The Zone: A High Performance Diet

If you want to avoid diet-induced disease, then you should eat "meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar". This advice, which I've taken from Crossfit.com, is a great place to start but a more precise prescription is needed to optimize performance.

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Based on my own personal experience and that of many Crossfit/Athletic coaches, Barry Sears’ “Zone Diet” closely models optimal nutrition. Unfortunately, the full benefit of the Zone Diet requires you to first weigh and measure your food. Once you have done this for a week or two, you will be able to eye the measurements and eliminate the scale.

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The food pyramid below looks similar to the one the U.S. government used to recommend. However, instead of grains being at the bottom and the largest component, they are at the top as the least component.

Meals on the Zone are broken down into blocks.

1 block of protein = 7 grams of protein

1 block of carbs = 9 grams of carbs

1 block of fat = 1.5 grams of fat

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However, there is an assumption that there are about 1.5 grams of fat in each block of protein. So the total amount of fat needed for a 1 block meal is 3 grams. 1.5 grams of fat from your 7 grams of protein and 1.5 grams of fat from your single fat block. I won’t get into the blocks in detail here b/c that would take a long time.

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When a meal is composed of equal blocks of protein, carbohydrates, and fat, it is 40% carbohydrate, 30% protein and 30% fat. Typically, once I bring an athlete to the Zone parameters, they start to drop body fat FAST.

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As the men fall below 10% toward 5% body fat, that is time to kick up the FAT consumption. Yes that’s right, the fat. Many of the best Crossfit Athletes are at X blocks of protein, X blocks of carbs, and 3X or 4X blocks of fat.

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So what does one day on the Zone look like for an athletic well muscled male who works out 6 to 5 days a week with crossfit?

Breakfast 5 eggs 1 ½ apple 10 macadamia nuts	Snack 3oz sliced roast beef 3 cups sliced cucumber and tomato 30 olives 1 orange	Dinner 5oz chicken breast 24 asparagus spears 1 artichoke 2 ½ cups broccoli 30 almonds
Lunch 5oz tuna 1 large salad 5 Tbsp avocado 2 cups grapes		Snack 3oz salmon 2 cups green beans 24 peanuts

The above diet consists of 5 blocks of protein, 5 blocks of carbohydrates, and 10 blocks of fat and breakfast lunch and dinner. Twice a day this athlete eats a snack of 2 blocks of protein, 2 blocks of carbohydrates, and 4 blocks of fat. This athlete does crossfit 5 to 6 days a week, is around 10% body fat, incredibly strong/powerful and has excellent blood work.

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For individual guidance on how many blocks you should be eating and a comprehensive list of block card/meal plan, just shoot me an email and I would be more than happy to help you out.

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Much of the information on the post was taken from Barry Sears’ “Zone Diet” as well as 21^st issue of the Crossfit Journal, an amazing resource for any athlete interested in learning about Crossfit and becoming an animal.