FAQ

Nutrition

• Do I need to evaluate my diet?

  Yes. CrossFit is an exercise and nutrition program, and if you do not address nutrition, you are missing the foundation of fitness. You cannot out-exercise a bad diet. To reap the full rewards of the CrossFit program, work out regularly and optimize your nutrition.

• What is CrossFit's diet recommendation?

  Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

  These two sentences capture a nutritional approach that, when applied with our workouts, yields incredible health and fitness. By combining the potent training stimulus of constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity with a sound diet of whole, unprocessed foods eaten in the proper amounts, the results are nothing short of life changing.

  To truly optimize health and fitness, you have to pay attention to what you eat and how much you eat. That starts with choosing high-quality, unprocessed foods and weighing, measuring, and recording your intake. We suggest doing that for at least 30 days. At the end of the first 30 days, you should assess your results — i.e., How are your health markers such as body composition, resting heart rate, and blood pressure (among others)? How are your workout scores trending? How do you feel? If needed, you can then adjust what and how much you are eating for best results.

  This type of measured, systematic self-observation driven by real results will be the best guide as to whether you should change any of your eating habits or implement any new diet strategies.

  Overall, diet needs to be customized to each individual based on their physiological response, goals, and other lifestyle factors. The best way to optimize your diet for your specific needs is by carefully tracking inputs (the food you eat) and outputs (workout results and health markers).

• How can I start learning about nutrition?

  You can start by reviewing the nutrition category in the CrossFit Journal, and visit CrossFit.com for regular nutrition content.

  If you’d like to learn more, including how to customize our nutrition recommendation specifically for you and your goals, take our Nutrition I Course. This course teaches the foundation of CrossFit’s nutrition philosophy and recommendations and takes a deep dive into every aspect of nutrition, including information on chronic disease, insulin resistance, critical health markers, food quality and quantity, tactics to make implementation easy, supplements, and more. The course offers ways to implement our nutritional recommendations whether you have no dietary restrictions, have significant food allergies, or are vegetarian or vegan. Learn more and sign up here.