A variational technique is developed to investigate the low-lying energy levels of a conduction electron in a polar crystal. Because of the strong interaction between the electron and the longitudinal optical mode of the lattice vibrations, perturbation-theoretic methods are inapplicable. Our variational technique, which is closely related to the "intermediate coupling" method introduced by Tomonaga, is equivalent to a simple canonical transformation. The use of this transformation enables us to obtain the wave functions and energy levels quite simply. Because the recoil of the electron introduces a correlation between the emission of successive virtual phonons by the electron, our approximation, in which this correlation is neglected, breaks down for very strong electron-phonon coupling. The validity of our approximation is investigated and corrections are found to be small for coupling strengths occurring in typical polar crystals.