The Paleo diet and CrossFit have been closely linked for years, both promoting health, minimalism, and community. However, both have stirred up controversy. This article explores the connection between CrossFit and the Paleo diet, examining the benefits and drawbacks of this combination and offering guidance on how to maximize fitness results.
Understanding CrossFit and the Paleo Diet
CrossFit is an exercise methodology centered around functional movements performed at high intensity. These workouts aim to build core strength, flexibility, agility, and endurance. CrossFit requires proper nutritional support to reap the full benefits.
The paleo diet is based upon clean, simple, and primal eating, so naturally, adherents had to make it ridiculously complicated. The theory behind the paleo diet is that because it limits the follower to food products and cooking processes that were in place during the formative years of human evolution, it allows us to function more efficiently and healthfully. The paleo diet mimics the diet of our ancestors. Back when humans were hunter gatherers, it wasn’t a simple trip to the local stores to grab an organic chicken to cook for dinner, we’d have to go out and kill our own beasts if we wanted to feed our families. In reality, hunter gatherers had to eat what was around seasonally which meant that depending on the time of year, their meat consumption could range anywhere between 5-90%.
The paleo diet emphasizes whole, unprocessed foods, mirroring what hunter-gatherers supposedly ate. Processed foods (breads, chips, cakes, pastries, sodas) are out; whole, organic, GMO-free, hunter-gatherer foodstuffs are in. It typically includes lean meats, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds while excluding grains, legumes, and dairy products. The Paleo diet consists mainly of grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, vegetables, fruits, fungi, roots and nuts, excludes grains, legumes and dairy products, and limits refined sugars, starches, processed foods and oils.
Why the Paleo Diet Appeals to CrossFitters
Even though clean dietary choices seem as though they'd be good for everyone, CrossFitters are unusually attached to the idea and the practice of eating paleo. CrossFitters tend to be enthusiastic about the paleo diet lifestyle because they exert so much energy pursuing their CrossFit dreams. The high-protein and low-sugar diet has a high proportion of beneficial micronutrients that can aid in muscle recovery and allow for longer, tougher training sessions.
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Potential Benefits of Combining Paleo and CrossFit
- Increased Micronutrient Intake: The paleo-approved list of fruits and vegetables is fairly long. Unprocessed fruits, vegetables, and proteins are more micronutrient dense than Cinnabons, for example. If you incorporate all of them into your daily dietary rotation, you will deserve a medal for nutritional virtue.
- Improved Recovery: Carbohydrates support recovery and increase performance. The high-protein and low-sugar diet has a high proportion of beneficial micronutrients that can aid in muscle recovery and allow for longer, tougher training sessions.
- Weight Loss: Paleo can be effective for short- term weight loss due to the loss of water.
- Enhanced Performance: A relatively small (but sufficient) amount of carbohydrates in the Paleo diet is increasingly used by athletes with the aim of using fat during exercise and saving carbohydrate reserves.
Criticisms and Considerations
- Restrictiveness and Nutrient Deficiencies: The paleo diet is (sometimes needlessly) restrictive. It doesn't allow legumes, milk, or whole grains, which are three nutritional powerhouses. It can be difficult and time-consuming to get the wide variety of nutrients the body needs from exclusively meats, paleo diet-approved vegetables and fruits (you'll have to do a lot of cooking). Since Paleo can lead to micrinutrient deficiency and lack of energy due to low carb intake, it can negatively affect athletic performance.
- Not Necessarily Mimicking Ancestral Diets: We don’t know exactly what ancient people ate. But it’s safe to assume their diets were as varied as those of contemporary hunter-gatherer groups. There isn’t just one single paleo diet. Archeologists have found residue of grains on paleolithic tools from 30,000 years ago. Even our evolutionary cousins, the neanderthals, were found to have remnants of wild grains stuck in their teeth.
- Individual Needs: Each person requires specifications based on their own needs which includes (but not exclusive to) their biometrics, training volume and food preferences. It should be pointed out that it is crucial to feed the body what it actually needs and not solely what is permissible according to a lifestyle theory.
- Potential Long-Term Health Risks: Paleo is effective for short- term weightloss, but can have long- term health risks.Low carb diets such as Paleo are immensely popular, especially in Europe and North America and certainly among CrossFitters. Eating less carbs and more animal- based proteins and fats, would improve health and performance.
The Importance of Carbohydrates
It is well established within the sports science community that carbohydrates support recovery and increase performance. So no, unless you have an autoimmune disease where your body cannot tolerate it, grains do not cause inflammation. Carbs such as potato, sweet potato, beets, pumpkin, as well as non - paleo foods in rice, quinoa, oats (gasp) and other whole grains should be a staple for athletes.
The Zone Diet: A More Flexible Approach
These days the Crossfit diet is a little less rigid, following the Zone diet, which has a more reasonable macronutrient balance, but the food choices still follow the Paleo diet guidelines. The simplest system is 30% protein, 40% carbs and 30% monounsaturated (good) fats.
Paleo Diet and Insulin
Much of the low-carb and paleo reasoning revolves around insulin. We’ve known for half a century that if you give someone just a steak: no carbs, no sugar, no starch; their insulin goes up. Researchers only looked at beef and fish, but subsequent data showed that that there’s no significant difference between the insulin spike from beef, chicken, or pork-they’re all just as high. Thus, protein and fat rich foods may induce substantial insulin secretion.
Individualized Approaches: Case Studies
- The Athlete: If she’s training around 2 hours a day and spends the rest of the time recovering and thinking about training… Glamorous?! She’s using her anaerobic system consistently, and this system runs on glucose (carbs), not fat or ketones. Fran doesn’t run well on fat.
- The Superdad: Greg Glassman’s initial mantra of “eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar” is a perfect fit for this guy. In addition to this, a little tinkering with carb timing and quantity is required here to make sure he’s keeping the belly fat off.
- The Office Jockey: Absolutely. It might just save his life. Most carbohydrates will not be friends with this man, and his diet should be centred around healthy fats, protein and veggies.
Research Findings
Research examined the extent to which there is a relationship between the amount of carbohydrates you eat and the chance of mortality from both cardiovascular and non-cardiovascular causes. The study made a distinction between low, moderate and high carb diets. In a low carb diet less than 40% of the total caloric intake is delivered by carbohydrates. In a high carb diet that is more than 70%. In a moderate diet about 50% of the calories are delivered by carbohydrates.
Four key findings:
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- Low and high carb diets increase the risk of mortality, but low carb is worseBoth low and high carb diets increase our risk of mortality.
- Animal products increase the risk of mortality, plant products reduce itWhen in both a low and a high carb diets the carbohydrate are replaced by animal- based proteins and fats such as meat, eggs and butter the risk of mortality is higher than when those proteins and fats are plant- ased.
- Any diet high in animal products has negative long term effectsA low carb diet with animal based products and little plant- based products has expected negative long term effects, such as biological ageing and stimulation of inflammatory pathways.
- A balanced diet with 50% carbs and both animal and plant- based products seems the best choiceA diet where about 50% of the total caloric intake is provided by carbohydrates gives the smallest risk of mortality.
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