Tuesday 101207

WOD

Snatch Day!

More of the good stuff…

Hmmmm… this mid-thight-to-pockets thing has me thinking!

Sounds like everyone learned a lot at the nutrition talk on Sunday. Thanks for spending your rest day learning about how to fuel. There were some great questions today about a variety of nutrition subjects, but there was one that came up that was worth maybe elaborating on a little bit.

The questions was, to paraphrase, how does the Zone and Paleo diet go together? There are a lot of ways to answer this – a google search will provide endless hours of contradiction, argument, and confusion. Well, maybe not totally, but kind of. So here's an attempt at an answer.

The Zone can be looked at as a nutrition plan with portion control built in. To elaborate, the Zone talks about "favorable" and "unfavorable" macronutrient choices and goes on to describe why certain types of food fall under each classification. So with that, if you choose foods that fall under the favorable category, you can feel good that you are making good choices. Additionally, the Zone goes on to tell you how much to eat based on your lean body mass – these are the blocks. The blocks are based on protein, and then you match your carbs and good fat to an equal number of blocks each time you eat. So let's say your block count for the day is 15, then you break up your meals and snacks so you only eat 15 blocks of protein, carbs, and fat throughout the day. There's much more to it than that, but that's a simple snapshot.

The Paleo diet is essentially a nutrition plan. The premise is eat only the right stuff and eat as much of it as you like. Again, an oversimplification, but the gist is there isn't the portion control component that the Zone has. So you limit your food choices to things that our species ate back in the day (like way back in the day, 10,0000+ years). Avoid dairy, processed foods, grains, and new age crops (corn) and you're compliant. Understand, this is way, way oversimplified! There are a ton of great books out that elaborate on this – just ask me what I think of Robb Wolf's The Paleo Solution – simply awesome!

So, how do the 2 go together? What should I do? First, there is no right answer. Everyone is different, and all of you will respond differently to certain changes to your nutrition. The Zone works. It works very well. If you are strict with it, you will see results. Eating paleo style also works. It too works well. This way of eating requires a healthy dose of common sense to make it work. For example, you can't eat 2 pounds of almonds a day. Yes they are a paleo food but you can over do it. A solution that has worked well for many, myself included, is a Paleo Zone. That's right, a mish-mash of the good stuff. Portions as dictated by the Zone, only you eat Paleo foods. Another option is what has been referred to as a real-food Zone. This is essentially paleo, add some dairy, and call it good. No processed foods, no sugar. You get the idea. The possibilities are endless!

At the end of the day, you need to find out a couple of things. First, are you getting the results you're after? Next, is it sustainable?Many learned during the Paleo challenge that 100% paleo is not sustainable, but 80% is. And then you weigh and measure your food. Boom…Paleo Zone!

This is a very, very basic snapshot and is one persons interpretation of many books on these subjects. Fueling will always be a work in progress for people because there is noone-size-fits-all prescription. Talk to us about it, ask us questions. We could (and would) talk hours on this stuff because we dig it!