Back To The Basics
“Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.”
Most of you are likely familiar with these first two sentences of world class fitness in 100 words. You can read them on the wall at DeNovo now as well. It’s a simple prescription to simply eat real food. EAT…REAL…FOOD. This may be preaching to the choir, considering the audience reading this, but it’s a concept that can easily get lost in all the fad diets, tricky food marketing, and straight up garbage information about nutrition and health floating around the internet these days. Real foods are those found in nature, have no ingredients list (or a very minimal list of things you are familiar with and can pronounce), and most often found on the perimeter of the grocery store.
These two sentences also address the quality of the foods we should be focused on as well as the quantity for which we should aim. Meat (protein) is listed first and hopefully we all know by now that protein is king and needs to be prioritized in our diet. Vegetables (non-starchy carbs) provide our bodies with so much of what they need to be healthy and happy (fiber, micronutrients, etc.). Nuts and seeds - a catch-all for healthy fats - and includes foods such as avocados, olive oil, coconut oil, and quality full-fat dairy products. Including healthy fats in the diet has been shown to increase HDL cholesterol (aka, good cholesterol), reduce inflammation, and support brain function, among other things. Some fruit, little starch, and no sugar - this language helps us to reduce the consumption of refined carbohydrates and processed food.
While the CrossFit prescription emphasizes whole and unprocessed foods as the ideal goal, there is a place for minimally processed foods in this recommendation as well. There are many things we do in our own kitchens that are forms of “processing” (think heating, blending, preserving, fermenting). The important aspect of this is that we are sticking with foods where the processing doesn’t decrease the nutritional value or have added fillers like sugar, preservatives, and other additives that we can’t pronounce.
Nutrition is the base of CrossFit’s “Theoretical Hierarchy of the Development of an Athlete.” On top of that base sits metabolic conditioning, gymnastics, weightlifting, and sport. (Fun fact, you can read about this on the wall at DeNovo too!). The basic idea here is that if we aren’t paying attention to our nutrition, everything else above it will suffer. Whether your goal is to stay healthy and avoid chronic disease, or be a competitive athlete at the top of the field, starting out with these two sentences as a prescription for eating will help you achieve those goals.
