What is a well-balanced diet?

One composed of lean meats, vegetables, especially greens, nuts and seeds, little starch and no sugar. That’s about as simple as we can put it. Many have observed that keeping your grocery cart to the perimeter of the grocery store is a great way to protect your health. Food is perishable. The processed stuff in the center aisles with long shelf life is all suspect. You want to try to avoid it. If you follow these simple guidelines you will feel better, perform better and have a good foundation for your nutrition. We can sit down with you and give you a more detailed explanation of how to do this and what some of the overall benefits of doing this will be for you.

The Zone

The Zone Diet by Dr. Barry Sears is based on a “40:30:30” ratio of calories obtained daily from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, respectively. Where your carbohydrates are predominately vegetable and fruits, very little starches if any, and no refined sugar. Your proteins are lean meats and fish. And fats come from nuts, seeds and oils. “The Zone” is Dr. Sears’ term for proper hormone balance. When food is eaten in this balance the blood sugar is kept at an optimal level. When the balance is off, the blood sugar rises, which causes an insulin response to lower this level. This release and effect causes a roller coaster effect of highs and lows in your energy levels and over all feeling throughout the day. Once your hormone balance is achieved and your hormonal response is leveled you will get optimal nutrition by giving yourself the right amount of macronutrients. The amount of food required to increase muscle, maintain immune function and give you energy depends on your lean body mass.

The Caveman or Paleolithic Model

Paleolithic nutrition is based on the premise that people are genetically adapted to the diet of their paleolithic ancestors and that human genetics have scarcely changed since the dawn of agriculture, and therefore an ideal diet for health and well-being is one that resembles this ancient diet. Evolution has not kept pace with advances in agriculture and food processing resulting in a plague of health problems. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, obesity have all been scientifically linked to a diet too high in refined or processed carbohydrates. The Caveman model is vegetables, lean meats, nuts and seeds. It is all the stuff that was around when we were hunting and gathering.

While following the Paleolithic Model (Paleo), there are certain foods you will want to avoid. Rice, bread, pasta, candy, potato, sweets, cakes, corn, grains, wheat, sodas, preservatives, and most processed carbohydrates should be avoided. Excessive consumption of high-glycemic carbohydrates such as these is the primary culprit in nutritionally caused health problems. High glycemic carbohydrates are those that raise blood sugar too rapidly. Now that you are familiar with what to eat and what to avoid, to achieve top performance, you have to be specific about the balances of those things and accurate in your macronutrient consumption. With out being too technical you have to be in “The Zone.”

Nutrition for Kids

Our goal with kids isn′t to get them on the zone, but to get them to think and make good choices about what they eat. Our goal is to teach them very basic concepts, sugar is bad, protein is good and you need to eat some in every meal. Nuts and seeds are good fats. Eat them, don′t avoid them. Pasta, white bread, and white rice are not that good for you, stuff that′s red, yellow, green and found in the fruit and vegetable aisle is good for you. Eat a lot of it. Look at your plate, make a fist, eat that much meat every meal; turn your hand over and fill it with nuts and seeds, eat that much good fat, fill the rest of your plate with stuff you found in the fruit and vegetable aisle. Fill your plate this way at every meal, don′t eat more.

*Courtesy of Crossfit Kids HQ Brand X