CrossFitters, You Need to Eat More Carbs 80/84

CrossFit and Paleo go together like peanut butter and jelly, or so people think. They probably go together more like peanut butter and mustard. There's absolutely nothing wrong with going Paleo if you want to, and it if works for you then great. But at its core, it is probably not the best way to fuel yourself if your idea of a good time is constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensities.

Years ago, Paleo seemed to be the #1 recommended diet plan for CrossFit to the point where we had Games athletes, who usually train 3+ hours a day, claiming that they live on fruit, sweet potatoes and a ton of fat to fuel them through that. Now I'm not saying that that's not possible I'm just saying that it seemed a little fishy. The nature of the Paleo diet is to only eat fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and meat (nit bad by any means). It excludes grains of any kind (probably not bad) and often times potatoes. Similar to a Ketogenic diet, most of the energy source is from fat, which is fine if your goal is health based (see my last post), but that's definitely not the best plan if competing in CrossFit is your end game. CrossFit conditioning can range from 1-60+ minutes in duration but average around 8-12 minutes or so. There is also a ton of strength and power exercise added in and both of those things are extremely important to the sport. These things together add up to carbohydrates being SUPER important to, not only people looking to compete, but also to anyone who doesn't want to fry themselves out after a few months. Low carb plus high intensity workouts are one of the most common causes of adrenal fatigue, which can take a good amount of time to recover from.

Now I'm not trying to be unfair and call out Paleo, there are plenty of other low carb diets, but it is just the most popular in this space.
Plus, it's still perfectly ok to eat a Paleo style diet while training CrossFit BUT you really need to be conscious of your carb intake. Eat what fruit you can, eat tons of veggies and go hard on some sweet potatoes. I would also say that white and red potatoes are totally fine, especially given the situation, because that gives you a ton more options to pick from when you eat. I would recommend you aim for 1.0-2.0g of carbs per pound of your weight for most CrossFit workouts depending on how hard they are. You can back off on off days down to .5g/lb but keep it higher on the days you're working hard.

If you have questions about nutrition then please feel free to reach out. It is usually the #1 thing holding people back and I know I can really help you