CrossFit has substantially changed the way I view a healthy lifestyle. For me, it seems that the three fundamental components of the program are the fitness, the rest/recovery, and the nutrition.

A vast majority of CrossFitters typically follow the Zone Diet, the Paleo Diet, or a hybrid of the two. I’ll save the discussion of these diets for another time, but needless to say I’ve found that they’ve been brutally effective for me. And what about diets? There always seems to be some mystery and confusion shrouding anything that has the word “diet” in it, so I figured it’d be a good time to give a bit of what a diet really means.

The word seems to have the connotations of a quick fix to shed a few extra Chihuahuas off the waist and get one extra notch smaller on the belt loop. Or maybe a cleansing program that requires you to feed on nothing but lemons and rageahol for a week straight. But really, a diet should be much more than that. A diet should be sustainable, and something more along the lines of a way of life. The vast majority of Americans are given the amazing option to pick and choose what they eat. The problem is that we’re given such little information about what proper nutrition is, and the nutrition we are all given through general primary education is so completely off target. If you look at the revised food pyramid that is distributed by the USDA today, you’ll notice that it’s a much better system than what I remember having as a wee little Norm so many years ago. It’s slightly more balanced, but it still needs work.

Both of these are way off. Click on the image for an expanded view.

The very first slice of the pyramid advises all of us to eat at least 3 ounces of whole grains a day. But why? What are the benefits of consuming grains that make them an essential part of our daily diet? It mentions the fiber found in the grains listed as a health benefit, but not much else. Why not?

The grains that we all so often eat, choose, and enjoy in our lives aren’t actually helping us all that much beyond that. While they are cheap, easily stored, transported, and give us the calories we need to burn to carry out our daily tasks, it provides none of the nutrition of natural carbohydrates such as fruits and vegetables. But it goes even deeper than that.

A few people have heard of the terms glycemic load and glycemic index (especially if you have diabetes or are close to someone who does), but what does it really mean? Essentially, these are numbers that determine how quickly a food turns into sugar in your body, and the corresponding insulin response your body has to have to have to process this food. What does this mean? A diet filled with sugars (high fructose corn syrup, brown sugar, cane sugar, etc) and grains (bread, pasta, rice, quick oatmeal, etc) are known to be leading causes of obesity, and eventually from that, diabetes.

Grains (along with sugars) will send your glycemic levels absolutely skyrocketing (SKY ROCKETS IN FLIGHT! AFTERNOON DELIGHT!). The fact that grains are such a staple in our typical diets leaves me shuddering at the thought to those who are putting down slab after slab of bread without some sort of physical activity as recourse. It doesn’t even have to be as much of a hardcore fitness program as CrossFit, but something as simple as walking five miles or more a day can do wonders for your body.

So what am I saying here? Americans love their grains. A morning bowl of cereal. A nice deli sandwich for lunch. A few cold ones to knock back watching the game. Grains are intricately involved in our lives, as they are some of the most readily available foods that we live upon. Am I saying that we should get rid of grains altogether? Absolutely not!

Don’t get me wrong, I love a stack of pancakes with bacon, sausage, large three egg Western omelet and hash browns washed down with a hand dipped Cookies & Cream malt and coffee as much as the next person on a lazy Sunday afternoon (ask Jen sometime). But I don’t eat like that all the time. I know that meal is terrible for me and my body. I realize that meals like that are really something to be had once in a blue moon, because keeping up a pace of life like that would prematurely have me flying to that big buffet in the sky. So what am I suggesting? A reevaluation of diet sense from all of us. The more critical point is that moderation is essential. You could make the good and valid point that I talk about meals that don’t fit into what I preach. What I don’t mention here is that these meals I have of Indian food stacked with naan or pasta laden dishes aren’t the norm. I tend to limit myself to these extravagances up to 15% of the time, or about three meals out of the week. As far I’m concerned, that’s plenty to get your fill of what you want to eat, and maintain a healthy eating style for the rest of the week.

The Zone Food Pyramid, the right way to do it.

We definitely take the time to educate ourselves in our careers, to become more capable at performing our work and achieving our goals, which in turn, we hope will lead us to greater successes. A machinist will learn how to operate technologies to thread the bolts that holds our warships together. A cardiologist will learn about the available drugs to help save his patients from heart failure. An IT specialist will learn about the latest technologies to help him build better technological systems. So why aren’t we holding the same standard to being alive? Take the time to educate yourself on what a healthy lifestyle is. Take the initiative to learn how to more effectively and efficiently feed yourself, which in turn, I hope will allow each of us to experience a longer and better life.

As with all diets, there are considerations that really need to be thought of when you exclude a certain type of food from what you eat. If you exclude root beer from your diet, what the hell are you going to have with your ice cream? If you exclude mint from your diet, what’s going to take the crown when you can’t eat mint chocolate chip ice cream?

And with that, I bring us to the world of dairy. As a part of the paleolithic diet, I’ve really done my best to exclude dairy from my meals, save for the cheat meals where ALL. BETS. ARE. OFF. An interesting fact I’ve learned, though, is that dairy does provide the human body with innumerable benefits- in this case, probiotics. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines probiotics as, “Live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host.” There are many studies touting the benefits of probiotics in one’s diet (and of course, likely an equal number of studies claiming the harm of probiotics. The latter of these studies are conducted by chimpanzees in lab coats.) Really though, only a single therapeutic trial has shown that probiotics negatively affected the health of those who suffer from acute pancreatitis, but beyond that, there has been no other documented data showing anything but positive effects on the human body.

In our modern and industrialized nation, dairy is an immensely powerful source of nutrition. It is a superior source of probiotics, protein, and even calcium. So what do you do when you want all the benefits of dairy, but are restricted from having it in your everyday life?

I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather take a butcher's word for it.

In my research, I toiled the search mines of Google (for 0.21 seconds, according to the super search giant) and found that fermented foods such as sauerkraut, Kombucha, miso, ginger beer, kimchi, water/coconut kefir, or even sour pickles will adequately provide you with the probiotics you need the healthy bacteria in your life.

I can’t say I recommend ginger beer floats though if you’re trying to stay Paleo, Zone, or Paleo-Zone, but you’d definitely get your dose of probiotics with a large scoop of lactose free ice cream floating around in this stuff.

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