"When I first started, it was about getting fit. But it was always about gaining more strength all around. I have never been strong."
Not long ago, Fat Free was on the label of "health foods." Your average gym-goer ate Special K with nonfat milk before sluggishly heading to the elliptical machine. Now, a new breed of athletes has taken over and adopted a new diet.
Meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar.
Whether following paleo or Zone, CrossFit athletes are known to enjoy eating fat. They order avocado on the side at restaurants, and keep almonds or macadamia nuts in their cars or at their desks to balance meals on the go.
Those who follow the Zone diet are taught to find the right block prescription, and up the fat blocks if they need something extra.
Recently, one CrossFitter took it to the extreme.
After five years of CrossFit training powered by three years of a strict 18-block Zone prescription, Lucas Zepeda had great stats in all categories but one: heavy workouts.
“When I first started, it was about getting fit. But it was always about gaining more strength all around. I have never been strong,” Zepeda says. “I have always been smaller. I’ve been hitting plateaus on my lifts.”
In an effort to improve his strength, CrossFit Santa Cruz coaches encouraged Zepeda to eat more fat. Months ago, he tentatively added a small amount of more avocado and almond butter. When he still didn’t make gains, his coaches grew convinced that he still wasn’t getting enough fat.
“He was eating like a girl and trying to lift like a man,” affiliate owner Leif Edmundson jokes.
To settle, once and for all, whether Zepeda’s restricted diet was holding him back, Edmundson offered a challenge: one month, one jar of peanut butter a day.
If Zepeda ate a jar of peanut butter each day, Edmundson would pay for all 30 jars. If Zepeda failed, he’d have to pay the bill.
That’s an extra 2,500 calories per day and 70 (3 gram) blocks of fat.
“At first, I was like, ‘This is dumb. And I don’t want to pay for this. I don’t know if this will work,’” Zepeda says.
But it didn’t take long for Zepeda to see gains. He put on weight, and added plates to his lifts. By the end of the month, he added 25 pounds to his deadlift, 15 pounds to his back squat and 10 pounds to his clean and jerk.
More remarkably, after gaining 17 pounds of bodyweight, he was able to shave nine seconds off of a bodyweight workout: 4 rounds for time of a 400-meter run and 50 air squats.
It wasn’t easy to stomach the peanut butter and 18 blocks, however. After the first day, Zepeda never again felt hungry, he says. To conquer the daily jar of peanut butter, Zepeda hid half of it in his morning protein shake. He ate the other half with his meals, and shoveled down the food even when he didn’t want it.
Adapting to his heavier bodyweight and lack of hunger was tough. “I felt sluggish, like I had a weighted vest on,” Zepeda says.
To counter the bloated feeling, he added heavy lifting three times a week in addition to the gym’s regular programming.
Although the one-month challenge worked, it didn’t offer a sustainable diet. Immediately after the 30 days were up, Zepeda stopped eating peanut butter. He returned to his 18-block Zone diet, but this time accepted the extra fat blocks his coaches had long encouraged.
Now, he’s curious whether the gains from the challenge will remain.
“Right now, I can say it works. Let us see how much of that (17-pound weight gain) stays on and how much strength I keep,” Zepeda says.
“Would I recommend it to anyone? Hard to say. I guess it works in some ways. I think it is a big commitment.”
