I receive a lot of email from folks asking a variety of questions. Two questions tend to about send me over the brink: “How many blocks should I eat?” and “should I eat Paleo or Zone?” Both questions are troubling for several reasons but it’s actually the later question that just slays me and, is in fact, the causative factor FOR question number 1. You see, Barry Sears, The Zone, everything the man and the diet represent, are steeped in evolutionary biology. That folks, (Level 1 Cert crew teaching nutrition…) is paleo. For some damn reason CrossFit HQ  (or elements so of it) can not wrap their minds around the concept that the basic premise of the paleo diet, that nice bit of writing from World Class Fitness in 100 Words: “…Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds. Some fruit, little starch, no sugar…” is in fact everything that Barry Sears talks about in the Zone! Sometime ago I received confused emails from people who attended a closed to the public gig in which the HQ lecturer, when asked “What about paleo?” responded “Paleo is pseudo science and the individuals who purport it’s methods are pseudo scientists…”

WOW! Better than half of my Crossfit Nutrition Certification is pseudo science! That’s a bummer. Strike one for CrossFit Nutritional offerings. Strike two was delivered this past weekend when Dr. Barry Sears gave a seminar to a large group of avid CrossFitters. Kelly Frankson attended the seminar and was kind enough to allow me to link to her notes. What we find is that Sears is practicing Pseudo Science just like other scientists like Cordain, Eaton, Eades and, well, me. Sears talked at length about genetics that are mismatched for our current environment, the need to return carbohydrate and essential fats BACK to Paleolithic levels. It’s a pretty serious situation if myself, Loren Cordain and Barry Sears are all practicing pseudo science! How long until Dean Ornish or John McDougal will lead the vegan charge for HQ. Those guys are definitely NOT paleo, so they must be of credible scientific pedigree…

Of Weights and Measures

There is a common bit of “wisdom” that is shot around the CrossFit world that goes something like this: “No one will ever reach elite athletic performance without weighing and measuring food…”. Interestingly however, few of the top finishers the CrossFit Games weighed and measured. Would they do better WITH weighing and measuring? Sure, I think you need to keep track of your chow at some point if you are going to affect some additional changes above what a food quality (paleo) approach will provide. But THAT is not the statement, nor the sentiment. Despite defying logic AND the actual stated nutritional hierarchy within Crossfit (don’t piss in your gas tank) the order of operations out of HQ is NOT food quality first (paleo), weighing and measuring second. It’s weigh and measure, whatever you have on hand and THAT will guarantee your ultimate success. It’s an interesting proposition that is proving itself to be completely false. Laura Demarco was an ardent Zoner (weighing and measuring) using VEGAN foods. She had ass-kicking performance but she did one simple thing (always nice in science) she shifted her food from grains to paleo carbs and her proteins all became animal based (paleo). You know what happened? She saw remarkable IMPROVEMENT in her performance. For her it mainly focused on strength (former 1RM DL was 275, current 5RM DL 285!!), but the results are stunning. The only change was a shift in food quality. I have dozens of stories like this. Apparently, food quality DOES matter.

Back to the Barry Sears seminar, Dr. Sears, the developer of the Zone…DOES NOT RECOMMEND WEIGHING AND MEASURING. HE RECOMMENDS FOOD QUALITY FIRST. He makes the point that WAM may be more trouble than it’s worth. For the vast majority of folks I work with that is absolutely the case. When we shifted AWAY from weighing and measuring in our clinical practice our clients got far better and more consistent results. Wacky things like reversing autoimmune disease, something that weighing and measuring beer, Pringles and beef jerky will not accomplish. Which reminds me, I’ve received quite a number of emails about the nutrition lecture at given Level 1 cert. The gist of the lecture is that a well-known athlete weighs and measures his beer, Pringles and beef jerky. He kicks ass (he is about 23…wait till 10 more years are on the odometer), so this is what you should do too. The best spin on this I can provide is this is a method of portion control. Being less diplomatic, I’d say people paid good money to attend that cert and the nutrition portion was a failure. We can and should do a hell of a lot better than that. As a Fitness company I cannot figure out why a general policy on eating is not “Eat the best food you possibly can, as often as you can. Slice it and dice it into the proportions that help you to reach YOUR goals”.

I’m NOT trying to make a paleo cult, I am encouraging people to TRY things and then report back what works. In the mean time I’ll be developing a t-shirt that says “Paleo Diet: Pseudo Science Since 5-million BC”.

Just wanted to let folks know that the CFFB certs are up and running! If you have the chance, try to get out this event. If you coach football, participate in the strength & conditioning of football players or simply have a predilection towards strength, power and speed, you will LOVE this cert.

I’ve been bouncing between the CFFB program and Rutman’s ME-Black-Box and really liking the variety and results. My knees just won’t handle and exclusively O-lifting program. CFFB/ME-black box supply enough stimulus to keep the skill set fresh, not so much that I’m hobbling around after the effort.

Update-

I’ve been taken to task on what I wrote and I need to address that. I mention below a “50-60% adherence” number and really tore it apart. When Tony wrote that originally he qualified that as being an arbitrary number, not a claim of accuracy. I was pretty spun up about all that and managed to remember what I wanted to remember to suit my needs. Not very professional, not an accurate portrayal of how the discussion really played out. 

Chris put up a good post in the mmmgood thread that I wanted to tackle on the front page. Some of you might have followed the spirited debate that followed one of the recent Zone Chronicles over at the CrossFit Journal site. Here is what Chris had to say:

This whole thing seems really odd to me. I thought the standard CF nutrition line (eat meat, veggies, nuts seeds, etc) WAS a paleo prescription and then the eat this in a 40/30/30 ratio bit was listed secondary?? Maybe that’s changed.

A few thoughts though…

The top performers when interviewed about the Zone seem to add fat and drop back carbs. Crunching numbers puts this broadly line with what is naturally achieved by going Paleo.

Pat Sherwood might resort to burgers etc when on the road if needed, but his home routine is pretty tight paleo excl the weekly cheat meal.

I doubt that the top performers are doing zone purely on bread, shitty cuts of meats and trans fats – I’ll bet they’re keeping the quality pretty high and minimising exposure to sugar, white flour and trans fats. Hmmm… Paleo-ish??

So, my thought would be that both approaches when used by those trying to max out performance leads to the same place – a higher fat, lower carb, 80-90% paleo-zone diet.

Converging paths based upon separate protocols. If you look at this from the CrossFit perspective where using multiple paths to the same goal is encouraged (see the 2K Rowing article from one of the earlty CFJs) its seems odd that you wouldn’t use both paleo and zone to minimise the amount of time it takes you to hit your goal of elite performance.

Moving on from performance to health, Paleo seems a sensible plan to adopt 90% of the time. With first hand experience of the benefits to health that paleo gives, I find it hard to swallow when people dismiss it.

Oh yeah – Chris – I’m UK based and run Crossfit Westcountry. I have firsthand experience with UC and a paleo/zone approach to management – drop me an email if you or your brother need anything.

End.

Chris, thanks for the thoughtful post and YES, a paleo (quality first) followed by Zone (proportionality) is the likely best route to optimum health and performance. I’m not sure what the disconnect is with this in HQ but it starts feeling a lot like “We are going to argue this point until we are the winners” regardless of the content of the argument. On the one hand I have this sense that I’m being portrayed as some kind of tee-totaler who advocates we never go off the paleo-reservation. When I make the point this is not the case but that food quality IS important the argument shifts to “Elite performance only requires adherance to quality foods 50-60% of the time…”

Come again? When I hear numbers like this thrown around to a COMPLETELY unquantified situation it really raises my hackles. Interestingly THIS is the realm of pseudo science, citing hard numbers for a very soft scenario. This does BTW remind me of the apparent “20% slop” we are supposed to be embracing within CrossFit…that will be another popular blog post…

Anyway, like Chris mentioned, folks who are turning top numbers are eating “clean” much more than 50% of the time…this is just a fact. If we wanted to get SLIGHTLY scientific about it I could send out a nutrition survey to all the qualifiers to the games, but this is only as good as people’s memories and honesty, so not super, but it would be something. The reality is people notice when they eat like shit too frequently, that frequency varies from person to person, and based on what the particular nature of the crappy food is. That’s actually a much more accurate portrayal of elite fueling than some arbitrary percentage. This also reflects what people actually experience especially with regards to the quality piece. In the nutrition cert  the topic of cheat meals is always a popular piece. I lay out two different scenarios. The first is a beer+pizza bender, the second is a nachos+tequila schwa-re. I tell people to try each one and let me know which one they feel like more shit from. Inevitably, the nachos+tequila leaves people much happier the next day than the pizza+beer. Why? Pizza+ beer is a truck-load of gluten. Coach Glassman told me he does not really buy the gluten gig. I also remember Coach talking about dropping a stack of research literally 2-3 feet thick on the desk of some physician who was decrying the Zone as dangerous….but the doctor would simply ignore the literature and still damn the Zone. I’m certainly feeling like that with regards tot he gut-health gluten gig. I guess the response is the same as what they used with the static about hyperinsulinsim…ignore it and press on.

Hey there! In an effort to get more information out to folks I paid someone to mine the CrossFit Message board and the Performance Mneu message board for old threads I’ve participated in. It’s a boat load of information and I think will help to answer a lot of the questions that pop up for folks. I’ll also have these linked out of the FAQ.

Robb Wolf CrossFit Compilation

Robb Wolf Performance Menu Compilation

Thank you to everyone who came out for all the fun yesterday!! Thanks in particular to Jeremy Thiel and his crew for having us out. Crossfit Central is a great facility and we are looking forward to coming back! Next stop: Catalyst Athletics in Sunnyvale CA!!

A big thank you to Dave and Nancy of CrossFit Seattle for hosting this event! Seattle was just like I remember it: Cold, rainy…a little snow and boat loads of coffee! Thank you to everyone who braved the weather! Next stop: CrossFit Central in Austin, TX…Yeeeeeeeee haaaawww!

Just wanted to pass along a link to Melissa Urban Excellent blog. She is pretty damn funny and SMOKING HOT! What can I say, I have a thing for feisty brunettes. She interviewed Chemistry-ubber-stud Matt Lalonde on the varied topics of Paleo/Zone nutrition. It has some great information and Matt is very generous in his mentioning of my mad ramblings.