It’s good to experiment and find what works for you in terms of what you put in your body. I know that Macro tracking is not for me as my meals are generally quite involved and would be a total pain. Keto worked for me for a while, but being older it totally backfired and I gained 20 pounds because of hormone imbalances, my thyroid and adrenals suffering because of the diet.
I pretty much never eat sugar. I eat lots of vegetables, a little bit of fruit and nuts, I try to get enough protein and I eat very little starch/carb but mainly very little gluten/wheat. I do eat beans, as I find them very nutritious. I would say I’m mostly Paleo with an emphasis on vegetables. I will eat the odd rice pasta and I will make my own gluten free baked goods, but again I know what calories are in carbs, so try to eat less of those. I know during the pandemic I was having a glass of wine or a scotch almost every night and that probably didn’t help me at all. I’ve been drinking very little for the past month. i sleep wayyyy better and feel better, although having a drink is fun, I know the cost.
Here is Sam Briggs’ story:
Before nine-time individual CrossFit Games athlete Sam Briggs started CrossFit, her usual breakfast was a giant bowl of cereal. Lunch was the same: another giant bowl of cereal, often featuring three different kinds of cereal all mixed together.
“I didn’t really know any different regarding nutrition,” Briggs explained.
The Zone Diet Days
After years in pounding back cereal, Briggs was introduced to the Zone Diet—the diet CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman long endorsed and promoted—when she started CrossFit in 2009.
The Zone Diet, popularized by the book The Zone Diet, by Dr. Barry Sears, involves tracking Zone blocks. Each zone block is made up of one protein block (7 grams of protein), one carbohydrate block (9 grams of carbohydrates) and one fat block (1.5 grams of fat).
Though she doesn’t remember exactly how many Zone blocks she ate each day, Briggs signed up for a 30-day Zone Diet challenge her gym was offering and diligently ate the exact number of Zone blocks she was told to eat each day. At the end of the 30 days, she took a “cheat week,” but quickly realized the Zone Diet was a better way of eating than her old cereal diet.
“That was my first introduction into kind of probably how we should have been eating, as opposed to just having cereal for 80 percent of my diet,” she said, laughing. So Briggs continued to follow Zone for close to two years, and her fitness quickly improved.
The Paleo Era
In the months that followed the release of Robb Wolf’s book The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet in September 2010, the Paleo Diet quickly spread its tentacles through the CrossFit community.
Like thousands of other CrossFit athletes, Briggs hopped on board the caveman diet, which promoted eating mostly animal protein, healthy fats, fruits and vegetables.
“I didn’t eat bread, thought that rice was the devil,” Briggs said of her thinking at the time.
Though she no longer thinks this way, the Paleo diet worked for her. Briggs quickly rose through the ranks as an athlete, placing fourth at the 2011 CrossFit Games and winning the 2013 Games, all while eating almost no carbohydrates other than sweet potatoes, she explained.
In fact, she continued following the Paleo Diet until the end of 2014.
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