Interesting Paradox?
Posted on April 30, 2008
Filed Under Paleo Diet/Low Carb | 10 Comments
This is a great (interesting) question from Kirez who is dealing with Type 1 diabetes by using a paleo diet and hard training. Here is the original question/statement:
I’d like to talk again regarding insulin-dependent diabetes sometime. I’m noticing some surprising, unanticipated effects with strict paleo diet and heavy training — after initial decreases, my insulin requirements have gone UP. ?!?! I seem to be in caloric deficit (for 2-3 months now), maintaining weight but not increasing, high performance levels, ramped up metabolism — and requiring more insulin. It defies credulity. Higher metabolic rate, only protein & fat —-> increased gluconeogenesis???? I’m baffled, but monitoring everything rigorously and can’t explain it. My wife’s an endocrinologist, she’s with me on all this. (Neither of us is especially well educated regarding nutritional biochemistry, however.) From my experience, I’m seeing caloric deficit and simultaneously maintaining body weight and don’t know how this is possible. The only credible thought is that I can’t count very well. 
By my way of thinking, minimizing insulin requirements is an objective measure of a diet’s quality and effectiveness.
I’m not expecting you to know all the answers, but this is on my mind and I wanted to share it with you.
cheers,
Kirez
Kirez-
The type 1 Diabetes really complicates things due to a lack of precise insulin management. From what you are saying however you have been in caloric deficit for some time, have seen a performance slump and escalating need for insulin. I’d wager you have some elevated cortisol and what amounts to a chronic stressor. I’d try a little more post WO carbs and possibly raise your total caloric content. Ideally we should see an up-tick in your performance and following on that an improvement in your insulin regulation. If you want to shoot me a detailed food log we can get a bit more detailed.
Robb
Weston Price vs. Paleo
Posted on April 11, 2008
Filed Under Paleo Diet/Low Carb | 30 Comments
I received a great question from Pete that underscores some nuances of paleo/low carb eating. The topic of fat, particularly sat’d fat is an interesting and potentially contraversial one. here is Pete’s question:
Pete Kennedy
Rob, I am a huge fan. Thanks for the tremendous work. I am a recent convert to the Zone/Paleo/IF and am down 17lbs in 3 months. I just ordered a side of grass feed beef and entered a CSA for fruits/veggies.
A couple of questions for you. I have read from previous posts that you are critical of the Weston A. Price Org. Part of this is due to their being critical to the Dr. Cordain’s and Dr. Sears’ books. I have found good in all 3 so I am looking for a little advice.
- How many eggs a day? Go with Dr. Cordain’s advice of 6 a week? Weston A. Price as well as many PM and Crossfit blogs say you could almost eat unlimited eggs. I don’t understand Cordain’s reasons for limiting eggs due to the fat/protein ratio. I though Sat Fat and Cholesterol was no longer the evil once thought. If we are supposed to up our fat content, aren’t eggs perfectly acceptable.
- Are egg yolks bad? Once again Weston A. Price says the yolks are source of all the goodness (vitamins and other brain food). So should we heed to Dr. Sears’ advice of avoiding yolks?
- I am confused about the focus on lean meat in the paleo regime. As above, if saturated fat is not bad, why the focus on lean meat?
- What is your view of fish oil versus cod liver oil consumption? Take both or one?
- What is your view of raw milk and other dairy versus cutting dairy completely out?
- Finally, is fasting one day a week (24+ hours) as good as the daily 15-19 hr fasting window for long term health gains? I tried the daily fasting window last week and gained weight as well getting a lot of constipation. Any suggestions?
Sorry for the long laundry list but it is my first posts of hopefully many more. Thank you, Pete
Now I like 90% of what the Weston Price site has to say and really the points of departure are minutia when you get right down to it…but that can be enough to get some folks pretty riled up! Pete alluded to some of the issues I’ve had in the past with WP material, specifically the (in my opinion) personal attacks leveled at Prof. Cordain for his position on Sat’d fat. Sally Fallon and Mary Enig have really taken him to task on this topic and not in a nice or professional way. It burns my ass because Prof. Cordain always conducts himself with class and professionalism. He sticks to the facts as he sees them, states his case and provides ample opportunity for rebuttal. This SHOULD be how scientific inquiry occurs.
“…my theory is this, it’s based on this data set and makes these predictions…what does YOUR theory contain? What is YOUR theory based on? What does it predict?”
Instead of this exchange of ideas and debate of the facts, when people start to loose… things get personal. On a short list of people who have made debates with Cordain personal I can include: Fallon/Enig, Colpo, and Dr. T. Colin Campbell (remember the Protein Debate?). This is the same type of bullying that made Ancel Keys successful in promoting the diet heart hypothesis and began the demonetization of fat…which leads us to the heart of most of Pete’s questions which I think boil down to: What about the total fat in the diet and what about sat’d fat?
Cordain Tackles this question by looking at evolutionary biology, specifically: What was the composition of the diet of our ancestors? Using ethnographic information and whole body rendering and analysis of the fatty acids of wild animals such as deer Cordain has some models that indicate wild meat has/had a pretty low fat content in general and a low sat’d fat content in a particular AS COMPARED to grain-fed, feed-lot meat. His recommendations are geared towards emulating the fatty acid profile of our ancestors, hence the recommendation to eat lean meat in general and supplement with nuts, seeds and fish oils to round things out. Fallon/Enig pull from ethnographic info involving the tendency of our ancestors and modern hunter gatherers and pastoralists to favor fatty meats, whole fat dairy etc. Nothing is odd about this tendency and it is right in line with optimum foraging strategy: Achieve the greatest return on food energy for the least energy output. The problem is Fallon/Enig forget that feed lot meat can be upwards of 40% fat by weight whereas wild meat is 10-15% at SPECIFIC times of the year when the animals are the fattest. Additionally the saturated fat content is much lower in wild meat due to the lower glycemic load of plants vs. grains commonly consumed by farmed critters.
Doe this mean the clueless Mcdougalites might be right? Are low carb diets a sleeper-cell of impending cardiac death caused from…BOMP, BOMP,bomp!!!! SATURATED FAT!!!!?
Well…NO. Atherosclerotic lesions and vascular damage are complex processes that involve an ever growing list of factors, some dietary (lectins, glycemic load), some environmental (sleep, light exposure, stress) and some genetic (immune response). Prof. Cordain has made this VERY important point several times:
Our ancestral diet did not contain large amounts of sat’d fat. Sat’d fat appears to be a factor in the development of an atherosclerotic blood profile. Sat’d fat consumption at levels above those found in our ancestral diet it is not a guarantee of heart disease development.
So, what does the fracking Cave-Man on the street take from all this? Is it OK to eat eggs? Yes, it is. Try to get omega-3 enriched eggs. They taste better, contain loads more antioxidants AND the fatty acid profile is much more in line with (drum-roll…) our ancestral diet. The recommendation from Sears and Cordain to eat lean meats is so you minimize sat’d fat intake (because of the grain feeding) and then to round things out with nuts, seeds and fish oil…to emulate our ancestral diet. It looks like ratios of fat are more of an issue than any total amount. The Inuit traditionally ate upwards of 70% of their calories from fat but the lions share was mono-unsat’d.
Pete had a few other questions:
Fish vs. Cod-I like a mix of fish oil and cod liver oil. You can’t get all you supplemental n-3’s from cod liver oil due to the vit’s A&D, so round things out with standard fish oil.
Raw Dairy-See how you tolerate it. Find some grassfed variety if possible (remember that ancestral fatty acid profile?)
Fasting-No one knows! Get a dialed Paleo/Zone diet. Get your performance rocking, your sleep solid…all with a basic 3-5 meals per day plan. THEN introduce some IF. Do you feel or perform better? Is your sleep and recovery better? No? ditch it. It’s not a cure-all. It might help many things, it might also screw a number of things up.
What About Caloric Restriction?
Posted on March 29, 2008
Filed Under Paleo Diet/Low Carb | 19 Comments
I received the following question that is in response to an earlier post of mine:
John Robbs
“Calorie restriction doesn’t work and just feeds into neurosis.”
I don’t get it. I thought you recommended the Zone? If not that, or your own variation of the zone, what are you recommending?
I ask because the Zone is a calorie restriction diet. That is what Barry Sears said many times in his book, “Enter the Zone”. I don’t have it with me, but off the top of my head, I remember three explicit parts where he said this. Lets see, 1) in the summary chapter, page 204 (did a search), he directly said that the Zone works by caloric restriction (”A Zone-favorable diet is a low-calorie diet that supplies adequate amounts of protein, essential fat, and micronutrients …”), 2) in an earlier chapter, he showed a chart that he said was the quantities of carbs, fat, and protein that the average person ate on different diets; the number of grams of fat and protein were constant on all the diets, but the number of grams of carbs were the least on the Zone; when you add it all up, the graph tells you that the Zone restricts calories more than every other diet he compared it to, even the ones that are considered low calorie, and 3) he has a chapter extolling the benefits of caloric restriction, which I took to mean that he thinks caloric restriction is a good thing (”Chapter 16: The Zone and Life Extension”).
So I recommend the Zone…AND I said calorie restriction does not work…what the heck is going on? Most people approach “dieting” as some kind of calorie restriction…typically low fat, high carb (as a percent of calories) and a hellish application of meal skipping. This is the “prudent” eating approach that dooms people to ffailure, stripping away muscle mass and generally reinforcing bad eating habits. By contrast if we get people changing the composition of their food towards the low-ish carb paleo direction we control insulin levels and by extension hunger. This is what Barry Sears talks about in the Zone and is what you quoted above. I think the Zone is fantastic but it can be a pretty heavy change for folks to not only change the composition of their diet but to also start weighing and measuring. That’s why I recommend a basic paleo approach at first. This will reverse metabolic derangement and get people moving in the right direction. From here, if one wants or needs further refinement, be it for bodycomposition or performance, the Zone awaits.
That shopping and food guide you pulled that quote of mine from is written in response to questions and excuses of our clients who are…lost.I’m not trying to be a dick or elitist but getting our clients to understand what constitutes solid nutrition is a daunting task at times. Here is an example: One of Nicki’s clients came in with his son the other day. The son (about 6 years old) is gnoshing on a bag of microwave popcorn! We grilled the dad why he was feeding the kid this stuff and he was just stunned…”is’nt this a good snack?” The dad is in his early 40’s and has some ragging metabolic derangement…he is a mess and we have been hammering him on his nutrition for nearly a year and it just does not uptake. So that food& shopping guide is an attempt to educate and motivate, without getting overly technical or making the buy-in a deal breaker for 99.999% of the folks we work with.
Hopefully that clears up the seeming contradiction there.
Evolutionary Fitness & CrossFit
Posted on March 11, 2008
Filed Under CrossFit | 34 Comments
Here is a great question on the compatibility of EF and CF:
SD_Mikey
Hi Robb,
Sorry, I couldn’t find a better place to post these questions. There a bit deep so I’m just hoping for any golden nuggets of wisdom.
Are Devany’s Evolutionary Fitness and Glassman’s CrossFit programming mutually exclusive because of the power law variation? People seem to be having great success doing both EF and CF (I’m a CrossFitter).
Also, do you ever incorporate EF principles into you or your client’s training?
Thanks in advance!
- Mikey
Here are a few interesting similarities between CF and EF:
1-A strong interest in economics and free markets.
2-Empiricism
3-Intensity
4-Functionality (with a few caveats)
Now the question is do I think EF and CF are mutually exclusive? No, not at all. I think they are derivatives of a base theme or perhaps a better way to describe it would be fractal: self similarity at all scales. I like thinking about training and lifestyle in terms of how much emphasis we place on Performance, Health and Longevity. I think CrossFit is focused more on performance but I’m still unclear if that is at the expense of health & longevity as compared to a more Evolutionary Fitness-esque approach. I think dropping into periods of ketosis either with or without some fasting is of benefit to health for reasons ranging from cancer prevention to decreasing the rate of cellular senescence. ketosis however will absolutely crush one’s crossfit performance…so perhaps there is a place for some periodization with more of a strength emphasis at some points of the year and more metabolic conditioning at others. I’ve written about this in the Performance Menu quite a bit and some folks like Scotty Hagnass have tinkered with it to good result so there might be something to it. It’s all pretty speculative but interesting none the less.
Coach Glassman has developed an interesting definition of fitness. At one time this involved looking at three models:
1-The 10 physical adaptations to exercise.
Cardiorespiratory endurance
Stamina
Strength
Flexibility
Speed
Power
Coordination
Accuracy
Agility
Balance
2-A statistical approach to modality competency in which one throws a potentially infinite number of activities into a hopper and draws them out. He or she who does best at this stuff is on average the “fittest”.
3-Another model is the notion that to be fit one should have a good balance in the development of all the engines that drive human activity: the ATP/CP pathway, glycolytic, and aerobic paths. We tend to focus on the use of anaerobic training to develop the aerobic pathway so we do not destroy our power production too much.
What this boils down to is competency or aptitude in various modalities, physical adaptations and metabolic engines. It’s a slick way of looking at things and it mirrors what folks like Devany and Cordain have written with regards to the generalist nature of our hunter gatherer ancestors. Recently however coach Glassman has put forward a more quantifiable method for both assessing and defining fitness. In this scenario Fitness IS work capacity across broad time and modal domains. What the hell does that mean? If we graph the power output we can generate on a huge variety of tasks we will see a power law distribution of our efforts. High power activities like the clean & jerk on the left, relatively lower power activities like 5K runs on the right and a everything under the sun mixed between.
CrossFit’s contention is the smart use of mixed modal strength & conditioning will increase ones capacity across all these domains and modalities. There are obviously limitations to this and we see a point of diminishing returns on the strength side of things. Once we get past a 6XBW on the crossfit total the ability to express high work output on things like 5K runs drops off pretty severely. Interestingly however we are seeing some top end endurance athletes get a fairly impressive strength base and this is increasing their long efforts…it will be interesting to see where that experiment finishes.
So this concept of increasing work capacity across broad time in modal domains offers a quantifiable way of measuring fitness. Perform more work in less time and you are more fit! Another model that can be helpful is the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum. In this model we can order any marker of health we like, blood pressure, bone density, mental state…we can stratify this from sick to well to fit and we can use this as a guide for assessing our efforts. If we want to add 50kg to our OL total but the gallon of ice cream we eat each night drives our triglycerides through the roof this decision is most assuredly counter to fitness and I’d wager health and longevity. Keep in mind this is not a value judgement, if you want to add that 50kg go for it, just know there may be a price to be paid for your efforts.
From both the Evolutionary Fitness and CrossFit perspective we are wired to have a fitness the is “Broad, general and inclusive”. With this in mind we can use the model of increasing work capacity across broad time and modal domains coupled with the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum to quantify fitness and balance our efforts.
This is a loooong winded way of saying I think CF and EF are quite compatible ideologies and really just show a difference in focus.
Mike also asked if I use EF technologies in my training and I definitely do. The Hierarchical sets are very time efficient and a nice way to introduce some intensity without too much volume. On the CF side of training I end to stick with couplets and triplets with an emphasis on shorter efforts. Most of our folks are lacking in strength and this is a great way to focus on fundamentals and help people get stronger. Many of the newer affiliates get enamored with chippers and hour long WOD’s…they are really missing the point of CF and blunting the potential adaptations.
Thanks for the question Mike!
Chicken & Chard
Posted on March 3, 2008
Filed Under Paleo Diet/Low Carb, Gluten Free Cooking | 22 Comments
Apologies for the long break from posting. I have a pretty good bolus of stuff I’ve been working on so that should roll out in the next week.
This recipe was dead simple: olive oil, chicken thigh and chard. I browned the chicken in the olive oil, added the chard…and I added 1 packet of Trader Joe’s chicken bouillon. It is low sodium and in a paste form but it increased the flavor and “savory-atude” of the meal amazingly. Give it a shot!
Litany Against Toast
Posted on February 8, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | 9 Comments
Fans of Frank Herbert’s Dune series will appreciate Brad’s latest offering:
“I must not fear toast. Toast is the gut-killer. Toast is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will burn my toast. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the toast has gone there will be nothing. Leaky gut will remain.”
Mens Health!
Posted on February 8, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | 6 Comments
It’s a pretty big media month for us at CrossFit NorCal. In addition to the Fitness Rx For Men Article we are featured as one of the “Top 30 Gyms in America” in Mens Health. Check it out!
Performance Based Aesthetics?
Posted on February 8, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | 13 Comments
This is a follow-up to the Yo-yo post in which we looked at some “why’s” behind food-issues/non-compliance. Now…I’m going to give away the punch line to this post: Focus on performance to achieve better aesthetics. That is some good info but similar to the yo-yo post I want to look at why it is so hard to pull that off. In the yo-yo post I made a case that we are not wired for self control. In this post I want to make the case we are wired to be dead-sexy…and we are acutely aware of who is and who is not.
Hunter-Gatherer Economics
You may be thinking the terms “economics” and “hunter-gatherer” are misplaced! Not at all. Keep in mind economics deals with resource allocation, not nickles, dimes and shekels. In the case of hunter-gatherers economics describes foraging strategies, division of labor, food sharing and a myriad of other behaviors that made the HG life-way amazingly efficient. Ethnographic studies put average HG “work” at about 15 hrs per week. This provided for food, clothing, shelter, firewood…everything one needed to live. Now this was a very active 15 hrs but once those toils were accomplished HG’s found themselves with vast stretches of time in which to socialize, relax…and beautify. Beautify? Yes indeed. Tinker with hair, tattoo, scar, paint. A commonality of all HG cultures was a strong emphasis on aesthetics and a surprising resource allocation to enhance ones appearance.
Whoa! That can’t be! Looks are so banal, so Western. Is this original sin? An overvaluing of our lowly selves? Maybe. Or maybe that’s a bunch of limiting value judgments that obscure the reality of our situation and our heritage. Looks are strongly influence social status and (perceived) reproductive potential. Whether we like to admit it or not biology, particularly reproduction, is a potent motivator.
My point here is that the desire to look good and to be well regarded socially is woven into our DNA…and it is STRONG. The economic strategy our species is wired to use ties together food, sex and socialization in a synergistic manner and aesthetics are an important part of all of this. Are you still with me? Aesthetics=important…on many levels.
Now lets consider that HG’s were active and healthy. Anthropological accounts describe them as “beautiful, strong and robust”. Bone density, strength and endurance were on par with Olympic caliber athletes. So our default mode is to be active, strong, well fed and rested. It’s tough to look like shit when you have all those ducks in a row!
I hope I made the point that looks/aesthetics matter. Everyone wants to look good but putting looks ahead of performance is frequently the road to ruin. Whether you are a female wanting to be a size-whatever or a guy wanting to “get big” if the goals are purely aesthetic you will tend to fall into neurotic eating behaviors. This does not describe every situation, only about 99.999% of them! A simple google search with the terms “eating disorders by sport” clearly shows that the more AESTHETICS oriented a sport the more likely are eating disorders. Track&Field, basketball, volleyball tend to focus on performance and have a relatively low occurrence of eating disorders relative to dance and gymnastics. Wrestling produces a fair number of eating disorders due to the constant obsession with WEIGHT. Performance is almost forgotten in favor of trying to take as large an athlete as possible, dry him out, then hope you can bring them back to life for the event. In contrast, many jiu-jitsu tournaments require that competitors weigh-in immediately before a match. The scale is actually outside the mat area and you either make weight and you get to wrestle or don’t and you forfeit. I think this is a far more sane approach and it likely decreases the potential for squirrely eating.
In our training practice the folks who are performance oriented feed themselves well. When they know they have 18.973654 pull-ups and they will kill for the 19th we do not have problems with meal skipping or dicey food choices. When people get tired of coming in DFL (dead-fucking-last) they get serious about their food. Then the performance increases and the aesthetics take care of themselves.
The desire to put aesthetics first is strong, and to be sure it IS important and it is woven into our DNA. If you fall into this trap however you will have neither the aesthetics nor the performance that you otherwise could.
Fitness Rx For Men
Posted on February 5, 2008
Filed Under CrossFit | 8 Comments
Hey! We are featured in the current print edition of Fitness Rx for Men magazine. I was interviewed for an article on CrossFit. The proof I read was pretty good so we shall see how the real deal goes! I’ll pick up a copy on the way to the gym and see how it looks.
Yo-Yo-Dieting
Posted on January 28, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | 47 Comments
Sue left the following question which I think is important and offers some interesting insights:
Thanks for the great post. It made me think and stop acting like such a victim because of my weight gain. What do you say to the yo-yo dieters out there like me?
Sue
The dieting merry-go-round is an interesting thing. So much information and good intention, so few favorable results. One result is a sense of failure on the part of dieters that takes on the likeness of a relationship gone bad. Promises are made, only to be broken and a sense of betrayal ensues. Instead of the dynamic describing two lovers this is the personal hell that many people face. Rosy picture isn’t it!
Part of what makes this situation so difficult is that people are facing tough biological, social and psychological issues when attempting to alter eating habits. All of these issues end up stuck together and the glue, not surprisingly, is carbs. WHOA! you might be saying…that’s a lot to lay on a piece of toast or a plate of potatoes…but in my experience this is exactly the issue. Lets take these apart one at a time:
Biological- When folks mention they are yo-yo dieting they are NOT having a problem eating meat, veggies, nuts and olive oil to excess. Whatever the clueless Mcdougalites may say, it’s not being ON the low carb diet that’s a problem, it’s going off the rails and eating every carbohydrate in site down to the bark on trees! Calorie restriction doesn’t work and just feeds into neurosis. It sounds great and plays into our puritanical leanings but it is a failed venture. I’m not sure why but everyone from the government to doctors to theologians LOVE this whole calorie restriction thing…”Eat less, be prudent..have more water dense vegetables…drink a glass of water before a meal to blunt hunger.” Bullshit. None of that crap works and it just leads people down a path towards failure.
The people who have success with this stuff find a level of carb intake that “works”. This level is different from person to person but it mirrors what people like the Dr.’s Eades and others have said for years.
Social- have you ever noticed that no one says a word to the folks who eat a bag of chips and a coke for lunch but if you have a piece of grilled meat, a bag of nuts and a salad you can sell tickets to your lunch hour as a circus side show? It’s an interesting but well documented fact that people do not like seeing others change or make progress. Come from a poor or dysfunctional family? Did you work to get healthy and perhaps wealthy? Are your family members excited about your success or least bit resentful? We see this almost daily…one spouse starts training and eating differently…they start making progress and change and the significant-other freaks out. It either undermines the efforts of our client or the couple tends to split. No shit here folks…heavy stuff but we have seen this pattern play out dozens of times the past 5 years. So part of yo-yo dieting is that people undermine our progress. It kinda sucks to catch flack for trying to affect positive change and sometimes it’s just enough to slide one back to junk-food (that’s TOO MANY CARBS if you missed the section above). Where does personal accountability come into this? Glad you asked…
Psychological- for some damn reason people have some kind of self sabotage thing they get going. For some it relates to diet, for others it’s betting on football and buying shit they do not need. Whatever the issue is the individual knows better, sets their will for change…then fails, feels like crap and the cycle continues. Some people do manage to affect change…but no one knows what the hell it is they are doing differently so it’s really tough to replicate. A growing number of psychiatrists think that drugs, talk therapy and chakra balancing are not very effective at helping people change. What is effective? Sleep, omega-3 fatty acids, and a tightly controlled insulin level. I know this is dragging things back to the biological but most of the yo-yo dieting, bad relationships gambling…it’s all neuro-chemistry and you either take steps to remedy the situation…or you don’t. If you are not sleeping well (and enough), taking your fish oil and keeping your insulin levels under control NOTHING YOU DO WILL WORK.
I’m sorry if this is a bit of a downer but some things just can not be snuck-up on. Some things require a fundamental shift in how you are doing things…if you want to kill the yo-yo dieting (and most behaviors that are troubling) you need to do some combo of the following:
1-Best defense: Don’t be there. What his means is do not have crap in the house. NONE. We do not have self control, we are not wired for it. This is that deal where folks have 8lbs of beef cooked in the refrigerator and they quip “I’m hungry…I’m bored with this…” You’re not bored, you are addicted to crack and you need to decide how you are going to handle the situation. If you absolutely MUST have some, go out and eat it. Make it high quality and do not bring ANY home. No Gad-damned Ezekial bread that can be gnoshed down at 2am as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Meat & veggies, nuts & seeds…that’s what you have on hand at home. If you are not convinced, let me use this analogy:
Most people feel like they can pull off a committed, monogamous relationship.They can avoid a bit of temptation, and do just fine. Cool. What if you are drunk and you just took a whopping dose of Ecstasy…and 10 of the hottest members of whatever sex you are into walk into the room with you and insist on having their way with you. Refined carbs are analogous to an alcohol soaked Ecstasy binge at the PlayBoy Mansion. If you are OK with the consequences of that fact, fine but if you are looking to affect change you need to know that will power will fail you EVERY TIME. You need to plan and you need to keep your home free of crack.
2-Rally the troops or go it alone. Tell the people near you, be it family or friends what you are up to and that you need their help. If they rally to your aid, great, it will really help things. If they begin undermining you as I mentioned above you need to distance yourself and minimize their influence. Obviously this can suck if it’s your best friend, spouse or boss but things are tough enough. If you let the people around you undermine your activities…bad on you. Your eyes are open and you know better.
3- Give yourself a break. This may seem at odds with the ass-whooping I’ve unleashed but you are only one meal away from perfect compliance. Obviously this can not stretch into an infinity of non-compliance (unless you are my parents!) but you need to take it easy on your bad-self. You CAN do this but you actually have to DO it.
We see three basic behaviours in our clients with regards to food. Some folks “get it”. They generally eat what they should, when they should. They feel good and they make great progress at more or less a constant rate. Some of our other clients are still stuck on the crack and generally eat too much of the wrong stuff. They feel like shit during workouts and make some progress, albeit slow. The final group does not eat enough. Progress is stalled and in many cases retrograde. This last group is actually a flavor of yo-yo dieting and it is hard as hell to reach these folks.
Perhaps a line from Star Wars in closing:
“Do or do not, there is no try”. Yoda
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