Awesomeness By the Forkfull: The Foundation Diet

I'm going to keep rolling with the food side of the equation but just bare in mind that there's a majorly synergistic relationship to the eating lifestyle I'm promoting and strength training ... I'm talking synergy, as in two or more things functioning together to produce a result not independently obtainable. For now, if you're doing something physical on a regular basis you're on the right track, but the next blog will be a cut and dry phase 1 workout plan.

You can trust me, I have abs ... and absurdly small nipples, a sure sign of trustworthiness

In the spirit of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid, or Occam's Razor for people that aren't impressed enough by my abs and need me to write intelligently) I want to outline the foundation of the eating lifestyle that can help you reach your goals. This is the base of the diet regardless of the individual. In the future we'll talk about modifications and options specific to your individual goals, lifestyle and personality that build on this diet. While this is the strictest phase of this diet, mastering it is essential to effect long lasting changes that will turn your body into an efficient, shredded, elite machine.

My masterpiece of a food chart, half stolen from a Paleo site + way too much time cutting and pasting images. In order of priority, it's vegetables, protein sources, fats, and a minimal amount of fruits.

 

The Good

In this Foundation Phase, we're limiting our food choices to 3 things:

• High Proteins 
• Moderately High Fats 
• Unlimited Vegetables

Basically, this phase is a Paleo diet without much fruit, or an Atkins or Keto diet with loads of Vegetables. That's it. Simple, but not particularly easy at first. We're not measuring portions or spending half our day doing macronutrient calculations. Our goal is to make this a long term approach that works with your lifestyle while giving the results you need, so we want to keep it simple and do-able, and this is where it starts. When you're in this phase of eating, you just pick foods that have a minimum of carbohydrates and eat unlimited vegetables.

How bad can a diet be when bacon is a guilt-free food??

For the majority of this phase, you'll be in a state of ketosis. What's ketosis? "Ketones, to put it briefly, are compounds created by the body when it burns fat stores for energy. When you consume a diet very low in carbohydrates, the body responds to the significantly lowered levels of blood sugar by flipping the switch to another power source. The body converts fatty acids in the liver to ketones. Ketones, then, become the main energy source as long as blood sugar levels remain low." [1]

The point of this phase is not to massively under-eat. However these macronutrient ratios will leave you satisfied with a lower amount of calories than "empty calories" from processed carbohydrate based foods. It's pretty difficult to overeat to a large margin in this phase. The high protein content will help maintain muscle mass through periods of under-eating.[2] Additionally, the structure of this diet with a high protein content changes the results of overeating. In a recent study on overeating comparing high protein to low protein diets, the researcher's findings where that while both groups gained weight, the low protein overeating group LOST muscle mass, while the normal and high protein overeating groups actually gained significant amounts of muscle mass. Additionally, the amount of energy used at rest was significantly higher with normal and high protein intakes.[3] Other studies reinforce that last finding, with one study demonstrating that postprandial (after meal) thermogenesis was increased 100% on a high-protein/low-fat diet versus a high-carbohydrate/low-fat diet in healthy subjects.[4][5]

 

The Bad

Fruits, for the most part, are off limits in this phase of dieting. I'll go in depth with explanations in a future blog dedicated to the negative aspects of fructose despite it's low glycemic index (GI=19), but for now, refer to the first photo in this blog for references. Remember this diet structure is both a foundation for future eating and the first phase to kick off long term change in your diet, so while there are valuable nutrients in fruits, if you're loading up on vegetables like you should be then you're not missing anything.

 

The Ugly

For the most part we want to stay away from grain based foods, and especially eliminate any and all processed carbohydrates and sugars. It's interesting to note, in animal based studies, when they need to start the test subject in an obese state, researchers will just put the subject on a sugar and fat diet for a few weeks. Take a look at the macronutrients on popular foods and tell me you don't suddenly feel like a laboratory rat in an obesity study. But just as simple as it is to transform yourself into a fat blob, it's just as simple (not necessarily always easy, but simple) to change how you eat to become a lean powerhouse of awesomeness.

A major benefit of eliminating carbohydrates is the control we take over insulin response to blood glucose. One cross over study of moderately overweight young men reported that after exercise resting energy expenditure declined by 10.5% on the high-glycemic diet compared with 4.6% on the low-glycemic diet, indicating that low-glycemic diets influence body weight and resting energy expenditure independently of caloric intake.[6] Beyond that the health benefits are far reaching, including avoiding insulin resistance leading to diabetes. In another recent 2 year long study, researchers concluded that a low-carbohydrate diet is associated with favorable changes in cardiovascular disease risk factors.[7] There's also studies indicating the benefits of lower carbohydrate diets to breast cancer prevention.[8] [9]

There is a growing body of evidence linking sugar consumption as the likely dietary cause of several chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles such as heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers.[10]

 

The Big Picture

The Foundation Phase lasts for 2 to 4 weeks before we start building on it, depending on where you're starting from and how your body and mind responds to it. This takes some honest assessment and reassessment. I'll detail the assessment process before going into the next phase, but the purpose of it is to maintain the primary objective of this diet, which above all else is to effect permanent changes in what we put in our bodies and what they give back, without it consuming us or interfering with our enjoyment of life.

This is the foundation of our eating because this is how we want eat the majority of the time, and when we deviate from these restrictions for educated reasons, our body retains the benefits of our foundation diet. This phase of the diet is home, and while we might go out here and there, this is where we come back to, so mastery of it and adaptation to it is of paramount importance.

 

Taking the First Steps

Depending on your current knowledge base, you may need to put some effort into learning the macronutrients in common foods. Here are two links that are easy references, and valuable even for the knowledgeable dietician:

• http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/nutrient.htm 
• http://nutritiondata.self.com/

Another point that I should emphasis is that whole food sources of these nutrients is best, but in the real world you may need to compromise. I can't work full time and keep up with my responsibilities in life while maintaining the diet that makes me feel and look the best without relying heavily on protein shakes. It becomes an equation of relativity, continually making better and more educated choices in what and how you eat.

 

Tips and Tricks:

A Simpler Transition: I've found that the first couple of days are often the hardest, and I crave sugary cereals pretty bad. One thing that helped me and some others I advised to try it is to kick off your new eating lifestyle with what's called a protein sparing modified fast. It's simpler than it sounds. For anywhere from part of the first day to a couple days, you only ingest carbless (or very low carb) protein shakes. Personally I would do this the first day until I really start craving any whole foods, then start adding in salads with oil and lemon dressing. Then the next day I'll start adding more acceptable foods as I cut back a little on the protein shakes. You can stretch this out over a longer period of time. For me it takes away the decision making process until my body starts to adapt to it's new fuel source. I find a casein or blended protein shake works best for this and controls hunger better.

Guilt Free Gorging: Don't get overwhelmed at this point. This phase is temporary but will give you some quick results. If you feel like it's too much to adapt to all at once, you can plan a cheat meal one day a week. Plan this meal to fall with in the 5 hours window after an especially heavy RESISTANCE training session, and enjoy yourself guilt free, knowing the excess macro-nutrients are being sucked up by your muscles. Limit yourself to a couple hours tops of guilt free gorging. Eventually this will become a staple of your diet, but it's more effective when you reach a lower level of leanness, so use it only as necessary for now. You can also take advantage of this strategy for social engagements. Also, if you're starting out lean or as a "hard gainer" with a priority towards muscle growth over fat loss, you can plan these "cheat meals" more frequently. Not sure if you're a hard gainer? Just compare yourself to what I looked like 10 years ago:

The wife-beater shirt says "I'm tough" but the glasses say "I'm a poet"

In future blogs on diet I'll start going into your option for using carbohydrates to your advantage, but it's important to master this phase of the diet and also let your body adapt to this kind of eating. If you implement these changes now, and follow this blog as it progresses, by the time we've delved deeper into how to make educated choices in the timing and type of carbohydrates you eat, you're body will also be ready to take full advantage of these strategies.

For more details and resources on some more of the physical benefits of this diet before I write in depth on this, you can find a months worth of reading with a quick google search, but here are a couple of links with some interesting reading:

• http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/2
• http://www.marksdailyapple.com/your-brain-and-the-primal-blueprint/#more-20796

Refrences:

1. Ketosis In A Low Carb Diet, http://www.marksdailyapple.com/dear-mark-ketosis/#axzz1qTO1dHxl
2. Matthew P. Harber, Simon Schenk, Ariel L. Barkan and Jeffrey F. Horowitz. Effects of Dietary Carbohydrate Restriction with High Protein Intake on Protein Metabolism and the Somatotropic Axis. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 90, No. 9 5175-5181. 
3. George A. Bray, Steven R. Smith, Lilian de Jonge, Hui Xie, Jennifer Rood, Corby K. Martin, Marlene Most, Courtney Brock, Susan Mancuso, Leanne M. Redman. Effect of Dietary Protein Content on Weight Gain, Energy Expenditure, and Body Composition During Overeating. JAMA. 2012;307(1):47-55. 
4. Veldhorst MA, Westerterp-Plantenga MS, Westerterp KR. Gluconeogenesis and energy expenditure after a high-protein, carbohydrate-free diet. Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Sep;90(3):519-26. Epub 2009 Jul 29. PubMed PMID: 19640952.
5. Carol Johnston, PhD et al. Postprandial Thermogenesis Is Increased 100% on a High-Protein, Low-Fat Diet versus a High-Carbohydrate, Low-Fat Diet in Healthy, Young Women http://www.jacn.org/content/21/1/55.full   
6. Agus MS, Swain JF, Larson CL et al. Dietary composition and physiological adaptation to energy restriction. Am J Clin Nutr 2000;71:901-907
7. Gary D. Foster, PhD et al. Weight and Metabolic Outcomes After 2 Years on a Low-Carbohydrate Versus Low-Fat Diet: A Randomized Trial. Ann Intern Med. 2010;153:147-157.
8. Intermittent, Low-Carbohydrate Diets More Successful Than Standard Dieting, Present Possible Intervention for Breast Cancer Prevention, http://www.sabcs.org/PressReleases/Documents/Harvie.pdf
9. Starch Intake May Influence Risk for Breast Cancer Recurrence, http://www.sabcs.org/PressReleases/Documents/Emond.pdf
10. Is Sugar Toxic,  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=3