I get asked this question all the time. ‘Can you just tell me what to eat or what not to eat? Can you break it down easy for me?’ That may seem like an easy question to you but anyone with any kind of education about nutrition knows that isn’t the case. In fact the answer to the question what should I eat is….. it depends.
Sure I can give some general shot gun approaches which is something that we do. Eat meats, veggies, nuts, seeds, some fruit, no starch, no dairy, no grains, no legumes, no sugar or sweeteners. Most people will do really well on that. Then again there are some people that won’t. The shotgun approach fails to take into account what we call confounding factors. For example, most people will do really well on eggs, but some people have an auto immune issue and eggs can flair that up. Most people can do fine on tomatoes but some people have issues that cause them to get worse with ‘night shades’ (tomatoes, eggplant, mushrooms). Some people will do fine on fruit. Some will have an abnormally high insulin response to the fructose in fruit.
You see everyone is different, and responds different ways to different stimuli. That’s why they can create a drug and it’ll save 100 people’s lives and kill 10 people. Not one human is the same, so why would you think that one dietary approach would work for everyone? We know that most humans have a negative response to most grains which is why we tell you to cut them out. We know that most people can not function well on a diet of donuts and soda, so we cut those things out, but as you progress it tends to get highly specific to the person.
This is why it’s helpful to work with a knowledgeable coach. If that coach’s only nutritional expertise is to eat Paleo, they’ve missed the boat. There’s way more to it then that. That is why I’ve been studying this for the past 13 years, and I continue to learn new stuff every day. So does the entire community of researches and scientists working on these problems for that matter. The more specific you are to you the better. The more testing you can do to be accurate the better. Paleo is a good place to start but where do you go from there? I know it seems like a cop out but if you are having issues, work with someone who knows more then the average CrossFit coach who has heard of Paleo before. It’s not as easy to break down as you think.
7-24-13 WOD
Push ups x 5
Lunges x 10
Wall Balls x 20
AMRAP 10 minutes
