The Best Diet

What’s the best diet? The one that works for YOU.

The best diet will move you closer to your goals, and just as importantly will be sustainable (long term). If that means fasting for you, great! If that means paleo, vegan, carnivore, a mix of all, or anything in between, then great! The goal is to achieve the goal, and what works for me might not work for you. Let’s talk about how to find the best diet for yourself.

Two key points:

• My diet moves me closer to my goals.
• I enjoy my diet and can maintain it for extended periods of time.

Here’s the cool thing, you don’t have to marry one specific diet and stick to it the rest of your life. You can, but you don’t have to. The even cooler thing is that you can mix and match as life happens. If you’re a competitive crossfit athlete who trains 5-6 times a week for 90+ minutes per session you will greatly benefit from a hefty amount of carbs in your diet. But in the off season you decide to take a break and just sustain, you can shift to paleo and maintain for a while, and then shift back to high carb or something else entirely. Experiment and find what works and what doesn’t work for you. You have your whole life ahead of you to figure it out.

Here’s another thing to consider, all these diets actually have a few things in common. Through all the paleo vs vegan dilemma there is actually middle ground believe it or not. The main purpose of these diets is to provide a healthy life to the individual, at least physically speaking. All these diets promote a controlled caloric consumption, meaning that you should be eating just enough for your activity levels and goals. These diets surround themselves with real food, whether carbohydrate, fat, and/or protein, they promote eating real food. And all of these diets have worked for a certain population at a certain point in life, this is why they became fads in the first place.

So when picking the diet you will try next, start with one you think you will enjoy. And if you’re in doubt about it, reach out to a professional and make your life easier. Nutrition coaching is as important to us at Crossfit Phoenix 815 as exercise and recovery is, because they are all pieces to the same puzzle.

P.S. At this point in the game I am assuming we all understand that diet doesn’t necessarily mean weight loss or a 30 day challenge. Diet is the way you eat. You can diet to gain weight as much as you can diet to live a healthy life for years.