From MMA to CrossFit: Discovering the Benefits of Functional Fitness
Adam lives in Venice, Florida, and owns a CrossFit gym in Northport, Florida. As a competitive MMA fighter in his 20s, Adam joined a CrossFit gym, thinking he would “be able to destroy it.” What happened, though, was that “I’m not even joking when I tell you there were some older ladies, um, basically cheering me on after my first workout where I was dying.”
This led to Adam deciding he didn’t understand fitness as well as he thought he did. He would end up leaving MMA “because I got addicted to CrossFit and decided to make it my life.”
Keto to Carnivore: Adam’s Transition to a Meat-Based Diet
His diet journey wasn’t unhealthy; he said, “I’ve always had clean nutrition since I was probably about 18. I started with paleo, which is big in the CrossFit world. Then I transitioned from paleo, and I switched into more of a keto-based approach.” This would lead to a problem, however.
Adam had fallen into the trap of “keto treat” foods, eating “products like Rebel ice cream. I would save the carbs I had just to eat a whole pint of Rebel ice cream.”
He heard about Carnivore from an internal medicine physician and CrossFit client who asked Adam for advice on the diet, and Adam agreed to try it with him. He found the first several months to be “absolute torture” as he detoxified from all the keto treats.
Adam had tremendous sweet cravings from all the sweet Keto treats he had eaten. “My wife would look at me like I was crazy. I’d grab it on the side of the counter and just grip it as hard as I could to fight through the sugar craving. That’s how addicted to the sweet taste I was.”
The Benefits of Carnivore for Joint Pain and Recovery
Adam noticed that his achiness went away, and his energy levels improved significantly. He later noticed his recovery had improved as well, even working out twice a day. “Carnivore has really allowed me to not feel anything in my joints.
That’s the one thing I felt, regardless of the way that I was eating, was joint discomfort…That all stopped once I did carnivore full-force.”
Why Vegetarians and Vegans Struggle with CrossFit Exercises
He explains the functional basis of Crossfit movements: “Typical exercises in CrossFit are going to be functional fitness. So any kind of movement that you do on a day-to-day basis, whether it’s picking something up off the floor, or bringing something from your waist up to your shoulders, or from your shoulders up to overhead, those are the kind of things that we focus on…through different weightlifting exercises.”
Adam finds that vegetarians and vegans have a hard time with CrossFit exercises. “They’re all ‘skinny fat,’ so they have high body fat and a low amount of muscle mass. I never see any changes; they all plateau; they all struggle to build actual muscle mass itself, and their body fat hovers around the same.”
“I’m blowing a lot of people out of the water when it comes to those that are focused on carb-driven diet fuels, so it’s been really cool to see!”
