Everyone who’s successful at what they do starts with the fundamentals — whether it’s learning to play piano or training for the CrossFit Games. In CrossFit, if the basic principles are never truly refined, then the distance between potential and performance will always be greater than necessary.
Watch NowPractice Makes PowerfulNUTRITION
The CrossFit stimulus—constantly varied high-intensity functional movement coupled with meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar—prepares you for the demands of a healthy, functional, independent life and provides a hedge against chronic disease and incapacity. This stimulus is elegant in the mathematical sense of being marked by simplicity and efficacy. The proven elements of this broad, general, and inclusive fitness, in terms of both movement and nutrition, are what we term our CrossFit Essentials.
The best way to understand CrossFit and its value as a fitness program is to experience it yourself by walking into a CrossFit gym and trying it. But we understand you may want to know what you’re getting yourself into before you take that step, so here’s a primer on the basics of CrossFit.
Read MoreThe Basics of CrossFitThe holidays are often festive free-for-all when it comes to food. How should you handle them if you struggle with nutrition?
Read MoreFast or Feast?Dina Marks was working as a pastry chef at Michael’s on Main in Soquel, California, baking warm brownies, crisp-topped crème brulées, and strawberry shortcakes when the pain drove her to visit the emergency room. After a confusing medical diagnosis turned into a harrowing journey toward recovery and healing, Marks started doing her own research. That's when she became angry.
Read MoreThe Angry Woman With the Puke BagAnyone who wants the full benefit and results of CrossFit must understand—and then act on the information—that nutrition is the foundation for all the other work you do in the name of athletic development and elite health. The key, of course, is hormones, which regulate how the body stores and releases energy and repairs itself.
WatchNutrition: The Teeter-TotterIn "Gut Feelings: The Microbiome and Our Health," Alessio Fasano, M.D., and Susie Flaherty point to a number of environmental factors that influence obesity, including “sleep deprivation, disruption to circadian rhythms, chronic stress, changes in food composition, labor-saving devices, drugs (including antibiotics), and endocrine disruptors” as well as socioeconomic factors. They also add another variable to the mix: the gut microbiome, the ecosystem of microorganisms in and on the human body.
Read MoreObesity and the MicrobiomeBefore starting an intermittent-fasting protocol, it is important to weigh the pros and cons. Choose the right protocol for you.
Read MoreIntermittent Fasting and the CrossFit Prescription for NutritionA recently introduced bill would prevent CrossFit trainers in Nebraska from discussing nutrition with obese clients. CrossFit is fighting back.
Read MoreKeeping Nutrition Talk LegalFrom the archives: Seminar Staff Flowmaster Adrian Bozman keeps his nutrition on track by packing eight pre-made meals on a trip halfway around the world. “That meal has been in his backpack since California, Tennessee, New York, Iceland … being in the refrigerator a minimal amount of time,” Dave Castro says with a smile.
Watch From the Archives: The Zone Chronicles — Boz's Eight Meals to IcelandCrossFit's nutrition prescription is simple. 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.
WatchNutrition: Support Exercise, Not Body FatWe all know greens do a body good — but they also make for powerful brain food, promoting cognitive function, cellular development, and mental health.
Read MoreLeafy Greens: The Ultimate Brain FoodIn part 1 of this five-part series, Seminar Staff Head Trainer Dave Lipson discusses the role nutrition plays in fitness. Lipson references CrossFit's theoretical hierarchy of development shown in “What Is Fitness?” and explains why nutrition is the foundation of the pyramid.
Watch The Foundation Is Nutrition: Part 1For many, the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced just how important mental health is for overall wellness. Rather than some intangible aside, it’s a critical element of physical health. You might even call it fitness. Referring to mental-health care as mental fitness creates a powerful mindset shift. It puts us in a proactive state and gives us the autonomy to improve it. And just as we build and preserve muscle with physical training, we can develop and sustain mental fitness by regularly training our brains. Start with these 12 steps.
Read More12 Ways to Train Your Mental FitnessWhen it comes to diet, most people’s concerns involve weight loss, fitness, cardiac health, and longevity. But what we eat affects more than our bodies; it also affects our brains. Recent studies have shown that diet can have a profound impact on mental health conditions ranging from ADHD to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, OCD, dementia, and beyond. In This Is Your Brain on Food, Dr. Uma Naidoo draws on cutting-edge research to explain the many ways in which food contributes to our mental health and shows how a sound diet can help treat and prevent a wide range of psychological and cognitive health issues.
Read MoreThe Gut-Brain Romance: This Is Your Brain on Food“'Too much sugar' might be the simplest explanation for the many obesity-linked cancers, but it is not a simple explanation. It is an idea built upon more than a century of science," Sam Apple explains in this excerpt from Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection. Here, Apple highlights key moments in that century of science, focusing specifically on how sugar and other rapidly digested carbohydrates spike insulin and insulin, in turn, "activates the pathways linked to cancer."
Read MoreSugar and Cancer: An Excerpt From RavenousOver his more than 40-year career, pediatric neuroendocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Robert Lustig has been dedicated to treating and preventing childhood obesity and diabetes. In his new book, Dr. Lustig exposes the truth, both scientifically and politically, underlying the current global pandemic of diet-related diseases. In this excerpt from chapter 8, he describes the two pathways that fuel energy metabolism and explains how different food sources affect the body at the cellular level.
Read MoreMetabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine — Excerpt 2Over his more than 40-year career, pediatric neuroendocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Robert Lustig has been dedicated to treating and preventing childhood obesity and diabetes. In his new book, Dr. Lustig exposes the truth, both scientifically and politically, underlying the current global pandemic of diet-related diseases. In this excerpt, he explains how the precepts of cell biology discussed earlier in chapter 8 (excerpts 1 and 2) present a new way to think about the role of diet and nutrition in the development of non-communicable diseases.
Read MoreMetabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine — Excerpt 3Over his more than 40-year career, pediatric neuroendocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Robert Lustig has been dedicated to treating and preventing childhood obesity and diabetes. In his new book, Dr. Lustig exposes the truth, both scientifically and politically, underlying the current global pandemic of diet-related diseases.
Read MoreMetabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine — Excerpt 1In this exclusive preview of Gary Taubes’ new book, Taubes explains why most of us have a fraught relationship with food and a flawed understanding of what makes a healthy diet. Here Taubes argues, “The existing evidence says that if you have metabolic syndrome, if you’re getting fatter or are already obese, if you’re prediabetic or already diabetic, avoiding carbohydrate-rich foods and replacing them with fat may be the single healthiest thing you can do for yourself." He adds: "No one can guarantee what happens in the long run. … Anyone who makes an ironclad guarantee for any way of eating—that one diet will assuredly make you live longer than others ... is probably selling something."
Read MoreThe Case for Keto — Exclusive Preview #4In this exclusive preview of Gary Taubes’ new book, Taubes explains why most of us have a fraught relationship with food and a flawed understanding of what makes a healthy diet. In 2002, Taubes discussed recent research findings on the relative benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet in an article in New York Times Magazine. Since then, he writes, “close to one hundred, if not more, clinical trials have published results, and they confirm these observations with remarkable consistency. The trials are still incapable of telling us whether embracing LCHF/ketogenic eating will extend our lives (compared to other patterns of eating the authorities might recommend), but they continue to challenge, relentlessly, the conventional thinking on the dangers of high-fat diets, and they tell us that in the short term, this way of eating is safe and beneficial.”
Read MoreThe Case for Keto — Exclusive Preview #3