I get asked often "What should I be eating?" Or, "What diet is the best?" The simple answer to the second is, the one you'll stick to, forever. Not just for a few weeks or months, but one you can make into a lifestyle. As for what should you be eating? Well, here is my recommendation after 10 years of tinkering to find what's simple and effective. I call it The PaleoFlexZone.
The Paleo Diet
This is arguably...ok no argument, this is THE best tool for teaching you what foods to eat. The Paleo Diet is restricted to eating veggies, meats, nuts and seeds and fruits. That's it. No grains. No beans (that means peanuts too). No dairy (milk products). No artificial (or "natural" labeled) anything. This is, without question, the best way to teach your body to eat whole, real food basically all the time. If you find yourself constantly eating from boxes and bags, start here for a while. It'll learn ya real fast. It isn't easy, but it is simple and effective. The draw back here is the totalitarian restrictiveness of this method. It becomes excessively difficult to stay on point as you try and eat with and around other people.
The Flex Diet (a.k.a. If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM))
The advantage of the Flex Diet is that it leverages the fact that humans are omnivores and can make energy out of anything we eat. It tells us that as long as your are hitting your calorie count via making it to your macro-nutrient goals you can control your...wait for it...GAAIIINNNZZZZ! (I just threw up in my mouth a little). Meaning your can control your fat loss, muscle growth, and overall performance buy setting specific goals in grams per day of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats and hitting them exact (or as near as possible with out going over) each day. I hate how bro-sciencey it sounds, but it's backed by actual science and it works without question. The draw back is that the only restriction it has is caloric. Although Flex Diet "recommends" eating a clean, healthy diet, many folks who eat this way eat poor quality food because it fits their macros.
The Zone Diet
The Zone Diet has been around since the 1970's. The whole premise is balance. Many diets are so carbohydrate biased that getting all of the essential macro and micro nutrients is difficult. The Zone hands us a macro-nutrient balance of 40-30-30. 40% of your calories come from carbs, 30% from proteins, and 30% from fats. This is very effective and makes it more possible to get all or most of your carbohydrate calories from vegetables. This also makes it a great partner for the Paleo diet. The problem with this diet is the way Dr. Sears set up the "blocks". Blocks are used to get people to eat good and correct amounts of each macro-nutrient, but the calculations are flawed and out of date. It also has odd restrictions on it's recommendations of "good" carbs and "bad" carbs.
The PaleoFlexZone
I am a proponent of balance. Ebbs and flows that allow life to happen well and leave us feeling better than we did the day before. The combination of these 3 diets gives us, in my estimation, the best balance for how to eat. Start with the Paleo diet, learn quality foods. Move to the Zone and learn how to portion those foods. Add the Flex Diet in to zero in on the absolute numbers to be in real control over the calories going into your body. The Flex Diet usually sets calories off of 50-55% of calories from carbohydrates on active days, and drops them on inactive days. The PaleoFlex Zone is this: 1) The bulk of your diet should be as strict Paleo as you can tolerate. 2) Use the 40-30-30 Zone balance with total daily calories based off of .7-1.0 grams of protein per pound you weigh. 3) Use the Flex Diet to track those numbers as a whole, as well as allowing yourself to eat not-paleo when it is difficult to do so or when you're in a social setting (see my blog from August 24th about this). This means looking at an egg as fats and proteins, not just proteins or milk as carbs, proteins, and fats or oatmeal as carbs and proteins, or...well you get the picture. It also means allowing yourself to have a meal or snack here or there that is totally not paleo, but you're ok with that. MyFitnessPal (no affiliation here, it's just what I use to help me, they are not paying me... although, I wish they would) is a great mobile app to help you set your calories and macro balance and then track it very closely.
Doing this takes discipline. This is simple, but it is not easy at first. You will struggle with willpower. You will want to quit. You will want to skip logging that fun size snickers you just ate, or that handful of skittles, or that "Sugar-Free/Low-Calorie" mocha-choca-bull-crap you just drank. Tough. Do it. Make yourself aware of where your calories are coming from. Buy a food scale. Weigh and measure everything that goes in your mouth.
If you want to make a change you have to be willing to do something you have never done before. You want to lose weight? Guess what? You gotta track your food intake (a.k.a. diet) and get your butt off the couch. You want to learn to play guitar (a personal goal of mine)? Guess what? You have to buy a guitar and start learning and practicing. None of this stuff is easy, but it works and it's worth it.
You should do it because you're worth it. You are worth more than the handbag you couldn't afford in the first place. You are worth more than the 8 hour Netflix binge in which you just indulged. You are worth more than you think. Are you willing to stop treating your body like a dumpster and more like the high performance machine that it was designed to be on the first place? Time to dust off the work ethic and get going.
Need help? Head to www.crossfitcrossroads.com (link is to our coaches page) and contact one of our coaches to get started on a PaleoFlexZone Plan and begin learning how valuable your health really is.
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