The Primary Limitation: Carbohydrate

   On this diet, no sugars (Simple carbohydrates) and no starches (complex carbohydrates) are eaten. The only carbohydrates encouraged are the nutritionally dense, fiber-rich vegetable listed.
   Sugars are simple carbohydrates. Avoid these kinds of foods: white sugar, brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, molasses, corn syrup, beer (contains barley malt), milk (contains lactose), flavored yogurts, fruit juice, and fruit.   Starches are complex carbohydrates. Avoid these kind of foods, grains (even “whole” grains), rice, cereals, flour, cornstarch, breads, pastas, muffins, bagels, crackers, and “starchy” vegetables such as slow-cooked beans (pinto, lima, black beans), carrots, parsnips, corn, peas, potatoes, French dries, potato chips.

Read More

Fat or Protein?

    Another hangover from the last half-century of dietary misguidance is the belief that dietary fat must indeed be bad for us, even if we accept that Carbohydrates are causing us to fatten.

    This is a compromise position that seems perfectly reasonable. It was this kind of thinking in the early 1960s that led proponents of carbohydrate restriction to describe their recommended diets as high

in protein instead of high in fat. Rather than avoiding only the fattening carbohydrates, you eliminate butter and cheese from the diet, eat chicken breasts without the skin, lean fish, the leanest cuts of meat, and egg white without the yolks.

   As I’ve said, though, there’s no compelling reason to think that fat, or saturated fat, is harmful, whereas there’s good reason to question the benefits of diets that abnormally elevate the protein content. Populations that ate mostly meat or exclusively meat, as I discussed earlier, tried to maximize the fat they ate, and one reason seems to be that high-protein diets–without signification fat or carbohydrates–can be toxic. Protein-metabolism experts in a recent U.S have addressed this issue.

Institute of Medicine Report called Dietary Reference Intakes.

   “It has been suggested from evidence of the dietary practices of hunter-gatherer populations, both present day and historical, that humans avoid diets that contain too much protein,” the IOM experts explain, citing the same research on hunter-gatherer populations to which I referred. The short-term symptoms of these high-protein, low fat, low carbohydrate diets, these protein-metabolism experts point out, are weakness, nausea, and diarrhea. These symptoms will disappear when the protein content is reduced to a more moderate 20 to 25 percent of calories and fat content is increased to compensate.

    When physicians and nutritionist tested carbohydrate restriction before the beginning of the anti-fat movement in the 1960s, they did so with fatty meat and diets that were 75 to 80 percent fat by calories but only 20 to 25 percent protein. This mixture had no side effects, was well tolerated, and is most consistent with the diets eaten by populations like the Inuits, who lived almost exclusively, if not exclusively, on animal products.

    Whether or not a diet that is 75 percent fat and 25 percent protein is healthier that one than is 65 percent fat and 35 percent protein is an open question. Equally important is the question of which is easier to sustain and provides the most enjoyment. If you find yourself satisfied eating skinless chicken breasts, lean cuts of meat and fish, and egg-white omelets. So be it. But eating that fat of the meat as well as the lean, the yolks as well as the white, foods cooked with butter and lard may be the better prescription for sustainability, and it may be for health as well.

Read More

Eat as Much as We Would Like

   If you have grown up with one belief system, it’s hard to leave it behind entirely when you open your mind to accept another. We’ve been told for so long, and believed for so long, that a fundamental requirement for weight loss is that we eat less that we’d like, and for weight maintenance that we eat in moderation, that it’s natural to assume the same is true when we

restrict the Carbohydrates we eat. Eating less of everything, though, as I discussed earlier, is another way of saying that we’re going to restrict consciously the amount of protein and fat we consume, as well as the Carbohydrates. But protein and fat don’t make us fat–only the carbohydrates do–so there is no reason to curtail them in any way.

   It’s true that people who restrict carbohydrates often eat less that they otherwise might. A common experience is to give up fattening carbohydrates and find that you’re not as hungry as you used to be, that mind–morning snacks are no longer necessary. Intrusive thoughts of food and the urge to satisfy them vanish. But that’s because you’re now burning your fat stores for fuel, which you didn’t do before. Your fat cells are now working properly as short-term energy buffers, not long-term lockups for the Calories they’ve sequestered. You have an internal supply of fuel that keeps you going throughout the day and night, as it should, and your appetite adjusts accordingly. If you’re not running short on fuel, you feel no need to restock every few hours. (If you’re losing two pounds a week, that’s seven thousand calories of your own fat that you’re burning for fuel every week–one thousand calories each day that you don’t have to eat.)

   Another effect, though, of restricting carbohydrates is that your energy expenditure should increase. You’re no longer diverting fuel into your fat issue, where you can’t use it, and so you literally have more energy to burn. By avoiding the fattening carbohydrates, you remove the force that diverts calories into your fat cells. Your body should them find its own balance between energy consumed (appetite and hunger) and energy expended (Physical activity and metabolic rate). This process could take time, but it should happen without conscious thought.

   Trying to rein in appetite consciously could lead to compensatory responses. You might have less energy to burn, so your energy expenditure won’t increase, or you hold on to fat that you’d otherwise burn. You might lose lean tissue (muscle) that you might otherwise maintain. And the conscious self-restraint might prompt an urge to binge. Physicians who prescribe carbohydrates restrictions in their clinics say that their patients get the best results when they’re reminded or urged to eat whenever they’re hungry and until they’re satisfied or even to schedule snacks every few hours and eat whether they are hungry or not.

   The same argument holds for Exercise. There are very good reasons to be physically active, but weight loss, as I discussed earlier, does not appear to be one of them. Exercise will make you hungry, and it’s likely to reduce your energy expenditure during times when you’re not exercising. The goal is to avoid both of these responses. Trying to drive weight loss by increasing energy expenditure may be not only futile but also actively counterproductive. You tend to be sedentary when you’re overweight or obese because of the partitioning of fuel into your fat tissue that you could be burning for energy. You literally lack the energy to exercise, and so the impulse to do it. Once that problem is fixed–by avoiding the carbohydrates that made you and keep you fat–then you should have the energy to be physically active and with it the drive or impulse to do so.

   The goal is to remove the cause of your excess adiposity–the fattening carbohydrates–and let your body find its own natural equilibrium between energy expenditure and consumption. So you should eat when you’re hungry and eat until you’re full. If you’re not eating carbohydrates-rich foods, you won’t get fat or fatter by doing so. Once you start burning your own fat for fuel, you should have the energy to be physically active as well.

Read More

The “Bad Cholesterol” Problem ­– Updating the LDL Connection

     These clinical trials alone should put your mind to rest about the idea that eating high-fat or high-saturated-fat diets will give you heart disease. But there are a few other factors worth

discussing that most of these trials didn’t address. The first involves LDL. It speaks again to how the science of heart disease has evolved since the 1970s.

    When we first started hearing about the evils of LDL and physicians and health reporters began to refer to LDL as the “bad cholesterol,” they did so because they thought it was the cholesterol that caused the buildup of plaque in our arteries. LDL, though, actually isn’t cholesterol; it’s the particle (the low-density lipoprotein –i.e., LDL) that contains the cholesterol and shuttles it (and Triglycerides) around the bloodstream. The “bad cholesterol” terminology is a problem only because the researchers who study these things now say that it’s not the cholesterol carried by the LDL that is to blame for heart disease but, rather, the LDL particle itself and other similar particles. The cholesterol seems to be an innocent bystander.

     To complicate matters, not all LDL particles appears to be equally harmful, or “Atherogenic,” which is the term used by the experts to describe something that causes Atherosclerosis or makes it worse. Some of the LDL in our circulation is large andBuoyant, and some is small and dense, and there are gradations in between. The small and dense LDL particles appear to be the Atherogenic once, the one we want to avoid. They work themselves into the walls of our arteries and being the process of forming plaque. The large, buoyant LDL particles appear to be harmless.

    This is important because carbohydrate-rich diets not only lower HDL and raise

triglycerides; they also make LDL small and dense. These three effects all increase our risk of heart disease. When we eat high-fat diets and avoid carbohydrates, the opposite happens: HDL goes up, triglycerides go down, and the LDL in the circulation becomes larger and fluffier. Individually and together, these changes decrease our risk of having a heart attack. So what appears to be a bad thing, circa 1970 science (the effect of saturated fat on LDL cholesterol), is again a good thing, circa 2010 science (the effect of saturated fat on the LDL particle itself).

     The health officials hesitate to discuss this science publicly, because it contradicts much of what we’ve been told for the past thirty to fifty years. Occasionally, though, researchers will let the facts break through, as did Chris Gardner and his Stanford colleagues when they wrote up the results of their A TO Z study. Their language is on the technical side, but it’s not so technical that you shouldn’t be able to follow it:

      Two of the more consistent findings in recent trials of low-carbohydrate vs low-fat diets have been higher (LDL cholesterol) concentrations and lower triglyceride concentrations in the low-carbohydrate diets. Although a higher (LDL cholesterol) concentration would appear to be an adverse effect, this may not be the case under these study conditions. The triglyceride-lowering effect of a low-carbohydrate diet leads to an increase in LDL particle size, which is known to decrease atherogenicity. In the current study, at 2 months, mean (LDL cholesterol) concentrations decreased by 2% and mean triglyceride concentrations decrease by 30% in the Atkins group. These findings are consistent with a beneficial increase in LDL particle size, although LDL particle size was not assessed in our study.

    These findings may indeed be a bitter pill for some to swallow, but they confirm that the diet we have to eat to lose weight–the one restricted in fattening carbohydrates–is also the diet that will best prevent heart disease.

Read More

How to do the workouts

Here’s everything you need to know to navigate your way through the plan.

·      How are the Workouts Structured?

You do three workouts a week and each one contains three super-sets – two exercise done back to back. You do the same moves each week for four weeks before moving on to the next set of workouts. The workouts have been designed using a split routine system, which means you work particular muscle groups in a workouts, rather that your whole body. You do, however, work each major muscle group at least once a week.

·      Why should I do super-sets?

Doing super-sets reduces the amount of time you spend resting during a workout, which ensures that the intensity of the session remains high. The workouts tend to start with the most demanding moves at the beginning, which allows you to lift as much weight as possible. The exercises tend to get slightly less challenging as the workout progresses because you’re fatigued.

·      What weight should I use?

Pick a weight that means you struggle to complete the final couple of reps of the last set. This is likely to mean that you need to use a weight that is at least 70% of your one-rep maximum – the weight you can only lift once with perfect from.

Read More

Clap press-up

 Having to clap between press-ups means you have to push up from the floor very quickly, turning a humble body-weight exercise into an explosive muscle-building move.

How to do it

·      Start in a press-up position and lower until your chest is just above the ground, keeping your elbows close to your sides.

·      Press back up powerfully so that your hands leave the floor. Quickly clap them together.

·      Land on your hands and descend into the next rep.

Read More

Cable Crossover

It’s hard to truly isolate your powerful chest muscles­­ – the arms and shoulders nearly always get in on the act because of the way your upper body muscles move together. But this move is a great way to work the chest because using cables, rather than dumbbells, for resistance ensures that there is constant tension throughout the move, which forces your chest to work hard to control the weight.

How to do it

·      Stand in the middle of a cable machine with a split stance, holding a D-handle attachment in each hand and with the cable set above shoulder height.

·      Keeping a natural arch in your back, your core braced and your upper body still, bring your hands down in an arc to meet in front of your torso.

·      Pause briefly and squeeze your chest muscle, then return to the start slowly and with the weight under full control.  

Read More

Incline Dumbbell Press

  Tilting the bench places the focus on the upper part pf your chest, as well as your triceps and the front of your shoulders. Using dumbbells allows for a greater range of motion.

How to do it 

·      Lie on a bench set at a 30-50º angle holding a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder-height.

·      Keep your feet flat on the floor and your back against the bench.

·      Press the weight directly above your head, but don’t lock out your elbows at the top.

·      Slowly lower the weight back down to your chest, flaring your elbows out to the side.

Read More