CrossFit South Bay | Hermosa Beach, CA

Paleo & Zone Eating

Why is nutrition important? Fit Rat what?

What’s the difference between Paleo and Zone? How does this relate to CrossFit?

How does the Paleo diet compare to the USDA Food Pyramid recommendations?

What about protein supplements?
How do I convert a Paleo meal into the right Zone blocks?

Fat is my friend!?

I’ve heard the Paleo diet is low in calcium?

What about quinoa and teff?

I love cereal/oatmeal… help?

I love CrossFit but I’m not sold on Paleo or Zone yet…

How should I go about implementing Paleo and Zone in my life?

FitRat Paleo Food

Why are the menus available only a couple days before orders are due?

Containers – what’s the process?

What about refrigeration?

What about dietary restrictions?

Where exactly do you get your meat, eggs and produce?
What is a CFM and CSA and why do you source your food the way you do?
How did you decide to price your meals?
You’re telling me these delicious meals aren’t fancy?

For $20 I could get a decadent meal at ________ restaurant…

What’s with primary and secondary veggies?

Can I request recipes?

Can I have more fruit?

Paleo & Zone Eating

Why is nutrition important? Fit Rat what?

Check out these posts:

• CFSB Introduces FitRat Paleo Foods & Thanksgiving Nutrition Tips
• Completing the Fitness Picture – A Nutrition Primer

What’s the difference between Paleo and Zone? How does this relate to CrossFit?

Paleo describes what food sources to eat and why. For that, check out this great video from King Crossfit, here.

The Zone describes foods’ effects based on their macronutrient content (carbs, protein, fat) and suggests how much of them to eat, when and why.

CrossFit’s experience in training athletes supports eating foods from the Paleo diet for basic health and disease prevention, and emphasizes a Zone prescription to maximize performance. So paleo is “what foods”, Zone is “how much of it, when”.

How does the Paleo diet compare to the USDA Food Pyramid recommendations?

Here’s a table-format diagram to help start (a work in progress). The USDA makes recommendations not only on “what foods” but also on “how much”. You can find that information on your own. It is grossly different than what CrossFit recommends for optimal performance. Its recommendations are ubiquitous, some very questionable, and worth your analysis. Especially the “what foods” recommendations comparison is worth examining to better understand the decisions you make.

What about protein supplements?
If you are a vegetarian/vegan CrossFitter, or if you’re itching to gain muscle mass and want to push the limits of your genetically-bound natural muscle-mass growth rate, then you’re probably contemplating protein supplements.

After you’ve addressed fish oil supplements and that you’re getting enough calcium, then you can move on to protein if you find that you fall into one of the following groups: 1) you can’t get enough protein from whole food daily due to appetite or dietary restrictions (vegan/vegetarian) 2) you want to gain weight and as part of a plan for post-workout (PWO) nutrition. As you might guess, protein powders weren’t available to our ancestors. Some people’s response to this is, well, they didn’t have all the exercise science, tools and training regimens we have now that push our fitness to higher levels, so why not optimize our fuel, too?  The best place to start experimenting is with your Post Workout (PWO) meal. Paleo purists dabble in raw milk and easy-to-digest protein like eggs.

Robb Wolf is one of CrossFit’s main nutrition experts and he has a great PWO entry on his website here.
CrossFit Intrepid also has a good protein supplement post here.

How do I convert a Paleo meal into the right Zone blocks?

If you’re trying to eat your meals in Zone blocks, it’s pretty simple when you eat Paleo. This site has a pretty extensive block list. The protein and carbohydrate will be obvious from paleo meals because each serving of protein is 4oz and each serving of vegetables is ~1-1.5c (will vary if the vegetable is starchy or root).

With food from the paleo diet, there’s no confusing combined blocks as you find with grains or dairy. Start with your protein block: there’s 4 oz of meat so about 4 blocks. For every ounce of meat you assume that there’s 1.5-2g animal fat depending on the meat. Then per oz meat and veggies, add about 1g fat from oils used in cooking. Additional fat may come from nuts that will be visible (these kinds of fat shouldn’t concern you though). Each meal is approximately 4-5 zone blocks with a caveat: the carbohydrate blocks may be a tad on the low side because I’m leaving your incorporation of fruit or additional veggies up to you. Also, fat blocks may be slightly higher depending on use of nuts in meals. Depending on demand, I may offer Zone block-strict paleo meals at a later time.

Fat is my friend!?

Dietary fat from the right sources is your friend. Fat should be your body’s preferred fuel, but diets high in carbohydrate shift the body’s preferred fuel source to glucose. This occurrence is growing increasingly better understood as far as nutritional biochemistry goes. How CrossFit recommends going about changing this for your health and performance is by eating Zone portions and foods that align with a Paleo diet. The science behind how this works is made up of theories and supporting research about the process of healthy restabilization of your body’s response to insulin by eating less of what makes your body’s response to insulin unstable (sugars, grains, legumes).

What you need to know starting out is this: fats have a much smaller impact on insulin and, as a result, promote the burning of both dietary and stored fat as fuel. You must eat fats to burn body fat. The best sources are fats are found in cold water fish, nuts, some vegetable/nut based oils, vegetables, and from grass-fed meat. Even with a well-balanced paleo zone diet, you still will likely not be getting enough omega-3’s and you may want to consider experimenting with a reputable brand of fish oil supplement.

I’ve heard the Paleo diet is low in calcium?
The right answer to this question is a question: low compared to what? If you’re comparing to traditional American diets which contain a lot of dairy, then you’ve heard right. However, that doesn’t mean the average American with adequate or high calcium intake have reduced risk associated with lack of calcium – quite the opposite due to the source and quantity of their calcium as well as the high rate of calcium excretion due to other poor dietary choices and activities.

The more important question you should be asking on the Paleo diet if you have adequate leafy green intake is whether you’re getting enough vitamin D because it’s key in calcium absorption (along with vitamin K which you get plenty of eating lots of vegetables on the Paleo diet). Vitamin D can be obtained best from getting at least 15 minutes of direct sun (but only in latitudes below San Fran), or from fortified foods or multivitamins.

Please read this article from the Harvard University School of Public Health – especially the section “Getting Enough Calcium”.

Basic nutrition science recommendations for daily calcium intake about 1000mg for those aged 19-50. This mg number means nothing without information about the source and the absorption of the calcium ingested. Calcium from dark greens (except for chards) is as or more readily absorbed than calcium from dairy, and gram-for-gram offers a much more nutrient dense source of fuel. That being said, you stand only to greatly benefit in old age by making sure your calcium intake is adequate if from the right sources. If you think you’ll be challenged to get enough calcium while you iron out the kinks in your paleo zone diet, then take a calcium complex multivitamin (remember vit D & K need to be supplied or be present with food to absorb the calcium) Check out this short list of some sample fruits and vegetables:

FOOD	PORTION	CALCIUM (mg.)
Collard greens	1 cup	357
Turnip greens	1 cup	249
Kale	1 cup	179
Sesame seeds	2 tablespoons	176
Okra	1 cup	176
Bok choy	1 cup	158
Dried figs	5 medium	135
Almonds	¼ cup	97
Broccoli	1 cup	94
Dried apricots	½ cup	43

Paleo diet creators and supporters also cite research in support of a strict paleo diet creating a net base-load on the kidneys which helps reduce calcium excretion. You can read more about that here.

What about quinoa?
Yes, quinoa is technically a seed. It’s a grain-like seed in how your body digests it since it breaks down to a lot of sugar. In nature it has a poisonous outer shell, so if you’re Paleo-strict, you’d omit this one from your diet. There are some noteworthy buts here: it has a great omega fatty acid profile, and is much higher in fiber and other nutrients than any other grain or seed. If you want to include quinoa in your meals, ask, as I love to make it, it tastes amazing (you will be ashamed you ever ate rice), and it’s a great grain replacer if you’re trying get off the crack (see menu examples).

I love cereal/oatmeal… help?
If you want to eventually try cutting out your oatmeal by first cutting out the gluten, then teff might help. Teff is technically a seed much like quinoa. It can act as your methadone to ease you off of your morning oatmeal heroin. Or, try not loading your oatmeal with sugar/nuts/fruit and see if you still love oatmeal. Teff is tastier plain higher in protein, fiber, and many nutrients than oatmeal. You can find it at Whole Foods. I’d recommend this only as you ease yourself off of breakfast cereal, but slowly reduce the portion and eventually eliminate or make it a cheat meal on a cheat day.

I love CrossFit but I’m not sold on Paleo or Zone yet…
Please read articles in the CrossFit Journal on Nutrition.  And then look around you at work, in public, at the gym. Take note of what foods dominate menus and grocery stores, food and drug advertising, nutrition advice, and take note of the most common preventable nutrition-related preventable epidemics that plague our country. More here soon!

How should I go about implementing Paleo and Zone in my life?

I recommend a slow and phased overhaul of your diet, with just a couple rules: 1) try at least 1 new vegetables, 1 new fruit, and 1 new paleo fat source (canola oil, walnuts and walnut oil, flax oil, avocado, coconut oil, almonds etc.) each week and learn the nutritional value and Zone blocks of each 2) don’t beat up on yourself for messing up 3) always leave 1 cheat meal per week. A possible plan:

Week 1:

• Record in detail a normal week of everything you ate.
• Identify what isn’t paleo and decide which of your most habitual non-paleo foods you’re going to change each week for the next six weeks.
• Determine your Zone blocks and mentally prepare yourself to start implementing them in Week 2
• Find 3 paleo meals (a breakfast, a lunch, a dinner) with a variety of meat/egg/veggie/fat sources that spread out your daily protein needs, and plan to make them in Week 2.
• Print out a list of Zone blocks to keep with you for your meals at home just to start studying
• Buy measuring cups if you aren’t 100% of what standard measurements are

Week 2:

• Make one of those paleo meals each day during the beginning of the week and then try two in one day, and then all three in another day toward the end of the week and see how you feel. Each time you make a meal, portion out your blocks from the food you made for that meal and save the rest for a snack or another meal.
• Start to replace non-paleo snacks with paleo snacks (low-sodium jerky, nuts, vegetables, small fruit) in even blocks
• While you’re eating out, think about Zone portions. Practice substituting at least one part of your meal that includes grains or legumes with a large serving of leafy green vegetables (kale, spinach, broccoli, asparagus), or a small serving of root or starchy vegetable (sweet potato, carrot)
• Keep track in your CrossFit journal after your WOD from now on whether the 24 hours prior were Rx’d: 100% Paleo Zone (or if they were 100% Zone or 100% Paleo)

Week 3:

• Repeat and improve upon Week 2, but make sure each breakfast this week is paleo zone.
• Try patronizing vendors that sell meats and vegetables that are less processed and more healthy (higher in omega-3 fats, not containing hormones or antibiotics or pesticides) such as grass-fed meat and organic produce from a nearby farmer’s market
• Take note of what you miss the most and start researching paleo alternatives
• Start keeping bookmarks or notes of favorite meals you like that aren’t paleo and plan to make paleo alternatives

Week 4:

• Try having at least 70% of meals Zone by the end of Week 4
• Try eliminating all non-paleo snacks by the end of week 4 except if it’s your cheat meal
• Reevaluate your performance, results, and eating and plan what changes you want to see in the next 4 weeks. Pick a date for when you want to see yourself eating 100% Zone Paleo (and which day based on your schedule and social events will be your cheat day).

FitRat Paleo Meals

Why are the menus available only a couple days before orders are due?

Menus are created just a couple days in advance of the ordering window due to seasons, pricing, and farmer’s market availability of main ingredients.

Containers – what’s the process?

• It’s preferable that you give me Pyrex with tops and fabric bags (to hold the containers) you already own to reduce resource use. Plastic is okay as a second option.
• Label your containers with your initials with tape/marker.
• If you prefer I buy the containers, then you will incur a one-time fee, and you’ll own the containers
• All containers/bags must be returned to me at CFSB before the end of the last class on Tues (Batch 2) & Saturday (Batch 1)

What about refrigeration?
You pick up your food from a refrigerator. It is not recommended that you leave your food out of the fridge for longer than 20-30 minutes.

What about dietary restrictions?

• Allergies: If you have serious allergies then you’re probably used to being careful. Please disclose all allergies. I can’t ensure that all food will be free from all allergens, but I will list all ingredients on the sheet you get with your batch.
• Spiciness: Most foods will be fairly mild. Any foods that use spice will be noted in the menu.

Where exactly do you get your meat, eggs and produce?
List CFMs, List CSA’s, List meat distribs, more to come here!

What is a CFM and CSA and why do you source your food the way you do?

A CFM is a Certified Farmer’s Market. A CSA is Community Supported Agriculture.

How did you decide to price your meals?
I based the per-meal cost on the price of other organic high-performance nutriton meal-services in LA such as Paleta and Susan’s (neither of use or promote strict Paleo food standards, sustainable packaging, the Paleo diet or CrossFit). I am a full-time student and run this service because I’m passionate about getting people out of the rat race mindset of living to consume and eat, instead of eating to live. I plan to charge only enough to cover the costs of running the service including paying for a certified commercial kitchen, and paying one chef and one helper, with the start-up costs of equipment being amortized over the period of one year assuming an average weekly client-base of 20 people.

You’re telling me these delicious meals aren’t fancy?
These meals really aren’t that fancy. There’s not many steps to each part of the meal. Meats are marinated/rubbed and baked/grilled/roasted/steamed. Veggies are raw or lightly steamed or sauteed with herbs. There’s no processing, no sifting or meticulous mixing (as with grains/baked goods), no thawing, no grinding (maybe the rare ground turkey or beef), setting for rising (with breads). The fanciest part is the effort that goes into pairing flavors so your mackerel tastes good and your kale doesn’t taste like grass clippings, and the chopping and prep of all that produce.

For $20 I could get a decadent meal at ________ restaurant…
Yes, but it would be sourced less efficiently and responsibly, cooked less healthfully, the veggies wouldn’t be chosen with your body in mind, and would likely be overcooked (depleting nutritional value) possibly from a frozen state or shipped cross-country, not in the quantity you should eat them, and drenched in oils you don’t want inside of you.

What’s with primary and secondary veggies?
Leafy greens vs. other veggies.. nutrient profile, etc..

Can I make requests to see something on the menu?
Yes. Email me – fitratpaleo@gmail.com

Can I have more fruit?
Fruit may be used in some veggie dishes, and a small amount will be included in your meal for fun/flavor/aesthetics, but emphasis is placed on meat and quantity of veggies for a few reasons. The first is that getting enough leafy green and other vegetables that taste good is a lot harder than getting fruit that tastes good. Fruit is like the perfect nutrient-dense natural candy and is not challenging to prepare. A lot of fruits contains fructose which is fine in small quantities, but not great in large quantities. Fruit is also better consumed in the morning (with protein and veggies) when you have all day to burn it up as fuel.