General

What is the most important rule to follow for a healthy diet?

Some say eat whole foods. They say eat foods that are basically in their natural state and didn’t need to be processed to be edible. You can be very lax with this rule, by allowing yourself sugar (controversial as any form of sugar triggers appetite especially if avoiding carbs) and salt as long as you add it yourself ; or you can be strict, by excluding olives and legumes. The choice is yours. Just stick to whole foods.

Maintaining enough vitamins. minerals (including proper levels of salts like sodium and potassium) and proteins while limiting carbs, sugars (of any form including “natural” sugars like those found in whole fruit and natural fruit juices) and calories is by far the most important rule to a healthy diet regardless of their source and whether or not they are “natural” or “whole”. Repeated studies have shown that having excess body fat, type 2 diabetes and weight gain are resultant from eating and storing more calories than one burns. Eating too many of any form of calories whether from whole foods or not will cause these problems. A Newcastle University team has recently (2011) discovered that Type 2 diabetes can actually be reversed by an extreme low calorie diet alone (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/biomedicine/news/newsitem.htm?id=diet-reverses-type-2-diabetes).

There is no evidence which excludes “whole” foods calories from this fact and whole grains are some of the highest calorie, low vitamin foods around. There is also no evidence that calories from low fat or high fat foods are any different from other calories for weight control.

Calories are calories and as long as you have a source of essential vitamins they are the same.

Fat calories are not “worse” than other calories. In fact fat has many essential vitamins and no health risks contrary to popular beliefs. Native peoples in the far north got virtually all their vitamins from the fat and organ meat of the animals they ate as there were no vegetables in that climate, and before the introduction of modern processed foods they had extremely low rates of heart disease. Additionally the linking of saturated fats to heart disease is a myth and has been completely dis-proven. The most recent studies including a meta study of over 347,000 people across 23 years (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648) showed no increase of cardio vascular problems from consumption of saturated fats. Fats are essential for many bodily functions including metabolism and brain function. Best estimates are that congestive heart disease (arterial clogging) comes from too many blood sugar peaks brought on by over consumption of sugars, carbs and starches at rates higher than your body can control their effect on blood sugar (another reason to avoid carbs and sugar) and perhaps over consumption of calcium which is a also component of arterial clogging.Heart attacks themselves are often now linked to inflammatory response of the body reacting to changes in injured or scarred arteries (which may explain why small doses of anti inflammatories like aspirin reduce the risk of heart attack.)

So what’s the dietary answer? Make sure you get your vitamins, protein, minerals and salts and fluids you need from somewhere and don’t consume more total calories than you burn each day regardless of what type of calories they are. Other than that try to avoid things that likely aren’t good for your body such as preservatives and other non nutritional substances of unknown effects that can be avoided.

Which diet plan is the best?

There is no best. There are many paths to maintaining a good diet and losing weight. Some methods work better for some people, other methods for other people. The important thing to understand is that people are different in their tastes and lifestyles but not in their body metabolisms by any large degree. Resting body metabolism between extreme athletes and unfit people vary by less than 5% which means it has virtually no impact on how much you can eat or burn in daily decisions. You should be prepared to experiment and find what works for you so that you can maintain a diet that avoids an excess of calories over your lifetime however actively you choose to live.

In the end, the “best diet” is the one that you will stick to.

How can I form a dietary plan that works with my busy schedule?

First we need to know your goals. Are you trying to gain or lose weight, or something more specific? Generally, you can take one free day a week, and cook up a good amount of food. Healthy chicken breasts can be cooked at one time and refrigerated for the next week or two. The same with rice. Peanut Butter and Jelly makes a versatile, portable sandwich should you be somewhere without a fridge in need of food. Nuts are a healthy, portable snack. Scrambled eggs can be left on the stove to cook on low heat as you do your morning routine. Carrots make a good, portable snack or meal addition.

Is it possible to gain muscle while losing weight?

You need to do away with preconceptions about weight. Just think of what you’re saying “gain muscle while losing weight”, well gaining muscle is gaining weight, but you’d be gaining lean mass and not fat. A better question would be “Is it possible to gain muscle while losing fat?” Which is absolutely possible and the best option you got A combination of better diet + cardio exercise and weightlifting = gain muscle, lose fat. Again forget about weight, depending on your body type and your current situation you might stay at around the same weight or go down then up, that’s not exactly bad as long as you’re losing fat and the weight comes from muscle. You’ll still look and feel better

Should I take supplements?

Studies have shown that simply taking a daily simple multivitamin supplement can help one avoid a huge number of health concerns that arise from vitamin deficiencies in modern eating practices. It is extremely difficult to get natural levels of vitamins from even whole unprocessed vegetables today because the actual farming soil has been depleted over years of over farming – vegetables simple don’t have the same levels of vitamins and minerals in them that they had 100 years ago. Furthermore, the other primary source of vitamins in food is from animal fats and organ meats such as liver which modern guidelines and eating practices tend to limit. Thus the two primary sources of necessary vitamins vegetables and meat fats no longer provide enough essential vitamins for the average person and a multivitamin supplement can be essential.

The other huge benefit of taking a multivitamin is that lacking vitamins often cause food cravings which leads to the intake of more calories. So if you make sure you are getting the vitamins and minerals your body needs with a multivitamin supplement you may not get as many hunger cravings which may cut down on binge eating.

Other Supplements are just that — something to take in addition to (not instead of) regular food.

Diet is generally more important than supplementation, but certain supplements can be useful for achieving fitness goals. Many supplements make doubtful or exaggerated claims, so do your research before purchasing them.

• What supplements do you know work?

What are the effects of alcohol consumption on fat loss?

One of the breakdown products of ethanol is acetate. Overview of ethanol metabolism

Presence of acetate in plasma reduces plasma level of free fatty acids 70-90%.

By reducing FFA you are in essence reducing the availability of fat to be used for energy. You will burn the glucose in the blood and the energy from the alcohol, not fat. Drinking often has been found to increase abdominal obesity and negatively affect weight loss.

This doesn’t mean all hope is lost for a healthy lifestyle and alcohol though. Most of the problems occur when alcohol is consumed alongside unhealthy foods. (Where your body would normally metabolize the foods, the alcohol takes precedence and the foods essentially go to body fat). A good article and collection of sources on the matter can be found here.

How much should I eat?

That depends on your basal metabolic rate — the number of calories you need daily just to maintain your weight (no loss or gain) and go about your daily activities. It also depends on whether you want to lose weight or gain weight. If (like many) you want to lose weight, your body can only take weight loss at a rate of about 1-2 lbs per week, maximum, without losing muscle too. Your best bet is to track everything you eat and determine your calorie intake; add (subtract) 3500 calories for every pound of weight you lost (gained); and that’s your BMR. Once you’ve determined your BMR, take an amount less by 500 calories (3500 calories per week — which corresponds to about a pound of fat) and use that as a target average. Try to get between 0.5gm and 1.0gm of protein per day per pound of lean body mass (your total body mass, minus the total fat); and make up the rest of your calories with (good) fats and carbs.

How much protein should I eat in one sitting?

According to this article how you divide your daily protein intake is not important to your muscle gains. Thus, you can simply divide the total protein up into multiple meals, or you can eat it all in one sitting. This is because, while your body can only absorb protein at a certain rate (and that rate depends on the kind of protein you’re absorbing), it will keep absorbing it until its gone completely through it. So feel free to do 6 meals of 20-30g protein each, or two big meals of 60-90g protein each — as far as your gains are concerned, they’re the same.

Low Carb / Paleo / Primal

What should I eat? What can I eat? How do you eat well and not get bored?

The short answer is: buy a cookbook or find a good website and make the stuff in it.

• Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple has a bunch of good “primal” recipes
• Mark has a cookbook out that has a lot of good “primal” recipes, too, with pictures and so on.
• Joyful Abode’s recipe index has a lot of good low-carb recipes in it.
• Everyday Paleo has nice looking paleo recipes
• What does r/Fitness eat for lunch at work?
• r/Paleo and the r/Paleo FAQ
• r/keto and the r/keto FAQ

The longer answer is: Educate yourself to find out what’s healthy and eat that. There’s a vast variety of stuff to eat out there that’s actually good and good for you, as long as you don’t unnecessarily limit yourself.

Make sure that whoever you’re learning from actually has some evidence on their side, though. See some of the books, websites, and videos linked below.

Also remember that if you’re going to make some changes in your life, you will have to make some changes in your life! This may include trying stuff you’ve never eaten before (Greek yogurt, really?), or eating things in different combinations, or abandoning old standbys (hard to have a sandwich for lunch when you can’t eat bread). Luckily, it may also include being “allowed” to eat stuff that, before, was a “guilty pleasure”. (Bacon, cheese, steak, and eggs all come to mind for this FAQ editor.)

Eggs? Won’t they make me die a horrible cholesterol-induced death?

No. Serum cholesterol levels are mostly unaffected by dietary cholesterol. There is both scientific and anecdotal evidence supporting this idea. Furthermore high cholesterol is not associated with the actual risk of heart attacks and cholesterol is essential for many bodily functions including metabolism and brain function (your brain is largely cholesterol).

Is a low carb diet a good idea for me?

Source.

The primary health benefit of low-carb is that people stop eating so much sugar and carbohydrates (flours and starches and pastas) which greatly reduces caloric intake without jeopardizing vitamin, protein or essential oils (fats) losses. Most carbohydrate sources are not nutrient-dense foods and are not ideal, unless you are trying to store more energy for more significant periods of exertion (e.g. marathon, distance bicycling or days of long hiking)

But it’s not as simple as it seems; you can also go wrong with low-carb, since you need to distinguish between “good” fats and “bad” fats, just like “good” carbs and “bad” carbs. Vegetable oils (hydrogenated or otherwise) and seed oils (soybean, corn, safflower, etc.) are highly inflammatory fats that are not ideal for consumption. Saturated fats (e.g. from animal products) and omega-3 fats from fish/fish oils are ideal fats that are safe to consume.

Most average people eating modern processed foods are consuming combined sugar and hydrogenated vegetable oils get the worst of both worlds. At a young, still growing age, lots of people can get by without noticing any detrimental effects on their body fat, but these foods will eventually cause metabolic syndrome (diabetes, dyslipidemia, hypertension, obesity) and other degenerative diseases if regularly for many years. And as long as it takes to gradually acquire these conditions, it can be even harder to reverse them. Low-carb or paleo dieting can help people lose body fat so they can start getting to a less metabolically deranged state.

In terms of athletic performance, low carb adapts your body to be better geared to burning fat. For example, intramuscular trigyclerides (i.e., fat stored in muscles) can double in 8 weeks on a low-carb diet. This can have advantages in ultra-endurance type of events that go beyond the point of the bodies ability to run the muscles off of carbs alone (4-8 hours or longer).

When weightlifting, the muscles energy to exercise come from carbs. Your muscles can store carbs in the form of glycogen enough for about a couple of hours of intensive activity. Upon entering a state known as ketosis, the body converts protein into glucose to replenish these carbohydrates. If you stay in ketosis long enough, and do a high enough volume of weight training, you will have more and more troubles getting a high intensity during weight training.

Don’t worry so much about lowering carbs if you’re young, healthy and lean unless you are eating more calories than you are burning. Especially if weight training. Low-carb diets are high in protein and fat, which are very satiating and people tend to eat fewer calories on these diets. This means weight loss, yes, but it also means that growth is slowed if calories are too low and you may find building muscle is at a much slower rate. Contrary to the myth that low carbs contribute to slow growth among children most studies have proven the opposite. In fact the seminal world study of native populations and their native diet done in 1938 by Dr. Weston Price before world trade made such studies impossible showed that high meat and fat diets lead to extremely healthy native populations with straight teeth, well proportioned bodies and often larger size than other populations. (This was documented in photos as well and is available in it’s original form for free Title: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration Author: Weston A. Price 1938http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html)

Probably a bigger concern in the diet would be trying to get enough carbs from good sources. Unrefined carbs for sure, but many carbohydrates can have a very high lectin and phytate load – these are the defenses of a plant to prevent them from being eaten. Their goal is to mess up your digestive system and block the absorption of vitamins and minerals. Whole wheat is probably the worst offender. But most rich carb sources can be significantly optimized to prevent these problems. Oats can be soaked overnight in water. Grains can be sprouted or fermented. Tubers can be peeled and cooked. Also, eating high nutrient foods can prevent issues with low vitamin and mineral absorption, e.g. beef liver.

Vegetarian / Vegan

How will weight lifting work if I am a Vegetarian / Vegan?

Yes, you can get big and strong as a vegetarian or vegan.

Protein requirements vary, if you aim for the usually recommended 1g/lb bodyweight (using lean mass is more accurate, but requires a body fat percentage to be known) then it is almost impossible to get without a) supplemental protein, or b) getting tons and tons of calories in the process. For those who want to aim for this level of protein and not get excessive calories, The Vitamin Shoppe sells Nutribiotic Brown Rice Protein in 3lb tubs, and they’ve got brick & mortar shops across the country; TrueProtein sells rice protein, hemp protein, and gemma pea protein in bulk fairly cheaply as well.

If you aim for a more moderative but still adequate protein intake (1-1.2g/kg bodyweight or lean mass), then you can achieve this through a healthy and smart diet. Just be aware to eat varied sources for a more complete distribution of amino acids.

In regards to soy usage and phytoestrogens (isoflavones), they do not affect testosterone levels per se. They may modulate the androgen receptor, which mediates the effects of testosterone. This is a ‘leveling mountains and filling valleys’ effect, and could potentially reduce testosterone if your testosterone levels were well above baseline to start. There is evidence that these same phytoestrogens can actually act androgenic (like testosterone) in older men suffering from low testosterone!

A conclusive statement about whether soy is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ cannot be made about the isoflavone content. Just be aware to cook your soy to denature the trypsin inhibitors so you can actually get the protein.