So whether you are new to CrossFit or have been practicing for awhile, the one thing that seems to elude all of us is what happens once we leave the gym. CrossFit is about getting the most work done in the least amount of time, but in order to do that the machine you use must have the appropriate fuel aka FOOD!.
What should you be eating? Its fairly simple “eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar”
Okay pretty self explanatory right....well maybe not so much. There is a lot of science that goes in to figuring out what to eat and if you are looking to optimize your performance, when to eat. You also need to realize that eating in this way will automatically reduce the calories that you are eating simply because you are eating less caloricaly dense foods. Couple tools to use to begin understanding how to approach nutrition, are first figuring out the basic number of calories that you have to consume within a day in order to stay alive. After you have this number you will then want to account for daily activity, so if you are working out within the day and also what you might do for a job, are all going to cause increased energy expenditure. Use this page to figure all this out very easily http://eattoperform.com/eat-to-perform-calculator/.
Now that you know how many calories you should be eating in a day (don't be afraid of the number), lets talk about what to eat and when to eat it. So breakfast is an important meal because your body is normally coming out of starvation mode so breakfast will help get that metabolism going. Your plate at every meal should consist of 1/3 lean meat, 1/3 vegetables, 1/3 healthy fats. This should be your standard for every meal except for and that is the post workout meal (which I will touch on a little bit later). The goal is to limit the amount of carbs you are consuming to around 100-150g per day. If you can keep your levels around that mark you will notice a change in body composition as long as you are getting enough fat and protein. As far as protein is concerned you should be consuming 1 g per pound of body weight at the minimum due to the high intensity type workouts that we do. For fats all of you should have a different number of grams per day based off of your calculations from the link. It is important to eat that healthy fat because it is going to help provide you with the energy you will need to make it through the day and to off set the reduction in carbs.
Post-Workout Meal- This is the most important meal of the day and the most important to your muscles recovery. You have a two hour window after completing your workout to refuel your muscles and help them in rebuilding. The make up of your post workout meal if you are looking to gain muscle strength and size should have a decent amount of carbs and protein in it. The plate should be half carbs, aim for a starch of some sort like sweet potatoes or squash, or even rice, the reason for this is it will allow your muscles to refuel their glycogen supplies. The protein provides amino acids which will allow your muscles to build and repair themselves. You can aim for anywhere from 50-75g of carbs in this meal, the only time that you should load up on the carbs.
This is a basic idea of how to start your nutrition, I will be covering more as we go and would love to get this discussion going as to what you guys want to know more of and your thoughts on how to implement this in your life! Changes always start in the kitchen!
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