Nutrition
Why is nutrition important?
Nutrition plays a critical role in the success and overall health of CrossFit athletes. A balanced and nutritious diet provides the energy and nutrients necessary for intense workouts, promotes recovery, and supports overall health and wellness. Proper nutrition also helps with weight management and muscle building. In CrossFit, it is important to consume a variety of whole foods, including lean proteins, healthy fats, and complex carbohydrates, to fuel the body and support performance and recovery.50
What is CrossFit's diet recommendation?
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.
These two sentences capture a nutritional approach that, when applied with our workouts, yields incredible health and fitness. By combining the potent training stimulus of constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity with a sound diet of whole, unprocessed foods eaten in the proper amounts, the results are nothing short of life changing.
To truly optimize health and fitness, you have to pay attention to what you eat and how much you eat. That starts with choosing high-quality, unprocessed foods and weighing, measuring, and recording your intake. We suggest doing that for at least 30 days. At the end of the first 30 days, you should assess your results — i.e., How are your health markers such as body composition, resting heart rate, and blood pressure (among others)? How are your workout scores trending? How do you feel? If needed, you can then adjust what and how much you are eating for best results.
This type of measured, systematic self-observation driven by real results will be the best guide as to whether you should change any of your eating habits or implement any new diet strategies.
Overall, diet needs to be customized to each individual based on their physiological response, goals, and other lifestyle factors. The best way to optimize your diet for your specific needs is by carefully tracking inputs (the food you eat) and outputs (workout results and health markers).
What if I need some coaching?
We have a personalized food coaching program called MacroRx+ that will help you choose the right kinds of foods along with accountability to help you stay on track. You can read more about the coaching program here.