The Basics, part 1: Protein
Here is what we at CrossFit Rising recommend for optimal health and fitness.
Protein: Pretty much everyone agrees that protein is necessary for life. Not much controversy, there. But exactly how much and from what sources? That is a subject of much disagreement, especially since the protein requirements of hard-training people who don't eat the Standard American Diet has not been much studied.
There has been some research which suggests that people who eat a lower-carbohydrate, lower-glycemic diet actually require less protein intake than someone who eats a lot of sugar and grains. I say “suggests” because I hear the claims but I have yet to see the studies themselves. Also interesting but is that, during a fast, the body will go about 18-24 hours before it begins to lose muscle mass. Low-carb diets and intermittent fasting are therefor said to have a “muscle-sparing” effect. However, much of the evidence I have seen is anecdotal. That doesn't mean it's wrong, just that it isn't proof.
Over the years I've heard many suggestions about how much protein to take in, ranging from 10% of total calories (50 grams in a 2000 kilo-calorie diet, a very small amount) to 2 grams per pound of body weight (for me, that would be 345 grams) per day. Usually none of the recommendations have much or any science to back them up, and every time someone did produce some “proof” of his recommendations, it came with some strange coincidences. For instance, the fellow who recommended the 10% of total calories happened to be a Vegan, and a proponent of low protein intake, prior to doing the studies. Most commonly I hear 1 gram per pound of body weight per day, a nice middle of the road number. I know of several people who eat in this range and none of them have reported any heath issues related to low protein intake.
But if you want to make it simpler than that, have some protein at every meal. Odds are you will get enough in the course of a day. “Some” meaning more than a couple bites.
Okay, where to get your protein? This is simple. MEAT. As Robb Wolf likes to say, you want a protein source which had a soul and a face. It should have a family which misses it. The simple fact is that animal protein is a better source of vitamins and amino acids for humans than any non-animal protein. If you are eating grass-fed cattle and swine, or poultry which hasn't been caged and fed grain and anti-biotics, the Omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acid profile will be in a nice healthy range, as well. These things are important, so important that I will go so far as to say that if you are not eating enough animal protein you are making yourself sick.
The ideal sources are things such as grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish, wild game, poultry which is allowed to roam free and eat however they please, and eggs from said poultry. Look around, get in touch with farmers or food co-ops. You would be surprised how available this stuff is. Often you can buy a ¼ of a cow and stick it in a deep-freeze, and pay half of what you would pay for the grain-fed equivalent from a grocery store. But if you can't get it for whatever reason, the store-bought kind is still healthier than having pasta for dinner.
The Basics, part 2: Carbohydrate
The scientific information available on the subject of carbohydrate in the diet is as voluminous and clear as nutritional information is ever likely to get. There just is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Anytime serious science has been applied to low-to-zero carb diets, the results have shown numerous and far-reaching positive health impacts. Simply put, when one looks at the Standard American Diet, the complete and total elimination of all dietary carbohydrate would drastically increase the likelihood of a long and major-disease-free existence.
So why are we always told by the “authorities” on nutrition that we need to make carbohydrate sources, especially “healthy whole grains”, a major part of our caloric intake? It is a confluence of politics, poor science, crony capitalism, and a lack of journalistic integrity. Sounds harsh? It is meant to.
The term carbohydrate here refers to the sugars, starches, and fiber we consume. There are more complex definitions, involving words that chemistry students might understand, but for our purposes this definition will do. In the body, all sugars and starches are converted to glucose. Fiber is a non-nutrient; it's inclusion in the diet means little[1]. The quicker the body converts a sugar or starch to glucose, the faster that carbohydrate will raise a person's blood sugar levels. The measure of a carb's blood sugar effect is known as its glycemic index. When the glycemic indexes of different carbs are compared, the comparisons are done on equal amounts of carbohydrate (usually 50 grams). The term glycemic load means the measure of the glycemic index of a food also taking into account how much of the food is being eaten. See here for more information. So, although the white flour in bread and the white flour added to gravy would have the same glycemic index, the glycemic load of the foods would be different because one has more white flour than the other, per serving.
The hormone insulin is a storage hormone, and the body produces larger amounts of insulin in response to higher blood sugar levels. This is important, because insulin has many powerful and important effects on the body, and is the primary regulator of fat storage and decider of what your cells use as energy. Simply put, the higher one's insulin level gets, and the longer it stays high, the higher the likelihood of obesity, high blood pressure, high blood triglycerides, small dense LDL particles, Type II diabetes, heart disease, stroke, many cancers, Alzheimer's disease... the list goes on. For health and well-being, the goal is the keep insulin levels as low as possible, and your cells' sensitivity to insulin as high as possible (so that the insulin you produce can do it's proper job without having to be produced in huge quantities).
To do this is simple; keep your intake of carbohydrates low, and make sure that the carbs you are eating have a low glycemic load. This rules out sugar and grains, and anything made from them or with them, entirely. Fruit and tubers should be eaten in moderation. Your primary carbohydrate sources should be leafy greens and fibrous veggies such as broccoli, spinach, lettuce, etc. As long as you are eating a healthy amount of meat, you won't need a huge variety of these things. A steak has more of the vitamins and minerals that one needs than any vegetable or fruit, and it has them in ratios and forms more suited to human needs. We are basically meat-eaters.
But what about performance? It is true that someone working out more often than once every twenty-four hours or so will need some extra carbohydrate to replenish muscle glycogen faster than he otherwise would. But we aren't talking about the 60% to 70% carbohydrate intake we see recommended for endurance athletes[2]. A sweet potato after your workout will do the trick. Have some butter on it, it's good for you.
Everyone reacts a little differently to cutting out high-glycemic carbs (“getting off the crack”, as Robb Wolf calls it). Most will see an immediate fall-off in performance, experience some hunger, crankiness, tiredness, and other symptoms which sound a lot like withdrawal. It is withdrawal. This is natural, your body is learning how to use it's stored fat as fuel again. Within a couple of weeks, most people's performance goes off the charts, well beyond where it started. Even fire-breathers. As Coach Glassman said, “You can't get top-fuel performance by pissing in the gas tank.” It's really that simple, folks.
The Basics, part 3: Fat
The truth is that, over the last several decades, while fat intake as a percentage of calories has been going down in the U.S., the incidences of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain cancers...basically all the “diseases of civilization”... have been going up.
Consider this: if you take half your normal fat intake out of your diet, what are you replacing it with? It isn't protein, because it isn't easy to eat that much meat[3] (removing 200 kcal of fat would mean approximately 22 grams, which would have to be replaced by 50g[4] of protein to make up the difference. That is almost a half-pound of extra meat, try it sometime.) Also, protein in real food tends to come fist-in-glove with fat. No, the odds are you are going to get it from carbohydrate, and if you believe that fat is bad for you, you probably also believe the myth of “healthy whole grains”.
A little bit of truth from Gary Taubes:
“Consider the porterhouse steak with a quarter-inch layer of fat. After broiling, this steak will reduce to almost equal parts fat and protein. Fifty-one percent of the fat is mono-unsaturated, of which 90 percent is oleic acid. Saturated fat constitutes 45 percent of the total fat, but a third of that is stearic acid, which will increase HDL cholesterol while having no effect on LDL. (Stearic acid is metabolized in the body to oleic acid, according to Grundy’s research) The remaining 4 percent of the fat is polyunsaturated, which lowers LD cholesterol but has no meaningful effect on HLD. In sum, perhaps as much as 70 percent of the fat content of a porterhouse steak will improve the relative levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol, compared with what they would be if carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes, or pasta were consumed. The remaining 30 percent will raise LDL cholesterol but will also raise HDL cholesterol and will have an insignificant effect, if any, on the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL. All of this suggests that eating a porterhouse steak in lieu of bread and potatoes would actually reduce heart-disease risk, although virtually no nutritional authority will say so publicly. The same is true for lard and bacon.”(my bold)[5]
And
that is just talking about heart disease. Fat will not make you fat,
it doesn't clog your arteries, it won't cause diabetes, or stroke.
It is, in fact, good for you. Naysayers will point to the fact that
saturated fat will raise your LDL (“bad” cholesterol) levels, and
this is true. But what counts is not the total level of LDL, but the
total level of small,
dense LDL. Saturated
fat increases the levels of the large, fluffy LDL particles, which
are not associated with heart disease, and decreases the amount of
small dense LDL. In other words, it prevents heart disease. Doctors
usually don't check these two separately. One of the best indicators
of future heart trouble is the ratio of triglycerides to HDL
cholesterol, and replacing refined carbohydrate in your diet with fat
will improve this ratio. As for obesity, diabetes, stroke, et. al.,
I don't really need to say much besides the fact that there never was
any good, solid science to support the association of fat intake with
these diseases.
So,
where should you get your fats? Your best choices are grass-fed
animal sources. Don't trim the fat off of your grass-fed meat, use
grass-fed tallow in your frying pan (oh yes, go ahead and fry stuff,
it's okay[6]),
use pastured butter... and so on. I say “grass-fed” because
grain-fed animal fat will have an unfavorable ratio of Omega-6 to
Omega-3 fatty acids, and you will have to supplement with fish oil to
fix that (more on that in a future post). But that is still better
than not eating fat at all, so if you cannot find or afford the
grass-fed, don't hesitate to buy the grocery store meat. Also give
coconut and it's milk and oil a try. Just be careful to get the
unsweetened kind.
Next
down on the list will be the mono-unsaturated fats, such as olive oil
and avocado, and then polyunsaturated fats. Get the poly's mostly
from fish and fish oil. Do not cook with or ingest seed oils, they
have a horrible O-6:O-3 ratio, just terrible. Avoid trans-fats like
the plague; these things are deadly. It is probably not a good idea
to get a large proportion of your fats from nuts. They are usually
high in O-6 fatty acids, and people tend to look, feel and perform[7]
better on a lower nut intake. Now, this does not mean “do not eat
nuts”, it just means do so in moderation. By the way, peanuts are
neither a pea, nor a nut, they are a legume, so leave them off the
menu.
The Basics, part 4: Macro-nutrient Overview and Supplementation[8]
After three weeks worth of my rants about nutrition, I will bet that everyone is wondering, so what do I eat? This week I am going to try to give you a simple, coherent answer to that question. Let's dive right in.
Remove added sugar and grains from your diet. Table sugar is made of glucose and fructose. Glucose will raise your insulin levels big-time, and fructose is a toxin your liver is forced to deal with. “Sugar” includes things like table sugar, honey, agave nectar, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, maltodextrin... and so on. Grains need to go not just because they tend to be heavily refined (yes, even “whole” grains), but also because a great many of them contain proteins which our digestive system cannot handle, and are known to cause serious auto-immune issues. Go to Google and check out “gluten”.
Remove oils which are made from grains or seeds. This means corn, safflower, cotton, peanut, canola, flaxseed (linseed). These are bad in ways too numerous to list right now. That will be a post unto itself, but for now I will say that this is just as critical as eliminating grains and sugar.
Replace the calories you have removed in steps 1 and 2 with good fats. I wanted to say “fats and protein”, but the fact is that most people who are not vegetarians get adequate protein.[9] It's hard to nail down the proper amount of protein in grams for hard-training people, but the fact is that it's extremely rare to hear of a meat-eater suffering from protein deficiency. So eat as much meat as you want to and protein will take care of itself. But don't trim all the fat off of it! That fat will be your energy source. It is calorically dense, so you don't need to stuff yourself, it will have a favorable effect on your lipid profile, it will make your body more resistant to the effects of oxidation[10], and on and on. Best of all, it tastes good. Let's face it, prepared food in the U.S. has tons of sugar in it because the fat has been taken out, and most people won't eat that cardboard crap without the sugar coating. Use animal fats, butter, cheese, heavy cream or half-and-half (not whole milk), coconut oil, some olive oil. Fats from grass-fed animals are best.
Make fruit a dessert, and eat berries. Basically because of the sugar. Berries are lower-glycemic than most other fruits. Grass-fed meat will provide you with almost all the nutrients you can get from fruits, in better amounts. You can eliminate fruit entirely if you are so inclined. But if you like fruit, make it a small snack or dessert.
Eliminate legumes. Like grains, these can cause auto-immune issues. Not as large a culprit as grains, and therefore lower on the list.
Supplementation. Despite the immense supplement industry we have, this is actually a rather short and simple list. First, vitamin D3. If you work outside, get plenty of sun, have a nice tan (not the tanning booth kind), don't worry about it. If that isn't you, then you should be taking 4,000 i.u. to 8,000 i.u. per day. Second, Omega-3 fatty acids. The idea is to get your O-6:O-3 ratio back in balance. It is out of balance in the Standard American Diet because we take in too little O-3 and way, way too much O-6. By eliminating grains and seed oils you will lower your O-6 intake significantly. If you also happen to eat wild-caught fish, grass-fed beef and pork, poultry which have been allowed to find their own food, or wild game, you have solved the problem. Congratulations. If you are still eating grain-fed animals, etc., then you should be taking fish oil to add in good O-3's to balance out the ratio. Look for oils high in EPA and DHA. The amount to take will be your body weight, divided by forty. That number is the amount of EPA+DHA you should take in a day, roughly. Play with the amounts a bit, see how you feel. Despite the size of the paragraph, those are the only two supplements to buy and take, and maybe none, depending on your lifestyle. Throw out the multi-vitamins. They may be killing you.
I kept it simple, so I know you have questions. Such as: What about those starchy tubers? Shouldn't I worry about muscle glycogen replacement? Why didn't you even mention intermittent fasting? Can I use nuts as a fat source? How will I ever get my micronutrients without my healthy whole grains? What about xyz other supplements which my grandmother told me I should be taking? All of this and more will be coming up in future rants (well, except that last one. That is Pony's forte and I will leave that to her). Of course, if you are like me and super-impatient, drop me an e-mail or comment on this post. I'd be happy to give you my usual long-winded response. Hate mail is welcomed, even encouraged.
[2] A strange recommendation, anyway, since endurance athletes run almost exclusively off of the oxidative energy pathway, which uses fatty acids, not carbohydrate, as it's main fuel source. Muscle glycogen stores are more of a concern for athletes doing short to medium duration, intense workouts. In other words, us.
[3] ...and if your protein sources are plant-based, you should consider changing that.
[4] Protein and carbohydrate are approximately 4 kcalories per gram. Fat is more energy dense at 9 kcalories per gram. This has often been used to condemn fat for making us fat, as it is “easier” for us to eat too much of it. This idea completely ignores the roles of insulin, leptin, ghrelin, and a host of other hormones in energy partitioning, fat metabolism, and hunger signaling. Read Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. Seriously, read it, you won't be sorry.
[5] Really, buy this book and read it, twice. It's worth the effort. Also, watch the posted video. It is long, but it is also worth it.
[6] I recommend using saturated fats for frying. Mono-unsaturated fats like olive oil are fine to eat, but at high temperatures they can burn and become “trans” fats, which isn't good. Use them as ingredients, but not for frying. What this basically means is that saturated fats are more resistant to oxidation. Our body will make our cellular structure out of the fats is has available, so if we are eating saturated fats our cell structure will contain saturated fats, and therefor be more resistant to oxidation. Not that we have to worry about that much, because eliminating processed carbs prevents a whole ton of oxidation. Google “advanced glycation end-products”.
[7] Wording blatantly stolen from Robb Wolf. www.robbwolf.com
[8] A big tip of the hat to Dr. Kurtis Harris, who has his own 12-step process for good health at his website, http://www.paleonu.com. A quick read under “Getting Started” will show you that my list follows his very closely. I won't claim that I got my list from him, as I came to many of these conclusions before finding his site, but I do think that I could have saved myself some time and effort by finding his site sooner. I like his style.
[9] Many vegetarians get adequate protein as well, just not from good sources.
[10] You will also be reducing the amount of oxidation going on inside you by reducing your blood sugar levels.
