That Stuff Will Kill You - About the Seminar

One of the reasons my seminar - That Stuff Will Kill You - is 3 hours in length is a result of experience.  I could explain in a few minutes what to eat to lose body fat and feel good - eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar no wheat - but then folks would run into an "expert" (wife, sister, friend, web article, doctor, or dietician), who would say:

- "all that fat and red meat will kill you!"

- "you need to eat more carbohydrates for energy!"

- "you might lose weight that way but what about your cholesterol?"

It reminds me of the old saying (and John Mellencamp song):  "You gotta stand for something, or you're going to fall for anything!"

In other words, if you don't know why it's important to eat eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar no wheat, you will have a much lower chance of sustaining that choice.  By contrast, if you know enough to sort through the nutrition and health "wheat and chaff", you can make informed choices by instantaneously being able to identify when someone is spouting myth or strongly held belief, but not fact.

Another reason the seminar is lengthy is that while the "eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar no wheat" prescription is simple, the implementation can be tricky.  There's the "low carb flu", hydration and electrolyte issues, long term behavior patterns to overcome, and many, many mis-information obstacles that can lead you right back to the eating patterns that are sabotaging your health right now.

No topic illustrates these issues more clearly than that of supplements.  

There are certain supplements that are nearly essential in the beginning stages of conversion to a  paleo diet implementation, and others that you will likely need the rest of your life.  My goal is, to borrow the biblical idea, to teach you to fish, not to give you a fish.  If you walk out of my seminar with the ability to think through why you may or may not need this supplement or that one, I'll be very satisfied.  

Supplementation is a very personal issue - and the guys out there making big bucks selling the powders we call "supplements" are designing new ones every day, and spending even more time trying to implement a marketing plan that will convince you to send them the dollars you give your life energy to obtain.  That's all good - it results in a situation in which you and I can get any supplement we can even conceive of.  The question for you is - "How can I tell if the benefit of any given supplement is worth what I'm paying for it?"  We can get to the heart of that matter very quickly at the seminar.

As an aside, one supplement that virtually every one of us needs is vitamin D - because most of us spend so much time indoors, under sunscreen, or under clothes that we can't make enough vitamin D EVEN IF WE GET THE 15 MINUTES OF SUN WE NEED EACH DAY!  We've been so long in between uses of our capacity to make vitamin D we've lost that capacity.  In fact, when I started vitamin D supplements, the impact on my training was more palpable than any other supplement I have ever tried (and that's a long list of "tried it").  

In closing, I should make it clear that I do not advocate spending much or taking many supplements, and the ones that have the most impact for me are the cheap ones.  So please, if what you want is a long list of supplements to spend big bucks on, don't come to my seminar!  The reason for that is that by far, the biggest impact you can have on your health is not by what powders you can buy to supplement your diet, but rather by what foods you choose to nourish yourself, and in what proportions you eat those foods.

Glutamine - What Is It, Why You Want It

"Take glutamine to prevent food cravings and maintain optimal body composition over the holidays. Glutamine is the most abundant free amino acid in the body and in addition to helping you avoid unhealthy food cravings, it can regulate blood sugar and nutrient metabolism. Taking a large dose of glutamine has also been found to help trainees break through muscle building plateaus and improve body composition.

"The cool think about glutamine is that it is involved in so many functions in the body that, by giving your body a larger pool to play with, you can improve health, brain function, physical performance, and metabolism. Here's how it works: First, glutamine is used along with the amino acids cysteine and glycine to make glutathione, which is a powerhouse antioxidant that needs to be made internally by the body rather than supplemented to be most effective. Glutathione regulates the immune system and helps you avoid everything from a cold to cancer."

http://www.charlespoliquin.com/Blog/tabid/130/EntryId/1685/Tip-477-Take-Glutamine-To-Prevent-Cravings-and-Maintain-Body-Composition-Over-the-Holidays.aspx

Read more at the link - very interesting!  This supplement is also recommended by Dr. Ron Rosedale (The Rosedale Diet) to help folks make the low carb transition.

Leucine for Muscle Protein Synthesis

Abstract

Background: The effects of essential amino acid (EAA) supplementation during moderate steady state (ie, endurance) exercise on postexercise skeletal muscle metabolism are not well described, and the potential role of supplemental leucine on muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and associated molecular responses remains to be elucidated.

Objective: This randomized crossover study examined whether EAA supplementation with 2 different concentrations of leucine affected post–steady state exercise MPS, whole-body protein turnover, and mammalian target of rapamycin 1 (mTORC1) intracellular signaling.

Design: Eight adults completed 2 separate bouts of cycle ergometry [60 min, 60% VO₂peak (peak oxygen uptake)]. Isonitrogenous (10 g EAA) drinks with different leucine contents [leucine-enriched (L)-EAA, 3.5 g leucine; EAA, 1.87 g leucine] were consumed during exercise. MPS and whole-body protein turnover were determined by using primed continuous infusions of [²H₅]phenylalanine and [1-¹³C]leucine. Multiplex and immunoblot analyses were used to quantify mTORC1 signaling.

Results: MPS was 33% greater (P < 0.05) after consumption of L-EAA (0.08 ± 0.01%/h) than after consumption of EAA (0.06 ± 0.01%/h). Whole-body protein breakdown and synthesis were lower (P < 0.05) and oxidation was greater (P < 0.05) after consumption of L-EAA than after consumption of EAA. Regardless of dietary treatment, multiplex analysis indicated that Akt and mammalian target of rapamycin phosphorylation were increased (P < 0.05) 30 min after exercise. Immunoblot analysis indicated that phosphorylation of ribosomal protein S6 and extracellular-signal regulated protein kinase increased (P < 0.05) and phosphorylation of eukaryotic elongation factor 2 decreased (P < 0.05) after exercise but was not affected by dietary treatment.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that increasing the concentration of leucine in an EAA supplement consumed during steady state exercise elicits a greater MPS response during recovery. 

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/3/809

It would be interesting to see the results if this were performed on strength/power athletes, for both max effort and CrossFit style training.  Most likely, leucine would be a good supplement to add for a competitive CrossFitter, but the difference between an athlete that's eating plenty of real meat anyway, and one who doesn't but supplements with leucine, would likely be small.

Getting Started

So, you know you need to lose weight.  Your health may be at stake, your career might be at stake in some cases, and certainly your enjoyment of life is at stake.  It's decision time - you are ready to commit - what to do?

1.  First, eliminate high density carbohydrates - bread, pasta, any liquid calories (milk, gatorade, cola/dr. pepper/mt. dew), and most non-whole foods (potato chips, fries, food bars, and most anything in a wrapper, especially if the product boasts a "healthy" label).  Quinoa, rice, potatoes - for now, these too are out.  If I didn't mention cake and ice cream and such, I hope you would still realize those are not on the menu for now.  For now, fruit is also a 'no go'.  Beer?  Not if you want to get over your health/body fat/living well hurdle.  If proceeding without some form of booze for a month is not appealing, try Robb Wolf's NORCAL Margarita:  shot of tequila or gin, with a whole lemon or lime's worth of juice, over ice with a bit of carbonated water.

Bread is the enemy - if you are already overweight and starting to show the signs of metabolic syndrome, and can't get used to the idea that the industrial food product known as "bread" is not really suitable for human consumption, you will die fat and sick.  Sugar - same thing.

2.  Get some fish oil, and get a gram of DHA/EPA down the hatch daily.

3.  Supplement with 2-6000iu of vitamin d gel caps.  If you are in the sun routinely and have been for most of your life, you may still make vitamin d; 90% of us reportedly do not.  Make a guess where you fall on the "always sunbathing" to "never see the light of day scale" and supplement vitamin d accordingly.  There are few things that will make a more palpable impact on your health or how you feel than restoring normal vitamin d levels.

4.  Eat good veggies if you like them.  Broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, mushrooms, radish, peppers, spinach - what they used to call the "5% vegetables" for their low percentage of carbohydrate content.  Dress these veggies with butter, olive oil, vinegar, and/or real blue cheese dressing.  You don't need to be concerned with calories per se during this period.

5.  Make a plan to get 100g of protein (that's about 15 ounces of meat, but you can also use hard cheese) down the hatch per day.

6.  When you get hungry, you may add coconut oil, coconut cream, or coconut pieces to satiety.  You can also eat nuts, but don't get crazy with nuts - munch on two or three at a time, not handfuls.  Don't count the protein in the nuts as part of your 100g.  Macadamia nuts are primo - walnuts, pecans and almonds are ok.  Stay away from the cashews for now; they are high in starch.  Some folks also really enjoy pork rinds - just keep the water handy!  If you put stuff in your coffee - stop, and start using only heavy whipping cream.  Trust me, you'll thank me for this later.

7.  Additional supplementation to work into your program over the next week or two:
-Magnesium - not much.  You know you've had too much when you get the trots.  Start out with a tablet or a half spoonful of a powder like Natural Calm, and work your way up from there.
-Glutamine powder - available as a recovery powder at Wal Mart.  Helps in the 1-3 week adaptation period.
-ALA - alpha lipoic acid is a potent anti oxidant and worth experimenting with when you are putting yourself through the relative metabolic stress of shifting from being a sugar burner to being a fat burner.

In part 2, we'll switch from the what to the why.

Magnesium Supplementation = Good

http://www.ajcn.org/content/93/2/463.abstract
BLUF:  Either due to leaky gut or the effect of anti-nutrients like phytates in grains, or due to the natural deficiencies in the unnatural industrial food chain, we're likely all a bit short on magnesium.  This study shows a number of benefits from supplementation.  The question is 'how'?

Natural Calm is a good choice, but any magnesium citrate or oxide will do.  You'll know when you are taking too much when your guts let you know with a certain amount of urgency to get to a restroom.  So, start small, work up the dose slowly.

Wolf Supplementation

The Paleolithic model incorporates the principle that most dieteary/performance supplements are unneeded if you eat food that humans evolved to benefit from.  However, in a world of industrial food chains in which each cow has a half a barrel of oil in it (as a result of the cow eating mountains of amonium nitrate fertilized corn), it isn't a walk in the park to fill one's plate with FOOD.  Those who have read Robb Wolf's book, or listened to his podcasts (http://www.robbwolf.com/) or scanned his blog know that in his clinical practice, he's found consistently good results with several very basic supplements.  Now, those are easy to find here:
http://astore.amazon.com/robwol-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=3

I use a magnesium/zinc supplement when I'm getting ready to sleep, and also want to experiment with the Super Enzymes, which seem to restore folks to a more optimal level of stomach acidity. 

On that note, one other supplement some clients have found helpful is glutamine powder (sold as a recovery product), which seems to help folks when transitioning to a low carb diet.  It can take as long as 30 days to get the body tuned up to run on fat, and glutamine seems to reduce the unpleasantness of being a sugar burner deprived of sugar.