Walking through the a bookstore recently, I was surprised at how big the diet and nutrition section is. There are books outlining weight loss plans from every dietary perspective imaginable. If I were just looking into losing weight without any background, I would be thoroughly confused as to which way to go. What is the right diet plan to get me to my goals?
There are many different approaches and some are definitely better than others. The key to any plan is how well you can preserve the body weight you want (muscle) and eliminate that which you don’t (fat). Most weight loss plans unfortunately
Here I am after about 1 1/2 months of following a cyclical ketogenic diet. In this picture I knew it was working, I just needed consistency and faith in the process.
don’t emphasize the the retention of muscle mass and this is precisely what you want to do. Now, the calorie is a calorie model has been refuted many times because your body deals with different types of macronutrients differently, and what you eat is generally more important than how much you eat. You want to focus on food quality and eating the right types of foods because doing just this will help bring your metabolism in line and likely initiate some weight loss on its own.
Have you ever heard someone say ‘I just stopped eating junk food’ or ‘I cut out beer and I lost 10 pounds?’ It almost seems like this weight loss was fairly easy by just making a simple change. Well, depending on how dysfunctional your metabolism is to start with, focusing on eliminating just a few bad elements can have positive effects. Many people, even when starting a less than desirable diet plan (vegetarian), will lose considerable weight. This will frequently happen because more attention is given to what they are eating, and the foods are probably more nutritious. This is a honeymoon phase and many people will easily lose weight in the beginning once they focus more on what they are eating. If you were eating like garbage to begin with, any improvement you could make would be for the better.
Even though macronutrient calories are dealt with differently in your body, and even cooking foods can impact their caloric value, this energy intake still needs to be considered. Once you
Following the primal/paleo approach with a high protein, high fat diet helped me shed unwanted body fat and maintain lean body mass. Who says eating bacon will make you fat?
have changed over to eating the right types of foods,
and some initial weight loss has been seen, some calorie restriction may be needed to achieve your goals. Yes, I know, this can be uncomfortable but just think of it as your right of passage to a new you; a transformative experience. The basic premise is losing body fat requires that you consume fewer calories (energy) than your body needs to maintain its current metabolic rate. Basically, eat less than you burn every day. This is a very simplistic viewpoint and restriction may not be needed in the beginning to attain body fat loss, but getting to lower and lower body fat levels will require more vigilance.
We are talking body fat loss here, not weight loss
What you really want to do is lose body fat, not just weight. You want to maintain as much muscle as you possibly can because it is metabolically active tissue. The more muscle and lean body mass you have, the higher your metabolic rate. Muscle just simply requires more fuel to be maintained. Body fat does not do this and actually affects the hormonal balance in the body, especially the visceral fat around the abdomen. This can lead to higher estrogen levels in men with many unwanted side affects.
Measuring body fat loss is a little more complicated and less precise that just weighing yourself. The electrical impedance body fat scales are not very accurate and are affected by the hydration and salt levels in your body. I have one and used it just for the scale function. Unless you have a Bod Pod or DEXA scan at your house, you will have to use a regular scale to give you some measure of your progress. I have never had a problem with using a scale, especially in the beginning portion of a restricted diet, BUT, this was only done because I knew everything else in my diet and lifestyle was in place to preserve muscle tissue. When trying to lose body fat, your goal is to cling to (and grow) as much of your muscle tissue as possible. You know how its said that yo-yo dieters actually slow their metabolisms down over time and have a harder and harder time losing weight. Do you know why? They followed diet plans that did not preserve and grow as much muscle tissue as possible. As they dieted down on a calorie restricted diet, their bodies consumed muscle tissue as well as fat tissue to provide the energy they needed for daily activities. Its simple: less muscle tissue requires less energy to maintain, thereby requiring less food. Now you have a slower metabolism.
Measure your progress
When you start a body fat loss plan, one of the best things you can do is take body measurements, pictures of yourself with minimal clothing on, and record your weight. The more you record your progress, the more successful you will be. Tim Ferriss did a great job explaining this in The 4 Hour Body and it really works. You may not be motivated to take ‘before’ measurements and pictures, but do it. You will be very glad you did!
How much should I eat
There are really 2 main aspects to food on a diet; what you eat and how much you eat. Both are important to preserving muscle tissue and helping you to maintain your body fat loss permanently. Right now, lets talk about how much to eat. You have probably read this somewhere before, but to lose 1 lb of body fat, you need to burn just about 3,500 more calories than you eat. So, if on a daily basis, you eat 500 calories less than your body needs to maintain itself through daily activities, in one week you would have lost 1 lb.
Everyone has a basal metabolic rate (BMR) which is the amount of energy your body needs to maintain itself and perform the functions to keep you alive. It is really how many calories you need to just lay around and stay alive. Any activities such as running, walking, or just moving would be added energy expenditures above and beyond your BMR. The problem is unless you are in a coma, nobody should be laying around in bed all day, so these BMR calculators will undershoot how many calories you need in a day. I just checked mine and it said my BMR is 1699 calories. I know from experience that I need about 2,500 calories per day, without exercise, to maintain my weight. S0 here is a calculator that is much better at estimating how many calories you need to maintain your weight.
Now that you have an estimate of your caloric needs per day, subtract 500 calories off this amount. This is how much you can eat, per day, to lose 1 lb per week. If you subtracted 1000 calories per day, you would lose about 2 lbs per week. You really don’t want to restrict your calories more than 1000 per day, and to be honest, even this can be quite difficult if you don’t have much weight to lose. Your metabolic rate determined from any calculator is an estimate and you may need to adjust your caloric intake up or down depending on your body. Weigh yourself, once per week, at the same time of the day, and preferably in the morning before you eat or drink anything. Don’t weigh yourself every day, especially women. Monthly cycles cause major water weight swings. We are looking for trends here, not day to day fluctuations.
When I was leaning out, I ate just about 2,100 calories per day. At that time I needed 2,500 to maintain my weight so this resulted in a deficit, per day, of 400 calories. I would also lift weights for 30 min which burned another 250 calories, so my total caloric deficit for 1 day was 650 calories. And yes, I was hungry, but it can be mitigated by keeping the fat and protein content of your diet high. Don’t trust the scale too much either. In my first week cutting with this type of deficit, I lost 1/2 lb, and the second week I gained 1 lb. Yep, I GAINED weight. After an entire week of being calorie deprived, it was disheartening to gain weight. I knew though that it was an increase in muscle that offset my fat loss gains for that week, something a scale could not tell me. Stick with it, and never quit, even if you are frustrated.
You will need to get a handle on how much food you are consuming in a day, and if you are not used to thinking about what you are eating, counting calories may be a bit challenging at first. Yes, I know, it takes a little extra work every day, but it becomes routine after a while and it isn’t a big deal. Get a digital scale and some measuring cups and track everything that you eat or drink that has calories. Don’t worry about fibrous vegetables such as lettuce and celery and such. You can eat piles of this stuff and it doesn’t amount to much.
Tracking your food consumption and understanding the nutritional content of food is incredibly easy today with the apps on smartphones. I use the Lose It! app which is a great tool and has the calorie contents of most foods you will eat.
What to eat
Protein
To preserve muscle mass while dieting, you need to eat protein. Get your protein from animal sources, meat, poultry, whole eggs, fish, etc. Do not eat any protein derived from soy, unless of course you like genetically engineered crops transformed into frankenfoods with a side of cancer causing phytoestrogens. I’ll save that for another post. You need to eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. This is very important because studies have shown that even without exercise, maintaining sufficient
Make sure you take advantage of a sale on bacon!
protein levels during calorie restricted dieting will help preserve muscle mass. The exact amount of protein is debatable and I have read anywhere from 0.8g – 1.2g per pound of body weight. I used a minimum of 1 gram/lb of body weight and it worked out just fine. Protein is also very satiating, helping keep you full for longer periods of time and requiring more energy to break down compared to carbohydrates. This is a good thing.
Fat
In addition to protein, you are going to eat fat. This is where most people get tripped up because they are afraid that fat will just redeposit itself around your body negating any effect of trying to lose fat. Well, that’s not how it works. The intake of fat will be your primary energy source supplying you with the fat soluble vitamins that you need. Once you become fat adapted and burn fat
Eating plenty of good, high quality fats should be part of any healthy diet. These are some that I enjoy daily. Clockwise from left: extra virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, homemade lard, and pasture butter. Stay as far away as you can from soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, and vegetable oil.
for your energy, as you restrict your calories, it is a quite simple process for your body to tap into its own fat stores to supplement its energy needs. It knows how to burn fat, and it will know where to get it. You can thank evolution for that and our ability to adapt to times of famine. The best sources of fat are grass fed or pastured meat, wild game, pasture butter (such as kerrygold), duck fat, full fat coconut milk, coconut oil, olive oil, lard, sardines, wild fish, and others. Now these sources are ideal, but if you don’t have access to grass fed meat or if wild fish is too expensive, you could do a lot worse than eating conventional meat and fish. I eat high fat dairy such as heavy cream, full fat plain yogurt (Greek Gods is my favorite) and higher quality cheese. I don’t have a problem with it but some may have an allergy to dairy or be lactose intolerant so it is not a necessity. Definitely stay away from industrial seed oils such as canola oil (rapeseed oil), corn oil, soybean oil, vegetable oil, and please, never anything hydrogenated (margarine). These are loaded with omega-6 fatty acids, trans fats, and are very pro-inflammatory. Try to find a processed food in the grocery store that does not contain one of these industrial oils.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates will round out the rest of your macro nutrient needs but in far fewer amounts than you may be used to. You will want to keep carbohydrates low, about 50g or less per day. Do not eat any carbohydrates that come from grain sources such as wheat, corn, rice, and oats. These provide no nutrition and actually contain anti-nutrients which causes them to pull minerals out of your body. These are filler foods, plain and simple. You need to keep your insulin response to food as low as possible and grain based carbohydrates, especially wheat, will skyrocket your insulin. Keep your insulin low and stay in fat burning mode. Get carbohydrates from the vegetables you eat along with roots, tubers and nuts. Unless I am doing a lot of cardio, I usually don’t go out of my way to include extra carbs into my diet; they just have a tendency to sneak in, and that’s ok. Even my full fat plain greek yogurt and whey protein contain carbs.
Everyone knows that fruit is healthy but in many cases, people will ruin their diet by eating too much of it. Fruit contains a lot of sugar and needs to be considered carefully when trying to keep your overall carbohydrates low. If you are going to eat a piece of fruit, do it right after exercising when your insulin sensitivity is greatest. You body will take the sugar and shuttle it straight into the muscles for recovery. Dried fruit is ok, but keep in mind that it is very easy to overeat due to its convenience and hyper palatability. Once eating a lower carb diet for a while, you will begin to appreciate the abundance of natural sweetness in fruit. In terms of fruit choices, berries are probably the best. Buy them frozen since the nutritional content and anti-oxidant levels tend to be better. Fruit destined to be frozen is usually left on the plant longer until fully ripe. Fresh fruit is picked earlier and left to ripen during transit to a grocery store or market.
Exercise
You can lose body fat through calorie restriction alone, however exercise should be an important component of this process. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a structured workout, but physical activity either at the gym, play, or at work should be part of everyone’s repertoire. We were given a physical body, so use it.
Exercise has many physiological and psychological benefits, but when it comes to lowering body fat levels, it does some very important things. First, it helps preserve and build muscle mass, so when dieting down you are sending your body signals that your muscle is needed and ‘non-negotiable’. Second, intense physical activity requires more energy and you can burn additional calories beyond calorie restriction alone. I was recently training for the Urbanathalon in Chicago, and in one 8 mile run I would burn about 800 -900 calories. Pretty cool! Finally, exercise keeps your metabolism racing, preventing it from slowing down and going into starvation mode. If restricting calories sends signals for your metabolism to slow down and preserve energy, exercise kicks it in the ass and says ‘get moving!’
During my leaning out process, I did almost no cardio and focused primarily on resistance training. I did this 4 to 5 days a week and each workout lasted no longer than 35 min. Resistance training is highly effective during a restricted calorie diet because you are using and building muscle; you are not wearing yourself out with long duration cardio sessions. Dieting is a stressor on your body and you want to keep overall stress to a minimum. When you have too much stress, too little food, too much exercise, and not enough sleep you will raise cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone your body releases and will work against you in getting rid of your body fat. Keep exercise punctuated and intense (resistance training, sprint workouts) or slow and long (jogging, walking).
Free day
The idea of a free day, when it comes to eating, seems to be the subject of debate. Some people don’t see the need for it, but I will tell you that I needed one to keep my sanity. I needed one day per week where I ate pretty much whatever I wanted. Most of the foods on the free day were carbohydrates and fat (I love ice cream!). Doing this once per week does have some adaptation advantages. Since you have been running low carb all week, this carb refeed provides your body with a refill of glycogen. It sends signals to your body that food is not in scarce supply, and it is ok to consume uneeded body fat during lower calorie days. How much can you eat on your free day? You don’t want to go too insane pounding back 6,000 calories because this excess still works as an additive to your total weekly calorie deficit. I will tell you I eat plenty of chocolate and ice cream (all gluten free) and have probably pushed 4,500 calories in a day. Not always, but I have. My free days are usually on Saturday and by the time Sunday rolls around, I wake up full and I am ready to go back to eating meat, fat, and vegetables.
When you eat a low carb diet all week, you will carry less water due to the decreased amount of carbohydrates you are consuming. After a free day, you will notice definite water bloating for about 2-3 days afterwards. Don’t freak out because this isn’t a problem and is not fat gain. After a few days this goes away but will be quicker if you incorporate some exercise during the days after your free day (you should be doing this anyway).
These principles are nothing new and are based upon a cyclical ketogenic diet. I have found this to be the best approach for me to not only lose body fat, but also get down to very low levels. It supplies your body with plenty of protein for muscle retention/building and fat for energy. Your body composition and health will be far superior following a plan like this rather than fad diets. Once you achieve your desired body fat levels just begin to eat more at a maintenance level. This is a way of eating that will serve you for life.
-Erik
I then put the 2 slabs in a closely fitting plastic container I had laying around and into the refrigerator they went for 7 days.
oz per 5 lbs and the bacon and to be honest, it could have been a bit saltier. There is a salt box method where you basically dredge the pork belly in the mixture and shake off the excess. This would no doubt have added more salt and maybe the end product would have been saltier. I also did not get much liquid evolving out of the pork belly during curing and this may have been increased if more salt was added. This liquid turns into a brine of sorts and helps cure the belly. Hey, there is always a next time. Now go get a pork belly and give it a try!
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