Aligning Your Carb Intake

How to Align Your Carbohydrate Intake with Your GoalsBy Emma WilliamsWith Full Range Crossfit’s first Primal Challenge around the corner, it is an appropriate time to address an issue that comes up frequently with regard to the Ancestral Health Movement and the fitness community: the dreaded carb! Carbs have gotten a bad rap recently, what with the Paleo Movement’s misguided banishment of the benign white potato and the like.Whether you are partaking in the Primal Challenge, or not, it is important to understand the role that carbohydrates should play in your diet. The third guideline of the Primal Challenge is “align your carb intake with your weight goals and activity levels”, and it is not one to be ignored. Without getting too much into the science, high intensity exercises, like Crossfit, eat up a lot of glucose. Glucose is the form of carbohydrate that your body uses as its main fuel. Unless you are on a high fat, very low carbohydrate diet your body will not work without glucose. As Crossfit athletes, we all need to include carbohydrates in our diets; leave them out, and your energy levels will suffer.So how many carbs should you be taking in? That depends, as Mark Sisson states, on your activity levels and your weight goals. To put things very simply: If your main goal is fat loss, then a sweet potato post workout is probably sufficient. If you find that your activity levels suffer, add in a banana or two. If you are happy with your body composition and perhaps want to focus on improving your performance in the gym, carbs should probably be an even bigger part of your diet. Maybe have some potato or some fruit with every meal. To take it a step further, if you want to gainweight, you should probably be making an effort to take in a whole bunch of carbs.Despite their questionable reputation, carbs are not the enemy, especially if you are in the gym four or five days a week. What’s important is that you choose the right form of carbs as fuel. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes, bananas, and other starchy fruits and vegetables are ideal for health and will provide you with the right kind of fuel to support your activity levels.So enjoy your Primal Challenge and don’t forget to eat your potatoes!