         Eat the same few meals over and over: There isn’t a great deal of variety in this diet, the recommendation is to pick a few meals that you’re comfortable with and consume them routinely.

·         Don’t consume “fluid calories”: Water, tea, coffee  (both unsweetened) and even red wine are fine on this diet. However soft drinks, milk, beer, white wine and fruit juices are forbidden.

·         Don’t eat fruit (tomatoes and avocados are OK)

·         Take one day off a week and eat whatever you like…….carbs and fat’s included.

Unlike the paleo diet legumes are allowed on this diet and positively encouraged. Peas, beans and lentils are all eaten in abundance. The slow carb diet is basically a low GI diet. So what does a typical day in the life of this diet look like?

Breakfast: 4 egg whites and 1 whole egg, mixed beans, rasher of turkey bacon,

Snack: Ham slices, mixed veg and almonds.

Lunch: Chicken breast, black beans and mixed veg

Dinner: Steak, peas and mixed salad

There you go! Not difficult! But your diet won’t vary much from the description above throughout your time on it. So as you can imagine it will get quite boring………However there is an upside with this diet. One day a week you’re allowed to go nuts and eat whatever you like. In fact according to Tim the success of the diet depends on you doing so. Apparently the rapid increase of calories consumed during the cheat day causes a hormonal change to occur. Namely the conversion of T4 thyroid hormone to T3.

There are a few other recommendations that Tim makes to ensure the success of the diet:

·         Eat within one hour of waking

·         Avoid all food stuffs that contain fructose

·         Eat plenty of protein

·         Drink plenty of water

·         Not overeating snack foods like nuts

·         Don’t overtrain

After trying numerous diets Tim insists that this is the one he’s found most effective for fat loss. Certainly if you’ve read his book you’d be left in no doubt about his commitment to experimenting with different diet and exercise regimes and he claims that this diet has helped individuals lose 9kg in 30 days without exercising! 

Technorati Tags: Crossfit diet, four hour body, slow carb diet

An early and still credible contender for the title of CrossFit diet is the Zone diet. Popularised by biochemist Barry Sears it is heavily promoted by the CrossFit community. Basically it advocates the consumption of food in a strict ratio. 40% of calories being derived from carbohydrates. 30% from protein and 30% from fat. The term Zone refers to the proper balance of insulin and glucagon that occurs when the diet is followed.  Promoters of the diet insist that when this occurs the body releases “eicosanoids”. These are anti inflammatory molecules that exhibit a similar effect to aspirin and help counteract “cellular inflammation”.

Cellular inflammation has according to Sears several undesirable effects on the body. It helps the development of chronic disease, can increase the chances of injury, has an impact on athletic performance and can cause obesity. Sears insists that there are no drugs that can currently treat this inflammation and the only way to control it is through diet.

So how do we implement the diet? Well to begin with it seems quite simple. Just divide all your meals into three equal sections. For example one third of the plate should contain some low fat protein roughly about the size of your palm. The other two thirds of the meal should be quality carbohydrates (fruit and vegetables). Finally you need to add a small amount of fat that is low in omega 6 and saturated fats, olive oil would do nicely here.

To “simplify” the diet a block system gas been devised to help people make correct food choices, A block is one choice from a list of protein, carbohydrates and fat. So a typical day could be comprised of the following:

Breakfast: Three blocks

Snack: Two blocks

Lunch: Three blocks

Snack: Two blocks

Dinner: Three blocks

This adds up to 13 blocks enough for a healthy adult male. 11 blocks should be enough for most women. The key is to eat regularly throughout the day which will regulate the hormonal response to food.

So what exactly is a block? One block of protein is equivalent to 7 of protein. Two blocks 14 grams and three blocks 21 grams. A block of carbohydrates is 9 grams, two blocks are 18 grams and three blocks are 27 grams. Finally a block of fat is 1.5 grams, two blocks are 3 grams and three blocks are 4.5 grams. So if we look at our example above again a typical day could look like this:

Breakfast: Three blocks: 3 egg whites, 3 turkey bacon rashers, 3 pieces of broccoli, teaspoon of butter

Snack: Two blocks: 2 oz Chicken breast, 1 pear, 12 peanuts

Lunch: Three blocks: 3 oz can of tuna, 3 tsb lite mayo, 1 slice of bread, ½ apple

Snack: 2 oz ground meat grilled, ½ bun, pickle, 2 tsb avocado oil.

Dinner: Three blocks: 3 oz roasted turkey, 2 ½ cups of kale, 1 tsp olive oil, 1 peach.

The diet is most effective for weight loss and the key is to eat quality calories in a strict 40:30:30 ratio.

The diet does have its critics. From a practical point it can be difficult to follow. To maintain your food intake in the correct ratio you really have to pay attention to what you eat. It also raises the same concerns as the paleo diet in respect to the large amount of protein and fat that are consumed. But the main concern is the lack of research that has been done into the efficacy of the Diet and Dr Sears claims.

But the zone is still a respected approach to nutrition in the CrossFit community and can still be called a CrossFit diet.

Technorati Tags: Crossfit diet, the zone diet plan, zone diet

Most traditional diets have pretty much followed a calorie in, calorie out approach. You try to consume less calories than you use and voila you’ll lose weight. This is fine up to a point, but what the three diets we’ve looked at have in common is their approach to managing insulin.

Our forefathers had very little access to sources of sugar. There would have been fruit, honey and the occasional root but these would have been seasonal. Estimates of carbohydrate consumption from the Palaeolithic era are as low as 90 grams a day as opposed to the average of 500 now. The majority of the calories consumed by populations of hunter gatherers would have been derived from protein and fat.  We have evolved to consume a diet that has a minimal effect on insulin.

Carbohydrates when consumed are converted into glucose. The glucose then enters the blood stream. Your body likes glucose to be maintained in a particular range not to high not to low. If you eat foods  that are easily and quickly converted to glucose your pancreas will release insulin to mitigate the elevated glucose.  The insulin will shuttle the glucose to empty cells in the body and send the excess to the liver where it will be converted to triglycerides. These will then be stored in fat cells.

So to recap carbohydrates will be consumed, converted to glucose, insulin will be released which will send the glucose to cells to be used as energy. The glucose that isn’t used as energy will be sent to the liver where after being processed it ultimately  will be stored as fat.

If you’re constantly consuming food that raises insulin throughout the day this can ultimately lead to insulin resistance in cells that utilise glucose for energy. This is where the presence of insulin becomes continuous. This can present a problem in that the “signal” that insulin  provides the body that there is glucose in the blood stream becomes reduced and can ultimately be curtailed altogether. The body reacts to this by getting the pancreas to produce more insulin which means more insulin in the blood stream, which again means a further reduction in insulin sensitivity. As you can see this becomes a vicious circle.

So why is the above a problem? Excessive insulin in the blood stream is called “hyperinsulinemia”. As insulin is a storage hormone one of the main problems as we have seen is the potential to store excess calories as fat.

Glucose is stored in the body as glycogen but there is a finite amount of glycogen that can be stored in the body. The body however can in theory at least store an unlimited amount of fat. Right so far we’ve kept this explanation relatively simple but things now have to get a little bit complicated.  There are two enzymes involved in the storage and metabolising of fat in the body, the first “lipoprotein lipase” (LPL) is used in the storage of fat in cells. In the cells themselves another enzyme called “hormone sensitive lipase” (HSL) is used in the release of fat as energy. LPL stores fat and HSL helps burn fat. Both of these enzymes have an important relationship with insulin. When there are elevated levels of insulin in the body LPL plays a big role in the storage of glucose as fat. In the absence of insulin HSL helps to burn stored fat as energy.

So lets look at the process again. Carbs are eaten, turned  to glucose, insulin is released which sends the glucose to cells to be used as energy. The glucose that isn’t used as energy will be sent to the liver where the glucose is converted into triglycerides. And the presence of insulin in the blood causes LPL to store the triglycerides in cells in the form of fat. There is another factor to consider as well. The body loves glucose as a source of energy and will always prefer to utilise it over stored fat.

If there is one common factor in the three diets that we’ve looked at so far it’s the way that they manage insulin in response to the food that we consume. All three diets avoid high glycemic foods that would release large amounts of insulin. These would include cereals, grains and processed sugars. The effect that reduced insulin sensitivity can have in terms of obesity is bad enough but when you factor the increased risk of diabetes into the equation you can see why these diets hace their enthusiasts.

Technorati Tags: Crossfit diet, insulin