ARTICLE:  Some Diets May Be Better Than Others For Keeping Weight Off And Staying Healthy, Study Suggests

 

When you are making changes and adopting a healthier nutrition plan, the first thing we recommend is to quit the sugar habit.  The second thing we ask you to do is starting eating protein at every meal and snack.  There are good reasons we recommend this, besides it being a great excuse to grill a steak!

 

Simply put, your body cannot function without protein.  The body doesn’t store excess protein so it’s important that you continually send more down so the body can continue functioning.  For the avid CrossFitter, repairing the body after workouts is a continual process as you are forcing radical physical adaptations and building/repairing muscles is a major part of this.  Your body uses protein to make enzymes and hormones.  Protein is required if you want to have bones, muscles, cartilage, blood or skin.  Protein is also required in various functions such as digestion, immune responses, DNA replication and repair and metabolism.

  

Although both plans were equal in calories, half the group followed a moderate-protein diet (40% carbohydrates, 30% protein, 30% fat) while the other followed a diet based on USDA’s food-guide pyramid (55% carbohydrates, 15% protein, 15% fat).

 If you added those numbers you probably realized that 55%+15%+15%=85%.  I found that that the USDA/American Heart Association specs are closer to 60% carbs, 25% fats and 15% protein.  It’s questionable that this is enough protein for the average body and is certainly not enough for the active CrossFit practitioner.  The CrossFitter should experiment, but will probably find they perform better with a focus on fats, protein at every meal/snack and with as many veggies as they can tolerate.  Have an apple for dessert.

 

As we’ve seen.  There is an effort to say that paleo and zone based diets regard one nutrient over another, see the previous post.  Now a diet of only protein certainly wouldn’t be healthy or possible.  We recommend that you eat in a way that supports they way our body is designed to be fueled.  The Zone prescription of 40-30-30 is a balanced approach to calorie intake.  Remember that carbs should come from leafy and colorful vegetables and rarely, if ever, from high-glycemic carbohydrates such as potatoes, rice, pasta, bread and sweets.  If you do this and eat a moderate amount of protein and a reasonable amount of healthy, naturally occurring fats (mono, poly and saturated) you will have a successful maintenance diet.

 

Finally, when reading about health studies, make sure you look for compliance statistics.  If these important statistics are missing the review of the study is incomplete or the study data were not credible enough to share.  The more information a researcher shares about their methodology and the more data from their databases they release, the more you should trust their conclusions.

 

 

I’ll let the author have the last word:

 

Any diet will do? Not if you want to lose fat instead of muscle. Not if you want to lower your triglyceride levels so you’ll be less likely to develop diabetes and heart disease. Not if you want to avoid cravings that tempt you to cheat on your diet. And not if you want to keep the weight off long-term.

 

 

 

 

 

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