Signed with C.

Trying to find the ideal diet for me had led me to several diet options. Basic bodybuilding bulking and cutting diets, high protein/low carb diets, grainless diets and restrictive GI/Gl diets. Then there were Primal (by Mark Sisson, Primal Blueprint) and the Slow Carb diet (by Tim Ferriss, The Four Hour Body). These two sparked my interest most.

My basic goals are quite common; lose fat, build muscle, be healthy and eat whatever I want. Easy, right? I found it can be, as long as you know the how and why of these four pillars. At least, how they work for me and my life. Although all of our bodies are quite similar, most of our lives are quite different. Meaning, you can’t all eat at the times you like to eat or you don’t have access to the foods you want to eat or you have a different background (cultural as well as how I was raised and what the psychological imprints I have about food because of that).

Pillar 1, lose fat

For men, the ideal percentage of body fat is about 15 to 20 percent, depending on your activity level. For women, this would be 20 to 25 (or even 30) percent. When you generally live healthy, don’t eat too much, you’ll normally have these levels of body fat. For me, I strive to have in the range of 8 to 10 percent fat. This being somewhat below the aforementioned 15 percent, I need to adjust my food and metabolism to burn this excess fat and keep burning enough of it to not be storing any new fat. The basics solution is to cut down on carbohydrates. If you eat below 150 grams of carbs your body burns fat. Keep it below 100 grams and fat is burnt fast as your body goes in a special state called ketosis. However, it is essential you eat enough fat to keep your energy level high, so that your muscles aren’t being metabolized (meaning, burnt as energy). Some carbs are ok to eat. These can be qualified as slow carbs or carbs with a low glycemic index.

Pillar 2, build muscle

Muscles are built out of three basic components, protein, glycogen and water. Also a little fat and a lot of smaller components are used, but I’ll stick to the basic three. In order to build muscle you need to give your body enough protein. A lot of people do not know this, but protein is actually the least abundant component of muscles. Carbs are the building blocks for glycogen. And water, well, is water. The thing that has me most dumbfounded is the amount of calories needed to properly build muscles. Classic bodybuilding says you need to eat 1000 or more calories in surplus to build proper muscles. By now, I disagree. Give your body a little more protein and exercise properly and that will build muscle. A human muscle contains about 1200 calories per kilo. In order to gain 5 kilos in muscle in a year, you need 6000 calories. That would be 500 a month, or about 20 calories a day. That’s not much, is it? Truth be told, you need something extra for energy you body uses for repairing the muscle after working out, but eating 6000 calories a day, although it might build muscle faster, will actually (for me at least) create much more fat than the extra muscle is worth. I’d rather build muscle more slowly and not have to worry about burning excessive amounts of fat afterwards than to build muscle faster and losing some while trying to burn the fat. In a years’ time, the net result will be the same, but when you build muscle more slowly, they will stay on longer. Also, you won’t change in clothing size as much, and you will look good all year round, instead of just in the summer.

Pillar 3, be healthy

This is easy. 80% of how you look and feel is a result of what you eat. Like I stated in the introduction, there are a lot of different views on what is healthy eating. The basics always remain the same. Drink enough water. Don’t drink calories. Eat whole foods. Don’t eat refined carbs. Also, don’t smoke, drink or do drugs.

Everyone has to figure out for themselves what works best in the particular foods they eat. Some people don’t like certain foods, some are allergic to certain foods and some don’t have access to some types of foods. For me, the following eating habits have the best results (the best results being physical well being combined with feeling good about what I eat without cravings), although I don’t exactly follow these habits right now for several reasons:

- No grains and grain-derived or -related products. No bread. No pasta. No rice. No potatoes.

- No sugar or candy.

- Up to four pieces or portions of fruit a day. Bananas, apples, peaches, straw-, rasp- or blueberries and pineapple are my favorites.

- Nuts, cashews, almonds and Brazilian nuts in particular.

- Varied beans (green beans, kidney beans or peas) for carbs and protein.

- Lots of (raw) vegetables. Tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, radishes and such. Broccoli and asparagus are excellent!

- Leafy greens. Spinach makes a great base for a salad.

And in the animal and dairy domain I eat:

- French cheese

- Eggs

- Chicken breast or turkey.

- Red cow meats, mostly steak.

- A variety of fish with raw or smoked wild salmon being my favorite.

Another important part of being healthy is getting enough sleep and exercise. I have to get a minimum of eight hours sleep per night. Not on average. At least eight hours per night, but no more than ten on the weekends. The old adage of “every hour before midnight counts for two” has great truth to it. I’d rather go to sleep at nine thirty or ten and get up at six then go to sleep at midnight and sleep until eight.

In addition, napping at about two pm for twenty to thirty minutes gives me a great boost. In the weekends I like to go for an hour, between three and four.

Concerning exercise, I’d suggest lifting weights twice a week and doing some fun cardio to go with that. Fun cardio for me is something like doing a martial arts training, going running with my dog, or going swimming for an hour. Weight lifting for me seems to works best when I do it three times a week (upper body/lower body split), with a little cardio at the end. Fun cardio I then do twice a week.

Finally I love to adhere to Mark Sissons’ move slowly principle. Just walk. Lay in the grass a bit. Soak up the air around.

Pillar 4, eat whatever I want

And here’s the kicker. I love candy. I love soda. I love fries. I love pizza. I love chocolate. I love beer. I love cake and pie. I love falling asleep with a very full stomach. I love going to the movies and eating crisps and drinking Coke. I love to bake my own apple pie and eat it all at once.

Shit.

Thankfully my cravings can be controlled if they arise. Thankfully, as described in Tim Ferris’ Slow carb diet, one binge day each week can’t hurt. In fact, it works in your favor, as it jump starts your body into burning more calories and being more efficient in the days you eat properly. The psychological aspects of something to look forward to and rewarding yourself works wonders. Plan the days you eat what you want and you’ll be fine, health-wise. Maybe at first, like I did, you’ll eat everything in sight. But after a few of these days, you’ll be less extreme with what you put in your mouth. You won’t eat as much and it won’t be all that bad. Especially if the rest of your diet is filled with great meats, veggies and fruits and such, like I described in pillar 3.

Bodybuilders frequently employ these cheat days or cheat meals to help them being more successful with their diets.

Finishing thoughts

I wasn’t planning on doing a review on the Slow Carb or Primal diets. Nor was I looking to make an exact comparison. But both diets/lifestyles have elements that can be mixed to make your own perfect match. The cheat days from the Slow Carb diet combined with the greater variance in foods from the Primal Blueprint and the absence of ‘fast carbs’ and grains make the best diet for me. I feel energetic, healthy and well fed, while providing proper fuel and nutrition for my body.

Check out the two diets. Find your own foods. And have fun while living healthy. You deserve it.

References:

Ferriss’ Slow carb:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/06/how-to-lose-20-lbs-of-fat-in-30-days-without-doing-any-exercise/

Primal Blueprint:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/definitive-guide-to-the-primal-eating-plan/

You need to do things to get the things you want. And usually, you want the things you need. In a previous post I spoke of discipline and motivation. I believe these two are intrinsically connected to wants and needs. Needs border on being fulfilled by discipline and wants border on being fulfilled by motivation.

But, taking into account I don’t believe in discipline, both the Wants and the Needs are connected to the Motivation.

Let me explain: I want to be a certain weight. To get there I need to eat properly and work out. The motivation I have for eating the right stuff and the right amounts and resisting eating the wrong stuff is a result of my want for the way I will look. The same applies for working out. Even though it can make you tired or sore, one would keep working out because one wants the results. For me, working out isn’t something I don’t like. I love it! I enjoy the sweating, the blood pumping, the manly growls I produce and whatnot. So I’m lucky in this.

But I notice more and more often when I talk to people or listen to their complaints that they want something. They want to buy a new coat, but don’t want to work. Or they want to go see friends but don’t want to travel an hour. I think it’s important to realize that if you want something you need to give something in return. This is the case for everything you want. There are no freebees. Figure out what you need to do to get what you want and then decide if you want it bad enough to put in the effort. Then you might find that by putting in that effort, what you need to do becomes part of the thing you want. At that point you can move mountains.

The vice versa on this are the things you need, without having a want for them. Maslows pyramid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) sort of summarizes most of our needs. It seems like a natural process to want the things you need. You need to breathe, so you want air. You need to live, so you want food. You need a roof over your head, so you want a house. I’ve never met someone who doesn’t like to sleep when they’re tired. You can think of tons of examples yourself.

Ponder this for a moment: Wants are natural products of needs. So why are needs not as natural products of wants?

For me, when regarding exercise, this combines into the following cycle: I want to be 90kg/200lbs with proper low body fat, so I need to exercise. Exercise makes me hungry and sore, so I need sustenance. As a result I want to eat more. Sometimes eating more isn’t quite as easy. But because I want what I want, I am motivated to keep going.

My homework to you, the reader, is take one aspect of your life you don’t like that much, but that you have to have in your life. Find out why you need to do it and what the want is that it is linked to. Focus on this want and determine if you want it bad enough to keep putting in the effort you need to in order to keep it in your life.

Can’t figure out how much you want it, or find that you don’t want it bad enough? Get rid of it. Don’t be afraid of scrapping things from your life. You need to do so every now and again to give more energy to the things you really want.

Or, you can figure out that you do want something bad enough to put in the effort of the associated need. The knowing why you do something already makes it easier. And, like I said before, the reward will be much greater when you put in the effort and get what you want.

And you know it, just as much as I do; you deserve to get what you want.
We all do.

C.

People often state that they have discipline. Discipline in order to achieve goals. Be it either in the gym, at school, at work or anywhere. Disciplined people achieve more than people without discipline. I disagree. Vehemently.
I believe that discipline is something we are taught in order to get ourselves to do the things we have to. When you think about discipline while studying, you think of getting yourself to burn that midnight oil. To spend some extra hours reading such-and-such book. But when you read about something you’re passionate about or, at the very least, enjoy, you don’t need discipline to keep reading. How often have you spend hours upon hours of reading a book and suddenly realizing it was 4 am already? I remember when I first read The Da Vinci Code, before I learned to speed-read. I started reading around two in the afternoon and read until after midnight. The book kept me turning pages until I’d finished it.
Think about your job. You spend 8+ hour a day sitting behind a computer, boring the hell out of yourself. You have to push yourself, discipline yourself to stay focused and do your work. You get in your car and curse that you’re tired of staring at that monitor all day. What do you do when you get home? Play videogames. On a computer. Behind a desk even. For hours and hours on end.

Why?

Because you like reading Dan Brown. Because you love Starcraft 2. Because you love what you do.
And because you love what you do, you are intrinsically motivated to keep doing it.

Apply this to dieting and exercising. I find that most people are surprised I’ve been following a protein rich diet for a year now. They think I’m nuts for going to the gym as often as I do. Even when I feel sick or tired. “Why do you go?” they ask. If you’re tired you should rest. Sit on the couch and have a beer.
But what if I enjoy what I’m doing. Or, what if I’m driven by goals I set for myself and I enjoy attaining these goals?

When people go on a diet they struggle because they think they have to have discipline. If they have a clear and vivid picture of what their goals are with that diet, all they have to do is re-imagine those goals at the tough moments. Before you start following a diet, make sure YOU want that diet. YOU decide to go on it. YOU decide WHY you want it. If you yourself can tell yourself, with full persuasion why you are doing something you will keep doing it. And keep on doing it until you have achieved your goals.

This also applies for going to the gym. Set goals for yourself. Visualize those goals perfectly. See your new body, see how slender you are, see how large your muscles are. Use that mental picture to drive yourself to that picture. Reach for what you want. Know how much you want it.

This creates motivation. This creates enjoyment. When you have the proper motivation, you won’t need discipline. After all, you can’t stop doing that which you love. You can’t stop eating healthy, you can’t stop going to the gym. Because it gets you what you want.

And add to that, realize that when you get what you want, what an euphorius feeling you will have. Pride, accomplishment and just a plain old good time.

Enjoy!

C.