Interviews

5-1/2 Questions with David “Chef” Wallach: Pissing in your gas tank

David “Chef” Wallach balancing fitness & fuel.

David, “Chef” Wallach represents a fascinating balance between food and fitness. At some point in their lives, athletes can get a bit anal when it comes to food. Who among us hasn’t gone off the deep end with some new nutritional strategy in attempt to improve our performance? Wallach, however, came to the same point as a foodie first, athlete second. Before he ever became serious about what goes on in a squat rack, he was devoted to what goes on in front of a hot stove.

With 20 years experience as a master chef in the United States and Europe, he has evolved (or should I say devolved?) back to a simpler approach to eating. It’s that lifestyle and balance that I wanted to learn more about.

1) Did you always have a marriage of the food and fitness in your life? If so, when did you become more conscious of the relationship between the two?

Wallach: I had been jolted into a relationship between performance and what fuel I put in the tank as a young man living in New York. I was city-cyclist, you know the type, used my bike to get everywhere, back and forth to the River Cafe in Brooklyn to get to work, regardless of weather, laps in the morning in Central Park, all day rides on days off, etc. How I fueled the efforts of the day had immediate translation to performance.

If I hit the bar a bit too much the night before? Bad ride the next day was an obvious consequence.

However, I started to notice that the more sugars and starches I ate, the slower my times in the park. I just gravitated to a higher fat diet with great results. In the times since that observation, I certainly have strayed and my health, my performance and my body composition suffered dramatically for it. I even gained almost 100 pounds after a surgery!

It was at about that time I started to do some research on how the body reacts to carbohydrate density and consumption and how insulin sensitivity governs all things. My friends and family thought i was nuts. They were telling me “Everybody knows athletes should be on high carb, low fat diets!”

There are now a few people I owe an “I told you so.”

2) Can you explain what a “Paleo” diet is and why you’re using it? After all, most endurance athletes have a long history of being carb fanatics.

One of the perqs of eating for performance: beach
tricks with your son.

Wallach: A Paleo diet follows, as close as is functional, a modern adaptation of our actual ancestral human diet. It’s really all about making choices of foods that can be hunted and fished, such as meat, fish and seafood, and that can be gathered, such as eggs, fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetables, herbs and spices. Add to that mix foods free of additives, preferably wild game meats and grass-fed beef. Those meats contain high levels of omega-3 fats compared with grain-produced domestic meats.

The shortest description that’s easiest to follow? Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar. If your going to take it seriously, this means an absolute exclusion of grains, legumes (peanuts), dairy products, refined sugar and processed oils. I make some room for oils that have a good ratio of omega3:6 and do use a little salt.

I could go in some deep detail about the history of the process, but there is loads of good info online.

I eat Paleo because it puts me in charge of my health and my performance in the most honest way I have found to date. I have done, experimented with and prescribed almost every diet under the sun to both my self and my clients. Our athletes find, without exception, that a Paleo approach to a modified “Zone” diet has been the most profound single contributor to their progress they have ever experienced…right behind getting out of man-made training protocols.

Simply?

Eat as your body was intended to eat, train using natural movements executed at a high intensity and you simply cannot go wrong. Relying on carbohydrates as your primary energy source, suffering through the disease factors and inflammation of a grain-based diet and living on selectorized equipment, or wallowing around on stability balls, is a prescription for inefficient and ineffective training. I could go on with the horrors of the insulin roller-coaster and how it’s killing us off en-mass, but that’s for another interview!

3) That sounds like a lot of work to eat that way, particularly with all of the pre-packaged foods made available to us….

“When in life did anyone celebrate anything easy?”>

Wallach: It’s actually not much work in the long run, but more important: Since when are athletes against hard work?

When in life did anyone celebrate anything easy?

Have you ever given someone a high-five after getting off an elliptical machine? An “awesome effort!” after eating at McDonald’s?

For real, the most fundamental and profound foundation you can lay for your sport, your performance, and your health is how you fuel the effort. If you want jet-fuel dragster performance you can’t piss in the gas tank.

4) Help us make the transition more successful then. Most chefs recommend certain staples for the pantry. Are there any Paleo foods/spices that we should have in our kitchens?

Wallach: As for making the transition more successful, just live by a couple of rules:

1) Stay out of the aisles of the grocery store. Nothing good lurks there.
2) If you can’t pronounce it? Don’t eat it. Life has enough chemicals in it all ready, don’t add more.

To be sure, changing old ingrained habits is a chore, regardless of how intuitive or “smart” those changes appear to be. Getting off of the starch and grain insulin roller coaster will take some time. Just take one step after the other.

After about a week you will be acclimatizing better and after 30 days you will have undone the addictive habits of decades. As for foods and flavors? Check out our blog at http://www.crossfitmclean.com for my recipe of the day (”Food for Fuel”). That should help a little. We have links to a bunch of good resources for Paleo living there as well.

5) Breakfast seems to be the most challenging to make due to the morning rush and subsequently the most missed. Any recommended Paleo strategies?

Wallach: Paleo breakfasts? Easy and wonderful!

I love a quick microwave frittata with toasted almonds and fresh melon. That takes less than five minutes to get onto the plate. I often have a quick omelet with some great salsa and some fresh berries. Fact is, I eat a more satisfying and flavorful breakfast now that I am strict Paleo than when I was a grain addict. Fresh basil and roasted garlic omelet with mango salsa and fresh avocado kicks the knickers off of a bowl of Kashi Go Lean with skim milk any day of the week! Plus, I am leaner, faster, and have much lower cholesterol to show for it!

5-1/2) OK, last question: What are some of your favorite Paleo snacks?

Wallach: I produce a line of all organic, grass fed beef and game jerky that has no refined sugar and no gluten. I munch that regularly. An ounce of my ginger and five-spice buffalo jerky with some cinnamon smoked walnuts and a small fresh apple or a handful of berries is perfect for a mid-meal snack. Excellent protein bio-availability, great lipid profile on the walnuts (super high omega 3:6) and good low glycemic load fruit.

How can you go wrong!?

To learn more about David “Chef” Wallach’s nutrition and training strategies, as well as to catch up on the fantastic-looking Paloe recipes he posts every week, visit CrossFit Breakaway.

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