Eating Plan
My eating philosophy is pretty simply ? eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Weigh and measure intake and adjust as necessary based on goals. Eat enough to support exercise but not body fat.
Sound familiar? It?s the official ?CrossFit? eating prescription ? modified slightly. If you?re familiar with CrossFit?s prescription for nutrition you?ll know that it simply Paleo food choices in Zone proportions.
The Zone Diet, created by Barry Sears, is a great approach to losing weight. What I really like about the Zone diet is two fold:
- It accounts for food intake.
- It?s easy to manipulate quantities once a baseline has been established.
The measurement system utilized by the Zone diet measures ?blocks? instead of calories to track food intake. One block contains each of the main macronutrients ? one protein source, one carbohydrate source and one fat source.
To get more specific, each block contains 7 grams of protein, 9 grams of carbohydrate and 1.5 grams of fat. In order to have a complete block, you would need to have those amounts present.
So, with that measurement system, a ?3 block? meal would contain 21 grams of protein, 27 grams of carbohydrate and 4.5 grams of fat.
As an example, if you were to eat 15 blocks per day you would divide that total up across the entire day. It might look something like this:
Morning: 3 blocks
Snack: 2 blocks
Lunch: 3 blocks
Snack: 2 blocks
Dinner: 3 blocks
Snack: 2 blocks
While not perfect, it was a very effective approach for the average American.
Do you want to be average? No, so we need to modify things a little bit.
As I mentioned earlier, this is rather high in carbohydrate (because it was written for a population who had become addicted to carbs!) and was low in fat. We?re going to modify this approach slightly for our purposes of improving our physique and performance.
And because I don?t want to get sued, we?re going to measure our intake in ?Bricks? instead of ?Blocks?. Big thank you to Christmas Abbott for coining that term.
For our purposes, one brick will contain 7 grams of protein, 5 grams of carbohydrate and 1.5-4.5 grams of fat.
For the first 21 days, my intake will be 20 bricks per day. Allowed food choices are what I consider to fall in the ?optimal? category for fat loss ? meat, vegetables and healthy fats. No grains, no dairy and no starches. Post-workout drink is allowed and it counts towards the daily total.
Following the first 21 days I?ll revaluate my progress and adjust as needed.
- and it was also the first time in about three weeks that I got relatively heavy on back squats. My depth felt great.