At the outset of this lesson, I have to stress that I am not a doctor and that you are responsible for what you choose to do with this information. This information does not constitute medical advice.
I don't know you personally and we've never had a face-to-face consultation. I cannot comment on your specific case or provide you with personalised advice.
If, at any point, you have concerns about your health, you should consult your medical practitioner.
This approach is the one that I have found to have the best results with most people. In fact, for some people, the body composition changes are dramatic.
Note, I say body composition changes, not weight. The scale can be very cruel. It's not unusual to vary in weight from day to day by as much as 1.5kg either side of an average, simply because of body water status.
If you use this approach and are coming from a high carbohydrate standard western diet, you need to be aware that you may suffer some symptoms, a bit like a bad cold (lethargy, tiredness etc.) and for the data-junkies, you will almost certainly see a drop in performance in the short term. This is perfectly normal & is only temporary, lasting between a few days and 3 weeks. You can mitigate this by...
- Drinking enough water
- Salting your food or adding salt to your water (your body will be dropping some of its water due a short term reduction in glycogen stores & sodium goes with it).
- Reducing the intensity of training and holding off on those intervals for a bit.
So, grab your worksheet and here's what to do...
Planning Your Nutrition - Fat Approach
Step 2: Daily carbohydrate intake
- Write 50g in the box.
- This is a hard limit. For a fat-based approach to work, you have to keep your carbohydrate intake low, especially initially. Those with metabolic issues may find they need to push it lower, often below 20g. Some people will be able to increase it a bit after a time using this approach.
Step 3: Make up the rest of your daily nutrition with fat
- It takes a little time to get used to this but the best approach is to choose those foods with plenty of natural fat included (fattier cuts of meat, for example). Adding extra fat to your diet by drinking butter in your coffee is generally not a great idea, although "bulletproof coffee" is a nice alternative to cappuccino if you fancy an occasional change from black coffee.
- There is no calorie target. Eat real food when you're hungry and eat enough to be satisfied.
Tasks for this lesson:
1. Complete Steps 2 and 3 on the worksheet downloaded in lesson 20.
2. Start looking at nutrition labels on food packaging to get a feel for the macronutrient composition of various foods.