Sunday Story…3 Strategies

The bottom line around the whole nutritional dilemma is answering these questions:

Are you under-muscled or adequately muscled?

Are you over or undernourished?

Are you metabolically healthy?

If you need more muscle, you will need to add more protein to your diet. If you are undernourished, you need more calories; if you are overnourished, you need less.

If we eliminate the “food” restrictions (things like Paleo, Keto, Vegan, vegetarian, etc.) because we are eating Real Food and making sure we are getting adequate protein and essential fatty acids there are only 3 dietary restrictions to discuss:

Time: Eating at certain times (and not at others) …intermittent fasting or even multi-day fasting

Calories: Eating less in terms of total calories but without regard to what or when it is being eaten.

Dietary: eating less of some element within the diet…such as meat, sugar, or fats

Each of these works but for pure efficiency caloric restriction is the hands-down winner. The problem is that you must track everything you eat exactly. It isn’t easy and it may not be sustainable.

Dietary restriction is simple…just eliminate 1 type of food. But this only works if the food you eliminate is plentiful and has significant calories to reduce overall calorie consumption. Going on a no-lettuce diet probably won’t work.

Time restriction may be the easiest. Restrict yourself to eating once a day. Unfortunately, if you eat a pint of ice cream and 3 pizzas you are still overeating!

Calories matter no matter how you answer the first 3 questions.

Next week: What to do?

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com 

www.crossfitodyssey.com

775-338-2412