CrossFit - A Competitor's Zone Prescription: Part 3

Matt Chan explains how to create a baseline Zone Diet plan for competitive athletes and how to intelligently deviate from it in this video shot at a CrossFit Competitor's Course at CrossFit Park City.
In Part 3, Chan talks about a Zone plan for someone who instead wants to lose body fat.
It comes with a similar warning: "There is no healthy way to underfeed an organism."
Chan adds: "If you have trained yourself-just like you would throw three workouts at a day, trying all sorts of different combinations of workouts-we're going to train ourselves to eat this stuff and see what works best for us."

[@TheTrinidave]

Awesome Stuff

[@shag813]

Brilliant! No bullshit approach!

[@tmartinez426]

Just like he said, your blocks will increase as you increase your training, so in order to keep from "overtraining" or "burn out" you eat more according to the math. As far as experience goes, I've been crossfitting for a little over a year and started doing 2 WODS/day, 2-3x's/week. I feel great because I upped my food intake. I don't use the blocks but after this I'm going to give it a go. A good way to keep from burn out is getting enough sleep 7-8 hours/day. Getting enough rest is key.

[@johnboy4365]

Love the clip, very good stuff. But on the 3wods a day. Check your math, you said .1 I think you meant 1. X .7. Again I love your clips matt chan

[@cjreyna100]

For the recovery are using LBM or total body weight? Loved the series btw, very informative.

[@Pwnnath]

thanks!

[@TheRaycruz88]

So it I’m a 25 block male and I want to burn more fat, instead of it being 5 blocks fat, protein and fat, I would do 4 blocks of carbs, 5 blocks of protein and 8 blocks of fat because im adding 3 more blocks in lieu of 1 block subtraction for carbs?

[@claytonmoorman]

Couldnt be a better explanation on the web

[@Pwnnath]

I do crossfit for 3 months and im 16 so i think i keep going with 5 WODs per week but eat more calories than i burn. i will try it as you do in the summer-holidays. thanks

[@VikingsJI]

Why is Egg-Protein better then Whey for somebody who has an allergy to gluten?

[@cf_benni_87]

Thanks =)

[@freepat101]

@saond Yeah, I see your point. Digging into the details, this doesn't make sense from a calorie intake standpoint. Even the 25 blocks prescribed for a 3 WOD per day schedule would only equate to about 2k calories. You gonna be hongry, son.

[@klintciriaco]

18 blocks only has 126g of protein (18*7g Protein). Isn't that severely deficient for a 210lb athlete?

[@tonygutierrez4711]

So, how would a PWOD meal factor into losing BF by doing 1 WOD per day. If I understand correctly, he advises to drop either 1 CHO block per day or per meal and back filling it with 3 FAT blocks either per meal or day. But the PWOD meal is roughly a 1:2 ratio PRO:CHO. That increases the amount of calories trying to lose fat as oppose to a normal workout. I must be missing something

[@freepat101]

Ok, so each block is ~78 calories, and 46% Carb, 36% Protein, 18% Fat. Easier way to look at it is that you want little less than half of all calories from Carbs, and your fat % should be about half of protein intake %. Easier to remember at 50, 30, 20, ish.

[@markwood7793]

Rest days... The same or different?

[@Kjeserud]

Part 1 talks about # of WODs vs Blocks

[@markwood7793]

@Kjeserud: thanks mate, forgot about that

[@Pwnnath]

He ist talking about 1-3 WOD's A DAY! O.o I usually do 4-5 WOD's per week. How can I do even one WOD a day without overtraining? Should I have much experience in crossfit, so that my muscles a ready for so many WOD's or just eating like he explained it or ... ? Do anybody has any tips for me ?

[@cf_benni_87]

what´s a block???

[@CoachJohnKelly]

I am confused because when matt says to multiply 180 times .7 he says that comes out to 18 blocks, but in actuality it is only 12.6????

[@hunterklemz781]

Live Free I know it’s been 6 years... but 180 x .7 is 126. 126/7 is 18.

[@saond]

Im confused, for 210lb guy would 18 block be a caloric deficit? How many calories in 18 blocks? My computation is 1400 i may be wrong.

[@nightfoxusc]

thedouche Exactly, his formula seems to be wrong. He said 4000cals is about 49 blocks, which makes a block to be 81.6cals. Then 18 blocks is 1468 cals for a 210lbs guy who does 1 WOD a day. Isn’t this extremely low?

[@ben2000d]

@@nightfoxusc The way to calculate it correctly is to count the calories for each blocks (28cals for proteins, 36cals for carbs and 15-27cals for fat). Never forget that the zone is based on LBM and not on TBM. So yes it seems low but it's made to be this way. Hope I helped you in some way !

[@taylordyson]

This does not make sense to me. So at his weight and body mass he should be eating around 1600 calories a day as his base line with his math. That sounds way too low. He explained how 18 blocks is what you eat when you want to loose fat.

[@randygrosjean2873]

I'm sure that Coach Chan means increase the multiple from .85 to 1.0 and not .1 when moving from 2 WOD's a day to 3. That threw me off for a second but I'm sure he just misspoke.

[@Oliviapaige.r]

then divide by 7

[@ryanpacker72]

1 block = 7 G of Protein, 9 G of Carbs, Approx. 1.5 G of Fat.

[@projaska]

First you have to be experienced and in good shape. Second you have to be smart and don't go to failure in every workout. And when you increase wods you eat more. But I have to say human body can take a lot of beating but if you eat crap/ not enough you will be overtrained. And please dont go to failure every day.