The 26 Fam is so excited to welcome a new CrossFit intro group to the gym this week! We can’t wait to meet you all, and to watch your progress as you learn the sport that our gym family loves so much. CrossFit challenges your body in ways that may be new to you. It’s important to take extra loving care of your body over the next few weeks. This includes sleeping well, mobility work, and (of course) nutrition. Diet quality plays a huge role in performance and recovery in CrossFit and in all sports.

If you searched the Internet for the best diet for CrossFit, you’d likely find thousands of posts with different approaches to nutrition. And to some degree, this makes sense. Different approaches to nutrition work better for different athletes! However, most of us aren’t planning to compete in the CrossFit Games. We just want to move well and be healthy.

Over the course of your intro, I’ll be sharing some information about nutrition that’s meant to help you make the most of your six weeks. This information is not sexy—I don’t believe in extreme approaches. Hopefully, some simple steps will help you to improve the quality of your diet and support your training.

Week 1: Diet Quality

This week’s focus is diet quality.

Let me just start off by saying, I don’t believe that any foods are inherently bad. There’s lots of room for fun in the diet PROVIDED you eat well most of the time. In my practice as a dietitian, I typically encourage my clients to eat up to 200-400 calories per day (depending on sex, height, weight, and activity level) from any food or drink that they like. I find that this makes adopting a healthy lifestyle easier to stick with, long-term.

But what about the rest of the day? What sorts of foods should be the foundation of the diet? Aim to get most of your calories from fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and olive oil. We’ll dig deeper into portion sizes very soon, but for now just focus diet quality.

Here is a sample grocery list to give you an idea of the types of foods that you might build your meal plan around. This list is certainly not all-inclusive–just a starting point! Feel free to ask if you have questions.

See you in the gym! Best of luck over the next few weeks!

Kim is a 26 member and coach (CF-L1, The  Brand X Method), as well as a registered dietitian nutritionist.