Ok this is where I make myself really unpopular. But in fairness to any who look at this and think I am saying you are doing something stupid consider I have likely made most of these mistakes myself during the decades I have trained, so what I am intending to do is help you avoid some of them without learning from your own mistakes.
Number 1 Protein the wonder food
Lose weight with this low carb high protein diet, gain mass with this high protein diet, anyone see something a bit strange here?
Protein is good for you, so good in fact that cutting it out of your diet will result in your death, but in fairness this is also true of carbs, fats, vitamins, minerals and even arsenic based on one set of research. However as is likely easier to understand with arsenic than protein eating too much of it will cause damage in your body so excess has to be removed or made useful.
Free form amino acids are toxic to the body, the only reason the body breaks proteins down to this level is for transportation, in the same way as you buy a flat pack kitchen to put in the back of your car because having it fully assembled would mean it won't fit. If they are used rapidly the body suffers minimal damage and everybody's happy. However if this is not used up the body has to take action. We haven't survived evolution by being too wasteful so the first thing we will do is convert whatever we can to energy as lipoproteins which are a form of fat, the rest is converted to urea for safe removal through our urinary system.
But these systems work, especially short term, so how does it happen? I will take these one at a time.
Low carb high protein diet to lose weight. Something many people tend to forget even though we all know it, water is heavy. Getting rid of the excess in your urine means losing one part protein nine parts water, that is how much it takes to remove this potential toxin. So for a while the body is so busy stripping you of water that you lose pounds while the body is actually locking away more fat in form of lipoprotein. It is also so busy being lethargic due to lack of carbs that you don't notice the effect of dehydration as much. This can only be short term unless you start balancing out your diet better or are burning off the additional fat being stored with exercise.
High protein for mass gain. By simply adding protein to your diet you will not notice the drop in water weight as much and most after mass will be thinking longer term so only notice the upturn when the body replaces the water and the additional weight from newly stored fat is assumed to be lean muscle.
The contradiction. With everything I have just said this will seem strange. If you are training try to take in a tiny amount more protein than you strictly need. The additional metabolism and tissue repair will require more protein for rebuilding everything from enzymes to new cell tissue, covering muscle to fat containment cells. If you have enough intelligence to be questioning you will wonder why would slightly more than you need be good if excess is so bad. Too little leaves a deficit and that could be detrimental to your health or stop you gaining that extra bit of muscle you have worked so hard for. Much as I painted an accurate but dramatic picture of what happens to excess protein, this is only an issue if there is a lot of it, the body will happily burn off a few grams of excess and dispose of a few more of urea without causing you any issue at all.
In summary protein good, too little bad, ideal perfect and if you get it sing it from the rooftops as an all hail miracle, little bit too much is as close to perfect as most of us will get and more than that is a rout to carrying more fat and making the body work too hard on waste disposal. No-one can tell you exactly how much is perfect for you but there are some good guidelines based on activity and bodyweight but simpler balance will be covered later.
Supplements are key. To ensure I got this right I went to dictionary.com to get a definition of supplement this is number 1 something added to complete a thing, supply a deficiency, or reinforce or extend a whole.
Basically if your diet is in need of supplements it is deficient, therefore before you reach for the shiny package with a body builder and bikini model on the front showing off their pearly white teeth, go to the library or search on the internet for independent nutritional advice, people like Anita Bean are a good example, nutritionist for the British Olympic team, used to dealing with everything from weight lifters to marathon runners and not gaining any financial reward for telling you to buy Joe’s latest mega super duper formula.
Perfect diet is not always easy and a just in case top up can be good, I still tend to use multi-vits and minerals because I concentrate so much on the calorific intake and balance in that area that I am not sure I get all of the trace details right, and I know city living etc. can all have an impact on how much of these you use. However this should always be the last consideration not the first as for many and it is always worth considering the potential damage of taking in too much of whatever you are supplementing with. Supplements are the lazy option and as someone who is largely against them but still uses some I say that from the heart. If I spent more time on my diet I wouldn’t bother with the pills.
Carbs are bad. No idea where this came from but somewhere along the lines carbohydrates became public enemy number one in the diet world and this looks unlikely to change.
The argument I hear in defence of this is that excess carbs become fat, this is totally true, but equally pointless as an argument. Excess protein is either converted to fat or disposed of, it cannot be burned as energy without being converted to something else first, fat doesn’t need to be converted at all and is the very thing people are wanting to avoid but it still seems to be silver medallist in worst foods race.
Carbs can be burned before conversion and are the preferred form of energy for most activities. So before you run screaming away from that loaf of bread consider the following.
Evolution and biology, no you haven’t just switched forums by mistake, but this is the main reason you shouldn’t avoid carbs. We have spent millions of years evolving for a diet high in complex carbs, our very survival has been made possible by our ability to make this our main staple food, because it is so abundant and such an effective fuel. Our saliva contains more amylase than any other primate, this is the enzyme that converts starch to glucose, showing we are designed for a diet high in starch, our insulin driven glucose management system is one of the most forgiving in nature showing we are set up for a diet of mixed carbs. Our entire dietary system has been purpose built for a diet with carbohydrate as the main caloric ingredient.
So off to the shop for a box of glazed doughnuts then! Not really, there is a catch and it’s a doozy. Our insulin supply system is forgiving but we are breaking it so often that type two diabetes is the fastest growing health problem in the developed world. Carbs are loosely grouped in two groups simple and complex, simple being everything from glucose (the thing all energy is finally broken down to) to fructose at the more complex end, and complex is basically starch. We are set up for mixed carbs but at least 90% should be complex, and ideally closer to 95%. This becomes a problem in a world driven by taste buds more than survival, sweet food tastes nicer than the bland starchy food, and therein lies the problem. So much of our food is now high in sugar without us even realising that keeping this balance takes conscious effort. Pasta is made of flour and water, with maybe a hint of egg, spinach etc. On its own wonderful, add that pasta sauce which is 30% sugar and all of a sudden you have an issue, or buy a pasta salad that comes with an even worse sauce, you get the idea.
Summary carbs are your friend as long as you are sensible. The boring starchy stuff is better for you and what you are designed to eat, sweets should be a hint not the mainstay. Yes too much carbohydrate will make you fat, same as too much protein or fat.
Healthy option foods. Just because it says healthy choice or low fat etc. doesn’t mean it is good for you. I saw a pack of flying saucer sweets advertising themselves as over 99% fat free, if you think eating a ton of these is a good idea you would have missed the over 90% sugar part.
To show how messed up this can be, full fat milk is considered bad, it contains 4% fat. Now think about how large the type would be on a diet product that was 96% fat free.
If you look at the big label you will think these are wonder foods and eating healthy is expensive. Look at the main ingredients and you will often find some of the cheapest food types around and realise eating healthy is simpler than people make out and remarkable low priced.
The KISS system, keep it simple stupid. There is so much info out there, eat x grams of y for each kg of bodyweight if you do z minutes of $ intensity activity a day or lose ^% of the benefit from your training and damage your unconceived child.
This will come as a shock to many but we have survived millions of years despite getting diet wrong most of the time, because overall the balance has been within acceptable boundaries. Ironically today with food so easy and convenient we are in one of the worst periods of global human malnutrition in history. Much of this is due to blatant disregard but I would bet that a significant amount is from people trying to eat well but failing due to sheer information overload, says me at the end of this massive post.
Regardless of race, creed, colour or gender we are all human and subsequently need roughly the same balance of food and if we are used to getting what we need and our needs change due to training etc. our bodies will let us know and even direct us to the foods we need to eat, most of the time.
There are numerous simple systems out there to use as a rough guide, but remember they are just that rough guides, to be tailored to your lifestyle. The food pyramid is one, but rather than looking at x servings of y and a further a servings of b look at the proportions and figure out your own servings. I eat a tub of rice with some eggs at work because it is simple and easy to prep, there are no vegetables or fruit there but I cover that later in the day. The rice isn’t one serving because that would mean making the number I needed would stop me being able to sleep with volume of food I would need, it may be 2 or 3 or even somewhere between, I don’t know or care. Suffice to say over the course of most days my diet is roughly in the right proportions and the food I eat is simple stuff.
If you need something more detailed consider the proportions of caloric intake in a well balanced diet are 60-65% carbs (with only 5% or less of this being sugars), 25% fats and oils, 17.5% protein. The balance is affected by activity etc. but remember so is your overall caloric need so the percentages change remarkably little. The two most who do understand nutrition to a reasonable level want to swap are fat and protein seeing the idea of 1 in 4 parts of their calories being fat as too high and fixated on giving protein more pride of place. Remember fats and oils include all cholesterols including the high density stuff which is good for you, fish oils, and everything else that comes packed with minerals and micro nutrients, and of course excess protein will become fat or waste anyway.
Increasing body mass means increasing everything you eat not one thing extra but more of everything in balance. Losing weight is the same but in reverse, not cutting out one food, unless you eat a pound of lard for breakfast, but cutting down all round. People don’t like the thought that diet can be this simple but it is.
Last example fad foods. Rocky ate raw eggs and is massive, I’ll do that, Viccy Beckham eats 2 pounds of celery a day and can fit through a letterbox I’ll do that. I don’t know anything about Viccy except she has less figure than a pool cue but you get the idea.
Raw eggs is a great one, I remember people taking it a step further and removing the yolk because it contained fat. What makes this really stupid is that the same process that made us so perfect for high carb diets, evolution, has made birds lock the protein down in the egg white to ensure it doesn’t’ go off before the chick needs it, the enzyme needed to break this in raw form is in the yolk, the only other way to make it digestible is to denature the protein by cooking it.
When you look at many fad foods you will find that most serious trainers have been eating the stuff for decades, oats are back en vogue at the moment either whole or as extracted parts, I and most have been eating them and known how great they are for years.
Bread and chocolate has been good for you then bad, back to good and will continue to yoyo forever. Simple explanation every food in the world is bad for you and most food is good for you, the key is balance. If you love chocolate, but desperately want to fit into that slinky dress without help from the all in wrestling team, have some but make it a few peeled swirls that are allowed to melt on your tongue not an entire king size box every day.
As much as practical ignore the fads, wait until real research comes out from independent sources and eat what you enjoy in balance.
Wow that's huge, I need a snack.
Number 1 Protein the wonder food
Lose weight with this low carb high protein diet, gain mass with this high protein diet, anyone see something a bit strange here?
Protein is good for you, so good in fact that cutting it out of your diet will result in your death, but in fairness this is also true of carbs, fats, vitamins, minerals and even arsenic based on one set of research. However as is likely easier to understand with arsenic than protein eating too much of it will cause damage in your body so excess has to be removed or made useful.
Free form amino acids are toxic to the body, the only reason the body breaks proteins down to this level is for transportation, in the same way as you buy a flat pack kitchen to put in the back of your car because having it fully assembled would mean it won't fit. If they are used rapidly the body suffers minimal damage and everybody's happy. However if this is not used up the body has to take action. We haven't survived evolution by being too wasteful so the first thing we will do is convert whatever we can to energy as lipoproteins which are a form of fat, the rest is converted to urea for safe removal through our urinary system.
But these systems work, especially short term, so how does it happen? I will take these one at a time.
Low carb high protein diet to lose weight. Something many people tend to forget even though we all know it, water is heavy. Getting rid of the excess in your urine means losing one part protein nine parts water, that is how much it takes to remove this potential toxin. So for a while the body is so busy stripping you of water that you lose pounds while the body is actually locking away more fat in form of lipoprotein. It is also so busy being lethargic due to lack of carbs that you don't notice the effect of dehydration as much. This can only be short term unless you start balancing out your diet better or are burning off the additional fat being stored with exercise.
High protein for mass gain. By simply adding protein to your diet you will not notice the drop in water weight as much and most after mass will be thinking longer term so only notice the upturn when the body replaces the water and the additional weight from newly stored fat is assumed to be lean muscle.
The contradiction. With everything I have just said this will seem strange. If you are training try to take in a tiny amount more protein than you strictly need. The additional metabolism and tissue repair will require more protein for rebuilding everything from enzymes to new cell tissue, covering muscle to fat containment cells. If you have enough intelligence to be questioning you will wonder why would slightly more than you need be good if excess is so bad. Too little leaves a deficit and that could be detrimental to your health or stop you gaining that extra bit of muscle you have worked so hard for. Much as I painted an accurate but dramatic picture of what happens to excess protein, this is only an issue if there is a lot of it, the body will happily burn off a few grams of excess and dispose of a few more of urea without causing you any issue at all.
In summary protein good, too little bad, ideal perfect and if you get it sing it from the rooftops as an all hail miracle, little bit too much is as close to perfect as most of us will get and more than that is a rout to carrying more fat and making the body work too hard on waste disposal. No-one can tell you exactly how much is perfect for you but there are some good guidelines based on activity and bodyweight but simpler balance will be covered later.
Supplements are key. To ensure I got this right I went to dictionary.com to get a definition of supplement this is number 1 something added to complete a thing, supply a deficiency, or reinforce or extend a whole.
Basically if your diet is in need of supplements it is deficient, therefore before you reach for the shiny package with a body builder and bikini model on the front showing off their pearly white teeth, go to the library or search on the internet for independent nutritional advice, people like Anita Bean are a good example, nutritionist for the British Olympic team, used to dealing with everything from weight lifters to marathon runners and not gaining any financial reward for telling you to buy Joe’s latest mega super duper formula.
Perfect diet is not always easy and a just in case top up can be good, I still tend to use multi-vits and minerals because I concentrate so much on the calorific intake and balance in that area that I am not sure I get all of the trace details right, and I know city living etc. can all have an impact on how much of these you use. However this should always be the last consideration not the first as for many and it is always worth considering the potential damage of taking in too much of whatever you are supplementing with. Supplements are the lazy option and as someone who is largely against them but still uses some I say that from the heart. If I spent more time on my diet I wouldn’t bother with the pills.
Carbs are bad. No idea where this came from but somewhere along the lines carbohydrates became public enemy number one in the diet world and this looks unlikely to change.
The argument I hear in defence of this is that excess carbs become fat, this is totally true, but equally pointless as an argument. Excess protein is either converted to fat or disposed of, it cannot be burned as energy without being converted to something else first, fat doesn’t need to be converted at all and is the very thing people are wanting to avoid but it still seems to be silver medallist in worst foods race.
Carbs can be burned before conversion and are the preferred form of energy for most activities. So before you run screaming away from that loaf of bread consider the following.
Evolution and biology, no you haven’t just switched forums by mistake, but this is the main reason you shouldn’t avoid carbs. We have spent millions of years evolving for a diet high in complex carbs, our very survival has been made possible by our ability to make this our main staple food, because it is so abundant and such an effective fuel. Our saliva contains more amylase than any other primate, this is the enzyme that converts starch to glucose, showing we are designed for a diet high in starch, our insulin driven glucose management system is one of the most forgiving in nature showing we are set up for a diet of mixed carbs. Our entire dietary system has been purpose built for a diet with carbohydrate as the main caloric ingredient.
So off to the shop for a box of glazed doughnuts then! Not really, there is a catch and it’s a doozy. Our insulin supply system is forgiving but we are breaking it so often that type two diabetes is the fastest growing health problem in the developed world. Carbs are loosely grouped in two groups simple and complex, simple being everything from glucose (the thing all energy is finally broken down to) to fructose at the more complex end, and complex is basically starch. We are set up for mixed carbs but at least 90% should be complex, and ideally closer to 95%. This becomes a problem in a world driven by taste buds more than survival, sweet food tastes nicer than the bland starchy food, and therein lies the problem. So much of our food is now high in sugar without us even realising that keeping this balance takes conscious effort. Pasta is made of flour and water, with maybe a hint of egg, spinach etc. On its own wonderful, add that pasta sauce which is 30% sugar and all of a sudden you have an issue, or buy a pasta salad that comes with an even worse sauce, you get the idea.
Summary carbs are your friend as long as you are sensible. The boring starchy stuff is better for you and what you are designed to eat, sweets should be a hint not the mainstay. Yes too much carbohydrate will make you fat, same as too much protein or fat.
Healthy option foods. Just because it says healthy choice or low fat etc. doesn’t mean it is good for you. I saw a pack of flying saucer sweets advertising themselves as over 99% fat free, if you think eating a ton of these is a good idea you would have missed the over 90% sugar part.
To show how messed up this can be, full fat milk is considered bad, it contains 4% fat. Now think about how large the type would be on a diet product that was 96% fat free.
If you look at the big label you will think these are wonder foods and eating healthy is expensive. Look at the main ingredients and you will often find some of the cheapest food types around and realise eating healthy is simpler than people make out and remarkable low priced.
The KISS system, keep it simple stupid. There is so much info out there, eat x grams of y for each kg of bodyweight if you do z minutes of $ intensity activity a day or lose ^% of the benefit from your training and damage your unconceived child.
This will come as a shock to many but we have survived millions of years despite getting diet wrong most of the time, because overall the balance has been within acceptable boundaries. Ironically today with food so easy and convenient we are in one of the worst periods of global human malnutrition in history. Much of this is due to blatant disregard but I would bet that a significant amount is from people trying to eat well but failing due to sheer information overload, says me at the end of this massive post.
Regardless of race, creed, colour or gender we are all human and subsequently need roughly the same balance of food and if we are used to getting what we need and our needs change due to training etc. our bodies will let us know and even direct us to the foods we need to eat, most of the time.
There are numerous simple systems out there to use as a rough guide, but remember they are just that rough guides, to be tailored to your lifestyle. The food pyramid is one, but rather than looking at x servings of y and a further a servings of b look at the proportions and figure out your own servings. I eat a tub of rice with some eggs at work because it is simple and easy to prep, there are no vegetables or fruit there but I cover that later in the day. The rice isn’t one serving because that would mean making the number I needed would stop me being able to sleep with volume of food I would need, it may be 2 or 3 or even somewhere between, I don’t know or care. Suffice to say over the course of most days my diet is roughly in the right proportions and the food I eat is simple stuff.
If you need something more detailed consider the proportions of caloric intake in a well balanced diet are 60-65% carbs (with only 5% or less of this being sugars), 25% fats and oils, 17.5% protein. The balance is affected by activity etc. but remember so is your overall caloric need so the percentages change remarkably little. The two most who do understand nutrition to a reasonable level want to swap are fat and protein seeing the idea of 1 in 4 parts of their calories being fat as too high and fixated on giving protein more pride of place. Remember fats and oils include all cholesterols including the high density stuff which is good for you, fish oils, and everything else that comes packed with minerals and micro nutrients, and of course excess protein will become fat or waste anyway.
Increasing body mass means increasing everything you eat not one thing extra but more of everything in balance. Losing weight is the same but in reverse, not cutting out one food, unless you eat a pound of lard for breakfast, but cutting down all round. People don’t like the thought that diet can be this simple but it is.
Last example fad foods. Rocky ate raw eggs and is massive, I’ll do that, Viccy Beckham eats 2 pounds of celery a day and can fit through a letterbox I’ll do that. I don’t know anything about Viccy except she has less figure than a pool cue but you get the idea.
Raw eggs is a great one, I remember people taking it a step further and removing the yolk because it contained fat. What makes this really stupid is that the same process that made us so perfect for high carb diets, evolution, has made birds lock the protein down in the egg white to ensure it doesn’t’ go off before the chick needs it, the enzyme needed to break this in raw form is in the yolk, the only other way to make it digestible is to denature the protein by cooking it.
When you look at many fad foods you will find that most serious trainers have been eating the stuff for decades, oats are back en vogue at the moment either whole or as extracted parts, I and most have been eating them and known how great they are for years.
Bread and chocolate has been good for you then bad, back to good and will continue to yoyo forever. Simple explanation every food in the world is bad for you and most food is good for you, the key is balance. If you love chocolate, but desperately want to fit into that slinky dress without help from the all in wrestling team, have some but make it a few peeled swirls that are allowed to melt on your tongue not an entire king size box every day.
As much as practical ignore the fads, wait until real research comes out from independent sources and eat what you enjoy in balance.
Wow that's huge, I need a snack.
