7 Keys for Nutritional Precision

Did you know that as much as 80% of unlocking your performance potential and receiving the health benefits that follow are a direct result of precise nutritional intake? The following 7 Keys for Nutritional Precision will arm you with the plan needed to implement your nutritional program successfully:

1. Acknowledge the Problem
Accept the hard truth that you are the only one to blame and the only one who can affect real change in your current state of health, performance, or body composition. How do you create real change – change that is lasting? Change your habits.

2. Don’t Blame Yourself, Blame Your Habits!
Make it a point to identify any negative habits around your nutritional intake (like waiting until you are starving before you eat causing you to overeat at your next meal) and “rescript” that behavior. Simple? Yes, but not easy!

3. Get Committed
Make a resolved commitment to yourself and to your goal. Tell everyone you know – your family, friends, co-workers and fellow CrossFitters about your desire to improve yourself. Be specific and tell them when you are starting, what you are doing and what you expect the end result to be. Create a blog to share your experience with others. (BlogSpot – www.blogger.com is free.) By committing first you will be motivated to follow through when the going gets tough.

4. Keep Score
Only by keeping a food journal AND workout log will you be able to regain control of your eating habits, quantify your results, and fine tune your nutritional intake. Tracking each workout is important because flaws in your nutritional intake can typically be observed first in your performance metrics. Make sure to include such notables as water intake, sleep quality and quantity, perceived effort of workout, emotional state, etc. Be as detailed (or not) as you would like!

5. Create Structure
Set up routines for meal planning, shopping, food prep, and cooking so that you are always prepared with healthy food options. For example, making the time in advance to measure food into 1, 2, 3 or 4 block servings to be put in the fridge simplifies throwing together healthy, balanced meals and snacks on the fly. By making it convenient, you can avoid waiting too long between meals to decide what to eat. Eating well is less about discipline and more about having the structure needed to not make as many decisions!

6. Take Action
Once you know what needs to be done, do it! Planning and thinking about it does not get it done. Start early, make mistakes, and correct along the way. Put in the effort to prepare your lunch and snacks the night before so that you can take them with you to work.

7. Evaluate and Improve
Regularly evaluate your food cravings and hunger level. It will realistically take 1-2 weeks for your body to transition to healthier nutritional habits. Gut it out. If it is not easy for you after a couple weeks or if you are feeling hungry, you will need to reevaluate the quantity and quality of the protein and carbohydrates you are taking in.

In regards to choosing to implement a nutritional program that works best for you, I have found that a combination of the Zone or Athletes Zone with Intermittent Fasting works best. They are fully scalable allowing you to begin at varying degrees of strictness and make gradual or rapid improvements as you continue to commit to the journey.