CrossFit Nittany coaches believe that a commitment to exercise is only part of the equation in achieving your fitness goals. Establishing a clean eating program is fundamental to achieving real results in the CrossFit program. If one of your goals is to change your body composition, exercise – even CrossFit – may not be enough. At CrossFit Nittany, we don’t prescribe fad diets. Instead we recommend eating a balanced diet that will help your body run at its optimal level.
So what do we think is optimal Nutrition?
At CrossFit Nittany our nutrition plan is simple: Eat meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Our holistic approach to health and wellness do not permit us to truly separate our fitness, nutrition, health, rest and well-being into categories to be addressed individually without considering their impacts on each other.
Here are some basic principles we follow and talk about regularly:
- Quality-based nutrition over quantity-based diet plans when eating primarily for health and longevity.
- Primal, Whole or Paleolithic style eating plans best represent the quality of foods you should be consuming… i.e. whole and natural nutrient dense vegetables and fruits, lean organic grass-fed meats, healthy fats such as oils, nuts and seeds
- Portion control in Zone-style prescriptions with the use of intermittent fasting as a tool to manipulate body composition faster.
- If you aren’t willing to write down in a journal or track with an app everything you eat and discuss it openly and maturely, well, then we don’t believe you are serious enough about wanting to or emotionally are not ready to do what is necessary to make the changes you would like to see.
- When in doubt, if it grows naturally and has no ingredient list it is probably going to be a pretty good food choice.
While our coaches are not nutritionists and don’t prescribe nutrition plans, but we have experience training individuals of all fitness levels and have observed the most efficient and greatest fitness successes from those who follow these principles and eat a balanced diet of nutrient-rich foods. Our coaches incorporate a discussion about optimal nutrition into all of our programs. If you think you need a more tailored nutrition program, we are happy to refer you to a local nutritionist.
Nutrition Challenges
CrossFit Nittany also offers bi-annual “Nutrition & Lifestyle Challenges,” in the spring and fall. Our members are invited to participate in a friendly and supportive competition to clean up their nutrition, improve their athletic performance, and look better naked. Participants put money into a kitty, take before and after pictures, and commit to logging a score for everything they eat and then some in our convenient online food logging system. Check out the before an after photos of some of our winners.
