I get questions like these quite a bit. I finally decided to take my thoughts and concatenate them into a single post. Hopefully it helps you, too!

What would be a good daily eating plan?
I want to get in better shape, weight included.

There is so much info out there on carb this, fat that…

It’s overwhelming.

-anonymous

Well maybe it is overwhelming, but there are a couple of ways to mitigate that.

First, you should start thinking about your body like a mini chemistry set. You put chemicals (food) in, and see what happens. The neat thing about your chemistry set is that it has a pretty quick response time – within 30 days, you should have noticable, measurable results.

Second is that you need to introduce some information filtering. Most of the ‘studies’ you see on the news are epidemiological studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology) and have questionable validity (for instance, by listening to the news, you would assume that cholesterol was the most evil thing you could put in your body, when in fact your body (and brain in particular) NEEDS cholesterol to survive). But I digress. You need to stay focused on your goal like a laser beam. Again, it’s only 30 days, and from there you can adjust as needed. But I think that if you don’t give something at least 30 honest days, you cannot comment on it’s validity or efficacy.

Finally, You’ll have to tailor your eating plan to your own preferences and food choices. That said…

I would recommend a fairly strict paleo regimen for a 30 day period. It’s not easy, and it requires that you get the ‘bad stuff’ out of your house (so you’re not tempted to go back and ‘cheat’). But it is something that is achievable and realistic.

The goal is simple: on the standard western diet, your body becomes acclimated to running off of sugars and carbohydrates (both of which your body needs, but more on that later). However, in order to run off of those types of things (sugars, and specificially glucose), your body will produce increased levels of insulin (for a good description of how insulin works and can cause you to gain fat, watch the movie Fat Head (http://www.hulu.com/watch/196879/fat-head) on Hulu), which in turn can cause your body to store fat. This is only one of the things we are trying to avoid, but for the goal of weight loss, it is an important one.

In addition to higher insulin levels, we’re also looking to avoid items in many of the low level toxins found in many different sources of carbohydrates. These toxins are a protective response to prevent animals and bugs from eating the seeds (offspring) of different plants. These include saponins, lechtins, and phytates (phytic acid), and are considered ‘anti-nutrients’ in that they actually hinder absorption of vitamins and minerals in the stomach and intestine.

We’re also looking to avoid inflammatory foods – at the very least for the duration of the 30 day period. Our goal with this is to reduce overall inflammation in the body and promote anti-inflammatory consumption throughout the process.

Finally, we’re looking to replace high-caloric, low-nutritive foods with low-caloric, high-nutritive foods. This is accomplished by doing what your mom always told you… you have to eat your vegetables. It can be hard for some people for sure, but it’s an important thing to note, nonetheless.

So all that said, what does this mean for what we don’t want to eat in order to fulfill the requirements above (don’t think if it as “I can’t eat this or I can’t eat that,” as it is a sure path to failure. You’re not depriving yourself, you’re restricting what you want to eat based on very specific goals and criteria.)? Well, lets investigate that a little further.

What? Wheat!

First off, the biggest items to restrict completely (at least for the 30 day experimentation period) are ALL grains. Period. This means no wheat, oats, sohrgum, quinoa, corn, barley, rye, etc, etc etc. None. They are gone from your diet completely. The next is most legumes. Most paleo regimens allow for green beans and snap/snow peas (despite the fact they are legumes) because they are mostly pod. Other than that – ditch the beans. We also need to dump the sugar and processed foods. They’re full of transfats (oils tortured out of the seeds and legumes we are trying to avoid) and sugar and salt. You don’t need any of that, so they’re all out.

Finally we get to dairy. Dairy is inflammatory, and you can do without it for 30 days (and introduce it back in, if you so choose, later). The noticable exception here is butter from grassfed milk (see Kerrygold, for example). Other than that, no milk, no cheese, no whey, etc. Just stay away from the dairy.

A few last things to avoid: Juices, sodas, energy drinks, or anything where you are consuming calories through liquid. It’s just a bad idea.

Also limit alcohol intake, especially in the first 30 days. (alcohol to drink, in order of least inflammatory to most, is clear distilled non grain alcohol (gin, vodka, etc), wine (red, then white), and beer.)

Beef, beef, it's good for your heart

So now we get to what we want to eat. Meat is good. It is full of the protein and saturated fats that your body needs, and that we are focusing on converting your body to run off of. The best kinds of meat are grass fed and pastured. Grain fed animals will have some of the inflammatory properties of the grains they are fed (weird how that works, right?) Beef, fish, lamb, and pork are all considered fair game. With beef, go for grassfed, and for fish, wild caught. Lamb is always grassfed, and pork never is (pigs eat all kinds of things, so they are higher on the inflammatory spectrum).

Vegetables!

Additionally, eat lots of vegetables. I cannot overstate how many vegetables you will end up eating. Cruciferous veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts) are all fair game. Kale, lettuces, bok choi, beets, radishes, carrots, chard, onion, cucumber, spinach, celery, etc. are all fair game. There are lots of vegetables that are higher on the carbohydrate scale (important if you are working out and expending lots of energy) including winter squashes (acorn, butternut, carnival, spaghetti, etc) and sweet potatoes (both the white and the orange). All are good for you and full of vitamins.

You can eat SOME nuts. I tend to stick to macadamia nuts as they are low in omega 3 fatty acids, which is important when considering inflammation. (They are also buttery and delicious, so that helps, too). Don’t eat too many, though.

You can also eat SOME (like one serving per day) of fruit. Fruit is high in fructose, which the body processes in the same way it processes ethanol, and overconsumption of fructose has led to the creation of a new disease – non alcohol related fatty liver disease… bad news.

Other than that, the rules are:
1) eat when you’re hungry.
2) eat until you are satisfied.
3) do not count calories.
4) Have both a protein and carbohydrate source whenever you eat.
5) Stick with it for 30 days.

Additionally, it is important that you get a benchmark. Weigh yourself, and measure your total inches (measure at the midpoint of each bicep, your waist at the belly button, your hips, and each thigh at the midpoint). In addition to your total inches, measure your neck at as well, as you can use it to help determine your body fat percentage using the US Navy calculation (there are lots of calculators on line, and you need both your neck and waist measurements in order to calculate it. Take pictures in as few bits of clothing as you feel comfortable in. It won’t be pretty. It will show you your changes, and will be important for your measurements.

So, if you’re sold on trying it, head on over to Robb Wolf’s website, where he has a free quick start guide, food matrix, and shopping list (http://robbwolf.com/book-resources/). It’s not hard, but it does require a bit of perserverance and dedication. It’s HARD to find things to eat on the go, so it’s important to plan ahead.

Good luck and let me know how it goes!