Tim Ferris' 'slow carb diet' from '4 hour body'. Rules: *Protein & veg at every meal. (That could actually serve as the summary) ::)At least 30-60g protein. *No sugar or starchy carbs (fruit, milk, rice, bread, potatoes,pasta included) *Make it easy for yourself by rotating the same core of easy, fast to prepare meals which you don't have to think about *Make sure you eat breakfast within an hour of waking *If you like a wee drink at night, try to make it a dry red wine or unmixed spirit As far as restrictions go, thats IT. Now here's the great bit - you can eat whatever the fuck you like one day a week. 3 pizzas? Have at it. Since you'll be in borderline ketosis, insulin sensitivity will be such that you'll partition calories like a champ. In fact the 'carb load' will be beneficial & is a mandatory part of the diet. Guilt free. That's it, super easy to stick to. I just keep cans of veg beside the cooking hobs and some more cooked frozen veg in the fridge and have some variety thereof with whatever I cook, be it beef, chicken, eggs, fish. Chop of the meat, throw in some salsa sauce, olive oil, mayo, squeezed lemon, whatever and it's a meal in about 45s prep time once the meat's cooked. Brilliant.
Not eating fruit is bullshit. No one gets fat from Fruit.Eating fruit keeps you healthy. If you eat no fruit, you will catch 20 colds a year.
All the macronutrient manipulation fad diets are bullshit. Excess calories, regardless of where they come from, are what make you fat. Our bodies are optimally designed to use carbohydrates as fuel, protein for building/maintaining muscle, and fats for a whole myriad of needs. Figure out your maintenance calorie needs, eat at least 500 calories less than that, and you will lose weight, guaranteed. Any macronutrient manipulation diets that work, work only because they reduce the total amount of calories consumed. It's better to eat like a reasonable person instead of depriving your body of macros it needs. The #1 reason most people think they lose weight faster on low carb diets is because low carbing depletes glycogen, causing you to lose water weight rapidly. Then carbing up on your "cheat day" makes it seem like calories are being partitioned more effectively, because glycogen/water will head directly to your muscles, causing them to appear and feel dramatically more full and hard.
Eat fruit on your day off. You're eating vegetables with every meal remember and a multivitamin on top will do you fine. Modern fruit's been bred to the point where it's practically candy.
This isn't a 'fad diet'. It's meat and fucking vegetables. :: Besides your point about macros is misleading. We're 'optimally designed' to use carbs as fuel for anaerobic stuff. If you do allot of that day to day then by all means eat a high carb diet. If you're Michael Phelps, eat your pasta & bananas. I'm not a competitive athlete or piano mover personally, so I don't think I need allot of carbs. For mulling around all the way up to light jogging, we use fat. Aka 23 hours a day at least. As for insulin sensitivity & calorie partitioning, I'll copy/paste you some info about that if you like. The water weight thing is not the main aspect at play at all.
Have you have heard of the Paleo Survival Podcast, Hut? It says that some of Ferriss' stuff is wrong and it can even lead to adrenal gland fatigue.
I guess they're talking about the cheat day? I'll bet if you really went wild it would have that effect, but even so, it isn't a high level bodybuilding/competitive athlete diet, it's designed to be as good a diet as most people can realistically stick to. And the free day really helps with that. So the few hours of potential adrenal fatigue is set against that. But I'm sure they're right that quite a few nits could be picked with it held against absolute optimality.
Oh wait, elsewhere in the book, he recommends a fat loss stack including epherderine. They might be talking about that?
Anything but a diet where you eat less calories is a "fad diet," this is just another one of the millions of variations of the Atkins diet that have come out since the early 00s. What's your source for saying that we use fat as an energy source for anaerobic activity (I assume by anaerobic you meant aerobic)?
In that case all eating templates are 'fad diets'. :TLC: Fat gets used for low intensity, run of the mill stuff, conditional on blood sugar not being elevated. Walking, breathing, beating our heart, scratching our ass. The stuff most of us do 23 hours a day. Once we get into 'exercise' mode we start using muscle glucose preferentially, but we dont need enormous amounts unless really going at it, olympian style. If you want a source I can give you them but google will know all about it
It seems I live by this diet unknowingly. Quite often my evening meal will be chicken/steak/fish plus assorted steamed vegetables. Nothing else. No dressings or sauces.
I'd like just a single direct source.. you can google anything and get 1000000 pages claiming it's the gospel truth.
You can find the info in Rob Faigin's 'Natural hormonal enhancement' pages 78-80. It's pretty heavily referenced so I wont type them all out, but I'll type out the shortest one: 'Schade DS, Eaton RP. Modulation of fatty acid metabolicm by Glucagon in man. Effects in normal subjects. Diabetes1975;24:502' The catalyst is glucagon. That mobilizes fat stores & re metabolises them to glucose in order to raise blood sugar when it's low (which then gets used as energy in normal daily life); in reverse to insulin's role of regulating blood sugar downwards by storing the excess in the fat and muscles. So since the amount of blood sugar you spike with your diet determines whether your body wants to down regulate or upregulate blood sugar, so it determines whether you'll be mobilizing fat stores for energy or whether you'll be using existing dietary blood sugar & storing any excess. Glucagon & Insulin also have different effects on subjective hunger, so they set up self reinforcing dynamics. Thats why things aren't as simple as a calorie being a calorie. Glucagon can also break down muscle to raise blood sugar, and you need insulin to build muscle. So it's not as if one's a good guy and one's a villian. If you're looking to bulk you'll need to up carbs. If you're really training hard you'll want more carbs. But anyway, those are their basic functions - glucagon will burn fat for you during general every day activity if it's in net preponderance over insulin.
it's a paleo diet basically what we've been eating for hundreds of thousands of years apart from the last few thousand years
And yet, the current obesity epidemic we're experiencing didn't come about until the latter half of the 20th century.. how/why is that?
When insulin isn't spiked, as I said. Hence the logic of limiting and/or cycling carbs & sticking to low GI carbs when we eat them. Refined carbs first and foremost, I'd say. Transfats are bad guys, too. But prior to getting fat we'd shrunk about 9 inches due to lack of protein for most of the agrarian age. Not sure whats worse, tbh.
Proteins can cause insulin to spike too, so I'm not really sure how a diet based on this theory would work at all. Protein is important and transfats are bad. Carbohydrates are not responsible for obesity, the data just doesn't bear it out. I used to think along the same lines as you, was what some call a "ketard." Reading the opposing point of view, which is based in biology ("biology" is very different from "nutrition" for a reason) destroyed all of that for me. Aside from that I hated the entire approach and in the long run, eating excessive amounts of meat & dairy is likely not that good for your overall health. I really recommend you check out Alan Aragon or Lyle MacDonald's work on these subjects, you might not change your mind but it's worth a look anyway. At the end of the day if you're low carbing you're (most likely) going to be eating less calories in any case, and if that's easier for you then more power to you.. I personally find it easier to just eat a balanced and reasonable diet ("easier," but not "easy" .. I do love food).
I've never read Aragon, but Lyle MacDonald says - 1) optimum carb intake entirely depends on activity level 2) As little as 15g daily will spare muscle loss and no more is necessary per se 3)carb cycling is very effective in many incidences. But genetics comes into play as well as training habits too.....the amount of carbs you eat isn't the key thing ultimately, it's how your body processes them and how they effect insulin. If you really don't like low carb diets and they make you feel shitty there's a fair chance you're well adapted to eating more of them. So do and enjoy them! Being of asian origin there's a fair chance of that, I think. Me personally, they just make me feel bloated, then hungry again 15 minutes later and tend to get me flubby in a hurry. BTW, you're right protein effects insulin, but it's a matter of degree and the difference in degree is big. Tuna vs milk Chocolate.....a calorie isn't just a calorie, because each calorie effects your desire to consume the next one.
