Diet and nutrition

Index

Summary

Documenting what I do in terms of diet.

Content

Diet and nutrition: Bulking food items

Basic diet and nutrition principles

Don’t post-hoc count calories. Instead, pre-calculate them

Post-hoc calorie counting of arbitrary food you consume is effort-intensive enough that you are likely to throw up your hands and give up. To stick with calorie restriction, in my experience, you have to make it work absolutely as seamlessly as possible.

I have found that this means pre-calculating calories for things I eat, and then only eating things from the list of things I have pre-calculated. Even more than that, I roughly calorie-match lunches, dinners, and snacks, to make each of these things interchangeable/modular, like building blocks. Then I basically just never have to think about it, aside from taking a few minutes a week to map out which meals go to which slots. Cutting means picking a cutting lunch, cutting snacks, and cutting dinner. Bulking means picking a bulking lunch, bulking snacks, and bulking dinner.

So basically, we shift diet design/macro mapping upfront, and then day to day, so long as you actually stick with the plan, you will automatically end up in the right calorie zones without having to think or expend extra effort; you’ll hit your macros and calorie reduction targets more or less automatically.

16/8 intermittent fasting

The easiest time to fast is after a full night of sleep = after your body has already been fasting for many hours. If you’ve ever tried to compare skipping breakfast vs. lunch vs. dinner, breakfast is the easiest to skip by far. So if you are going to skip one meal a day, that should be the one.

So if we decide we are going to skip breakfast because it is the easiest meal to skip, well why are we doing this to begin with? Basically, because in general it makes it much, much easier to feel full while staying within the bounds of your diet. To a certain extent, metabolism is sort of like an engine that requires fuel once it has been started up (i.e., you eat your first calories of the day). Once you turn it on, you have to fuel it regularly, otherwise bad things happen (like getting hangry). But if you just wait as long as possible before turning it on so that it is just chilling in its resting condition, it doesn’t require regular fueling to stay in a stable state during that period = fasting is relatively easier during that period. In essence, not having to fuel the engine for a longer period of time every day makes it easier to use less daily fuel overall. And that’s really all there is to it.

This is obviously most important during cutting wherein calorie restriction makes hunger a bigger problem. But actually, using a restricted feeding window even during bulking is still helpful, because it is just always inherently easier to effectively manage hunger when you have a larger number of calories to fit into a smaller window of time when hunger is a problem (i.e., a smaller window of time when the metabolic engine is actually “on”).

Always eat at least 1.8g of protein per kg of body weight, whether you are bulking or cutting. And maybe (?) eat even more protein when cutting

Some people like Martin Berkhan of LeanGains and Eric Helms advocate for very high protein intakes. Like 3g protein intake per kg of body weight, and the like.

Other people like Menno Henselmans and Sean Nalewanyj recommend a still high but not outrageously high intake, at about 1.8g protein intake per kg body weight (or about 0.8g protein per lb body weight), and argue that more protein past this point doesn’t really provide additional functional benefit. Even when on a calorie deficit.

Some reading you might start with:

For my own part, since basically everyone seems to agree that getting at least 1.8g protein per kg body weight is a no-brainer, I start with that. I should note that getting even this much protein when on a severe calorie deficit already requires pretty careful planning, much less the higher protein targets.

Past the 1.8g protein per kg of body weight, the question is whether to actually try to hit higher targets when cutting? At present, after realizing I was getting quite bogged down trying to dig into the research here (which seems… well not nearly as clear cut), I decided to just try to minimize my risk by assuming the “worst case” = assuming that when running a severe calorie deficit, extremely high level of protein are actually truly beneficial. The crowd that thinks that you never really need to go past 1.8g per kg of body weight does not think that there is a great deal of opportunity cost in eating more protein (aside from perhaps cost, since protein sources tend to be somewhat more expensive per calorie than the other macros), just that doing so may not actually be functionally useful/really get you anything. But going the other way, you’d have actual opportunity cost. So why not just sandbag against risk by eating the higher protein levels when cutting? Then no matter what is actually true, you’d be safe.

So basically, I decided to not even bother trying to take a firm position on this, but to just in principle act like you really do need more protein when cutting, so that I could pick a clear path forward and stop thinking about it. YMMV.

No drinking calories, ever

It is a well-known dieting principle that drinking calories doesn’t make you feel as full as eating them, even if by the time things reach your stomach, the difference might not be much in practice.

What exactly contributes to this phenomenon (e.g., hormone signaling caused by chewing?) is less important for our purposes here than that this is essentially always true as a global principle.

Interestingly, eating a smoothie with a spoon, eating soup with a spoon, eating cereal with a spoon, etc. seems to behave more similarly to eating calories than drinking calories. So even primarily liquid-based foods are still acceptable so long as you eat them rather than drink them.

I enforce this constraint during both cutting and bulking because again, better to harness every satiety/fullness mechanism we have, even when hunger isn’t proportionally as much of a problem. So this means never drinking things with calories:

  • Milk
  • Alcohol
  • Juice
  • Coffee or tea with caloric add-ins
  • Etc.

Personally, I basically only ever drink water. However, there would be nothing wrong with drinking coffee or tea without caloric add-ins.

Eat slowly, to give hormone signaling a chance to catch up

Eating slowly won’t really help you feel full longer (i.e., after an hour, say, whether you ate slowly or wolfed down your food won’t really impact how full you feel), but it will matter for naturally cutting off your appetite while you are still eating, so that you aren’t nearly as tempted to overeat. Scarfing down food basically doesn’t give your body a chance to say “wait, hold up, stop eating, that’s enough!”, so that’s why we want to avoid doing it.

This isn’t so terribly important when you are already inherently restricting your calories through upfront planning rather than eating ad libitum, but it is still a good habit to get into in general, because any time you are in cheat mode due to various circumstances (e.g., eating in social situations), having the habit in place will make it way easier to avoid accidentally overeating by a lot.

Eat some form of cruciferous vegetable at least once a day

For example: broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale.

Out of all foods, these are basically the very best in terms of satiety, due to being 1) high in volume, 2) high in fiber, 3) high in protein, and 4) high in micronutrients. Nothing is better than them.

However, I’ve found that trying to overly prioritize them backfires. Better to sustainably stick with some every day than try to go further than that only to end up stopping with them altogether.

I choose to steam frozen broccoli florets at lunch every day, and find that I don’t mind their taste and texture too much, even if I don’t exactly love them. YMMV. The point is to always eat at least some cruciferous vegetables every day, without fail. In my opinion, this is just a sacrifice that is necessary to build any diet that even gets close to ideal.

Always avoid spiking blood sugar. No exceptions

Different types of sugar (e.g., fructose vs. glucose) have greater or lesser impacts on blood sugar. Pure glucose (e.g., brown rice syrup) is actually the worst ibn terms of glycemic impact. (Although over-prioritizing fructose also has its own problems, since it can only be processed by the liver—that is, while all cells can burn glucose, only the liver can actually burn fructose).

Fiber inherently helps mute the glycemic response of sugar. So basically what this rule is saying is “if you eat something with a relatively high level of high-glucose sugar, ensure you eat a sufficiently large amount of fiber at the same time so that the overall glycemic response is not terrible”.

Most fruits pass this constraint because they have a sufficient amount of fiber to not completely spike blood sugar, and their sugar content isn’t all glucose anyway (i.e., they have enough fructose and sucrose to mute the glycemic response some to begin with).

Of course, the other easy way to avoid this is just to avoid eating lots of added sugar to begin with. A good rule of thumb is to only allow for maybe 5g or less of added sugar per 100 calories, give or take. (Especially if the food in question already naturally contains a fair bit of sugar to begin with).

We do all of this because basically the better your insulin sensitivity, the easier dieting becomes. Better insulin sensitivity helps stabilize blood sugar, reduce sharp hunger spikes, and make stored body fat easier to access for energy. (I’m generalizing, but that is the gist).

Always avoid consuming processed sources of omega-6 fats

Our bodies metabolize omega-6’s (linoleic acid) to turn them into inflammatory arachidonic acid. Systemic inflammation is bad, and so that is why we want to avoid this happening, as much as possible. That’s why we either want to 1) minimize the amount of omega-6’s consumed overall, or 2) consume fats that contain a sufficient amount of omega-3’s that there exists enough enzyme competition that the conversion of omega-6’s to arachidonic acid is functionally inhibited. (We’ll talk more about this below).

At any rate, what the specific wording of this rule means in practice is that:

  • Whole nuts and seeds are OK even if they have high omega-6 levels, because they are unprocessed foods.
  • Most vegetable and seed oils are not, because they are a processed source of omega-6’s.

So with the exception of foods that either do not contain much fat to begin with or do not contain much overall due to decidedly small serving sizes (e.g., croutons, tortilla strips, etc.), the only forms of oil you should allow in your diet are those that are not high in omega-6’s. That means generally prioritizing:

  • Olive oil
    • One of the best high-monounsaturated oils
  • Avocado oil
    • Another of the best high-monounsaturated oils
  • High oleic sunflower/safflower oil
    • Another of the best high-monounsaturated oils
  • Canola oil
    • Still pretty high in monounsaturated fats, but not quite as much as olive oil, avocado oil, and high oleic sunflower/safflower oil. Although it does have more omega-3’s in the remaining bit, so its overall omega-6 level is still pretty low overall. It’s a fine choice too.
  • Coconut oil
    • Higher in saturated fats, but still low in omega-6’s
  • Butter/ghee
    • Higher in saturated fats, but still low in omega-6’s

All of these contain relatively little omega-6’s, so are close to neutral in terms of omega-6/omega-3 balance.

The above oils are all following the first strategy of minimizing the amount of omega-6’s consumed overall. So what about the second strategy mentioned: using enzyme competition to functionally inhibit the conversion of omega-6’s to arachidonic acid?

The main oil that uses the second strategy is flaxseed oil, which has a massive amount of plant-based omega-3’s. One tablespoon of flaxseed oil might yield something like 7,200mg of raw plant-based omega-3’s (ALA) and 1,800mg of omega-6’s (linoleic acid). However, our bodies are pretty bad at converting ALA into EPA and even worse at converting ALA into DHA, meaning that all that ALA actually in practice only nets around 700mg EPA in practice. So does that mean that the 700mg EPA gets outweighed by the 1,800mg of omega-6’s? Not so fast.

Even though the final conversion to EPA is pretty limited and the conversion to DHA is even lower, flooding your system with the plant-based omega-3’s found in flaxseed oil fundamentally changes how your body processes omega-3’s and omega-6’s. This is because your body uses the exact same set of enzymes—primarily one called Delta-6 Desaturase (D6D)—to process both omega-3’s and omega-6’s:

  • The shared pathway: Think of the D6D enzyme as a single conveyor belt inside a factory. It can process omega-6’s to turn them into inflammatory arachidonic acid, OR it can process omega-3’s to turn them into anti-inflammatory EPA.
  • The typical imbalance from modern diets: In a typical modern diet, the conveyor belt is completely overwhelmed by omega-6’s from vegetable oils and seed oils. Because omega-6’s take up 90% of the belt (e.g.), the body produces a massive amount of pro-inflammatory cellular markers.
  • The flaxseed shift: Flaxseed oil is roughly 55% ALA. When you consume a spoonful, you overwhelm that conveyor belt with omega-3’s. This is further aided by the fact that the D6D enzyme actually has a higher natural binding affinity for omega-3’s than it does for omega-6’s.

In essence, by crowding the enzyme pathway with ALA, you effectively starve the omega-6 pathway. This helps prevent your body from turning omega-6 into its most inflammatory long-chain forms like arachidonic acid.

So the upshot is that in practice, flaxseed oil is another perfectly acceptable oil choice, and in some ways, close to the best in terms of rebalancing omega-6’s and omega-3’s.

However, there are two main caveats:

  • Flaxseed oil can only be used in cold-mixed things (e.g., salad dressings) because it is not stable at all, and easily oxidizes.
  • You should probably not switch completely to flaxseed oil in lieu of olive oil, avocado oil, etc., because there are other benefits to monounsaturated fats and saturated fats too.

So in practice, if you choose to use flaxseed oil, I would recommend only using it in salad dressings, and then stopping there. You don’t have to use flaxseed oil instead of olive oil, high oleic sunflower oil, etc. in salad dressings—that is, you can also choose to completely forgo flaxseed oil in your diet altogether—but if if you do decide to use it, then salad dressings are where I personally think it makes the most sense to do so.

As much as possible, avoid processed foods. This means primarily consuming whole foods and minimally-processed foods

If you are willing to pay more, you can usually find whole food versions of things. For example:

  • Whole food cereals
  • Whole food dressings and sauces
  • Etc.

These options will have little to no processed ingredients, and will be decidedly better for it.

Rather than being a black and white rule, this is more of an “as much as possible” sort of thing. For example, consider:

  • Refined/white wheat flour rather than whole wheat flour. (Note: refined wheat flour is different from enriched wheat flour. It is 100% natural, just somewhat processed).
  • Refined oils (rather than virgin/extra virgin oils)
  • Refined sugars like organic cane sugar (rather than completely unrefined sugar sources like maple syrup, coconut sugar, honey, and so on)
  • Refined starches like tapioca starch, potato starch, etc. (rather than the whole food sources themselves, like cassava, potatoes, etc.)
  • Refined protein powders like grass-fed whey protein powder, pea protein powder, etc. (rather than the whole food sources like milk, peas, etc.)
  • Etc.

These things are fine in moderation. Whenever given the choice, I’d usually go for options that are complete whole foods/as unprocessed as possible, but sometimes no market options exist that use completely whole ingredients. And sometimes recipes require a specific processed ingredient to work to begin with. These pea protein crisps come to mind; this product requires pea protein powder to work, so whole peas themselves would not cut it.

I try to be realistic here. Cutting out really processed things like maltodextrin is the main point, rather than getting fixated on some unrealistic standard of perfection. Eating more whole foods is definitely better than less, but not if it forces you to give up food options that make dieting so much easier to stick with in practice.

Avoid all food additives: Only eat things with ingredients that occur naturally in non-trace-amounts

This goes hand-in-hand with eating mostly only whole foods and minimally-processed foods, except this one is a black and white rule.

The somewhat refined foods that can be eaten in moderation (as discussed in the last section) pass this black and white rule because they naturally exist in whole foods in sufficiently large quantities = processing has not somehow chemically transformed them or shifted their composition so drastically that the proportions of things do not even come close to matching any whole food.

Here is an overview of some classes of things that that this black and white rule completely forbids:

  • Enriched flour, fortified cereals, etc.
  • Artificial sweeteners
    • Stevia, monkfruit, erythritol, xylitol, aspartame, etc.
  • Engineered flavors of all forms
    • Anything that includes the word “flavor” or “flavors” as an ingredient
    • Generic “natural flavors” is probably the most common thing that shows up as an ingredient. You should vote with your feet and always avoid purchasing foods that don’t list all their true ingredients. You should understand that this “natural flavors” business is anti-consumer behavior dressed up in the guise of protecting manufacturer trade secrets for flavor profiles. If you are eating minimally processed foods, the ingredients for something should easily fit on the ingredients label, so all the “but if we were to list everything, the label would be too big!!!” arguments also fall apart. Don’t buy the corporate propaganda. Instead, buy minimally-processed foods.
  • Preservatives of all forms, including “natural” ones. (In my opinion, a “natural preservative” is something of an oxymoron, because no true whole foods include preservatives, and minimally-processed foods proper don’t either).
    • Nitrates and nitrites in beef jerky, including celery powder
    • Tocopherols and rosemary extract
    • Citric acid
    • Etc.
  • Gums
    • Guar gum, xanthan gum, agar, carrageenan, etc.
  • Lecithins
    • Sunflower lecithin, soy lecithin, etc.
  • Non-natural leavening agents (i.e., all chemical leavening agents that react to form salts)
    • Baking soda, baking powder, etc
  • Fortified or processed fiber sources
    • Inulin/chicory root fiber, tapioca fiber, etc.
  • Other food additives
    • Dextrose, maltodextrin, etc.

Liquid smoke can sort of go either way. I like my BBQ sauces and smoky flavored foods so allow it, but depending upon how you draw the lines here, it could be considered a non-natural food additive.

I should be clear that the strict rules here seriously limit what you can eat. For example, eliminating non-natural chemical leavening agents means that the only types of baked goods you can consume are those that either have no leavening at all, or use only yeast. Enforcing this means that in practice entire classes of food suddenly disappear as options.

Forbidding things like xanthan gum also eliminates a lot of dressings and sauces that are supposed to be clean label. Xanthan gum is commonly used to prevent separation in dressings and sauces. Being strict about excluding it knocks out most options on the market (even the generally healthier ones), meaning you will be pretty limited in choices overall.

Only eat things that are certified organic

If the above rule basically forbids food additives of all kinds (whether they are “natural” or not), then organic certification ensures that at no point were nasty chemicals and so on used in growing or processing the food.

For example, synthetic pesticides like glyphosate are commonly used in growing foods, and synthetic solvents like hexane are commonly used in industrial food processing. Organic certification ensures that you don’t have to worry about any things like these.

I should note that organic foods can still be highly processed. All organic certification ensures is that the only sort of processing that can happen uses 100% natural means. In practice, you will want to try to only eat foods that are both organic and minimally-processed = as close to whole foods as possible.

Only eat things that are not genetically modified (non-GMO)

What we mean by this is humans tinkering with the genetics directly. Things that have been naturally selectively bred are fine.

In practice, anything that is organic is guaranteed to also be non-GMO.

As much as possible, only eat things that are ethically sourced

This can mean different things for different types of food. For animal products, you have animal welfare to worry about. For example, if you are eating chicken or eggs, were the chickens fully pasture raised (rather than being locked up in buildings)? If beef, were the cows 100% grass-fed and grass-finished on open pastures (rather than being locked up in buildings)? And so forth.

For non-animal foods, you still have to worry about sustainability in agriculture/the impact on the environment. For example, for palm oil, is it sourced in such a way that you can guarantee that it did not contribute to tropical deforestation—cf. the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) certification? Are grains and beans and so on grown in such a way that their production does not permanently destroy the soil quality?

And there is also the human component too. Are working conditions for the food’s supply chain reasonable and fair, or highly exploitative? Compare Fair Trade Certification.

Basically, the idea here is to as much as possible only source food that is ethical and sustainable in terms of how it impacts:

  1. Animals
  2. The environment
  3. The humans involved in its production

Avoid problematic materials during liquid food storage, all cooking with heat, etc.

What are “problematic materials”? Plastics, obviously. Also anything that leaches PFAS. Nonstick teflon coatings too. Not because they leach PFAS (the coatings are stable, and shouldn’t, even at relatively high heats), but because they can chip, and then you end up eating the chemicals.

What about silicone? Silicone has recently become popular as a “non-leaching” food-contact material. So it is any good?

In my N=1 opinion, silicone is fine for anything that does not involve heat. Silicone is made from a backbone of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms (derived from silica/sand) rather than carbon-carbon chains like petroleum-based plastics. This inorganic backbone makes it significantly more chemically stable. High-grade silicone (such as food-grade platinum-cured silicone) does not contain harmful additives like BPA, lead, or phthalates, and it resists leaching chemicals even when exposed to high heat.

The key phrase in the above, in my opinion, is resists leaching chemicals. Resisting leaching is not the same as no leaching at all. I don’t want to be a pseudoscientific scaremongerer and make a mountain out of a molehill, but siloxane migration at high temperatures is well-documented. Can you minimize it? Sure. Using platinum-cured (rather than peroxide-cured) silicone helps (particularly if it passes strict quality standards, like the German LFGB standard), as does pre-baking your silicone products a couple times to get the worst of the siloxane leaching out of the way. Are you safe after that? Eh. Probably?

I just see absolutely no reason to accept “probably” as an answer when we don’t need to. Why not just use stainless, glass, and pyroceram (and also perhaps ceramics that don’t have problematic glazes… although I personally just always use glass and pyroceram instead, since then you never have to worry about glaze sourcing)? Most things that you’d use silicone baking products for also have versions in one of these guaranteed-safe materials. So for me, that is that.

Now, I do use silicone ice-cube trays, because making ice cube trays flexible makes it way easier to get the cubes out. Plus there is no heat here. I also use reusable silicone bags when marinating meat, because again, no heat.

Another material that is food-safe is wood (assuming it has been carved, rather than stuck together with glue and the like).

OK, so if our safe materials list is basically stainless, glass, pyroceram, silicone (for things not involving heat), and carved wood, what does that mean exactly?

  • One important consequence is that it means any food that is liquid or semi-liquid (e.g., I consider nut butters semi-liquid) must come in glass jars, not plastic jars or cans. All cans are actually plastic-lined, so aren’t any better than plastic jars in practice. This rule alone knocks out tons of products. In fact, it is decidedly hard to source soups and beans and other such things in glass jars not cans. Impossible? No. But you’ve got maybe only a couple options on the market, and limited choices.
  • Another important consequence is that all food storage containers (for leftovers, and whatnot) should be glass. This way you can microwave them directly.
  • And of course, any products used during cooking proper (pots, pans, dishes, etc.) should be stainless, glass, or pyroceram.
  • Utensils you use when cooking or serving hot food (i.e., things that get directly exposed to heat) should be carved wood or stainless. If you like, you can use silicone-coated utensils for things that won’t be exposed to heat, like salad tongs.
  • Cutting boards should be carved wood, not plastic.
  • Water bottles should be stainless
  • Etc.

I might go on, but I think that’s most of the important stuff. Doing all of this will maximally reduce your exposure to chemicals. I don’t care how firmly the companies swear that the chemicals are actually safe. All it should take to convince you to have serious trust issues is briefly investigating how they replaced BPA (which had well-documented endocrine disrupting effects) with BPS (another endocrine disrupter that is honestly not much different in practice), but then proudly plastered “BPA free” all over their marketing materials. Plenty of consumers thought they were now safe, while actually they were getting just as high a dose of endocrine disruption as before. This sort of behavior on the part of companies is disgusting and predatory, and shame on them. So yeah, that’s why I push for “no chemicals at all, ever”. Because then I never have to take someone’s word for it.

With the exception of dinner, point-of-consumption food prep time should be five minutes or less (be that hands-on or hands-off)

What the “point-of-consumption” part of this means is that the prep time that occurs right before you eat the food should be five minutes or less. If you bulk prepare food every week, and that part of the food prep takes longer, well, so long as you can still get the food in an edible state in less than five minutes at the actual point of consumption, then you will have cleared this rule.

I view this rule as important for two reasons:

  • It lets me eat close to immediately, once I decide to. It is very common for me to get focused on something, and end up coming up for air only to realize I haven’t eaten yet. At such a time, I don’t want to have to go kick off some long process to get stuff ready to eat, but instead, I want to be able to eat within only a couple minutes of making my decision.
  • It makes it far less likely that I’ll end up going off-the-rails and binging stuff. It is way easier to procrastinate on any food prep that is not dead simple and quick. If I’m hangry, I don’t want to have to exercise self-control in that state. Instead I want to make myself un-hangry as fast as possible.
  • Doing things this way will not require context-switching back and forth, or having a timer hanging over your head.

Cooking dinner is an exception because I am always strength training just before dinner, and will for that reason never have time get away from me. So for dinner specifically, if something takes a bit longer to cook, that is fine. Even here, we still want to minimize point-of-consumption hands-on prep time for efficiency’s sake. But the point is, you can cook burgers in the air fryer for 15 minutes while finishing your last weightlifting set (or whatever), with basically no opportunity cost whatsoever.

If you do bulk food prep, multitask while doing it

One of the reasons why I try to avoid point-of-consumption hands-on food prep is because it leads to weird blocks of time. It’s more awkward to have 10 or 15 minutes here or there than a full hour in one contiguous block.

With a longer contiguous period of time, you can effectively multitask when doing bulk food prep. For example, you can talk to friends and family (be that in person or on the phone), listen to podcasts, go through audio flashcards for something you are learning, or whatever.

In my diet system, if you are willing to buy pre-cooked frozen chicken breast products (like these pre-cooked frozen chicken breast strips from Springer Mountain Farms), you can mostly completely avoid bulk food prep. Unfortunately, you cannot readily buy pre-cooked frozen pasture raised chicken breast products, so you will necessarily be sacrificing ethical sourcing if you take this path of buying pre-cooked chicken breast products to avoid bulk food prep.

I really wish some producer would remedy this situation. I’d buy pre-cooked frozen pasture raised chicken breast products in a heartbeat (even if they were expensive), because they would check literally all the boxes. It’s just that right now not a single product of this type even exists.

Only eat foods that do not get lots of dishes dirty

By “get dirty”, I mean more than just depositing crumbs than can be washed off in like five seconds. I mean grease or sauces getting attached, such that they have to be scrubbed off.

For example, getting a single large glass bowl dirty (for salads, burrito bowls, soups, soybean pasta dishes, etc.) is OK, as is getting a single air fryer container/stainless steel rack assembly dirty (for beef burgers and turkey burgers). What is to be avoided is making things that get more than one thing dirty at a time.

Most of the time, I recommend letting dishes soak for an hour or so. It tends to make cleanup go much faster after that.

Try to consume foods in their most bioavailable state, and in the state that best eliminates anti-nutrients and toxins

If a food’s beneficial compounds (e.g., vitamins, minerals, antioxidants) are more bioavailable cooked than raw, eat it cooked. If the reverse, eat it raw. This can vary widely by food.

Some things also become more bioavailable only in the presence of other ingredients. For example, the curcuminoids present in turmeric are best absorbed with piperine, a compound present in black pepper. So eating black pepper at the same time as turmeric makes sense, to maximize curcuminoid bioavailability.

In terms of anti-nutrients and toxins, beans come to mind. Soaking and pressure-cooking them is more or less mandatory, not optional. (Of course, you can buy beans in glass jars that have already had this done to them—which is what I do—but the point is, this has been done to them). But it is not just beans. Plenty of foods can have anti-nutrients reduced by preparing them in a specific way (often just by cooking or steaming them).

Cooking aside, you might also consider eating sprouted foods. Sprouting (germination) is one of the most effective natural methods for reducing anti-nutrients in grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Doing it yourself is pretty annoying and time-consuming, but it is pretty easy to buy foods that have already been sprouted or are made out of ingredients that have already been sprouted. For example, Food For Life frozen breads.

In terms of reducing toxins, consider the nixtamalization of corn. This traditional Mesoamerican process involves soaking and cooking raw corn in an alkaline solution (usually water mixed with food-grade lime/calcium hydroxide) to make masa. This process chemically alters and reduces aflatoxin levels by up to 70–80%. Again, not something I’d really recommend you do yourself, but you can look for products that use this process as part of their preparation, like tortilla chips from Masa.

Getting some things from supplements rather than whole foods

Getting some things from supplements rather than whole foods is a compromise I am willing to make in order to make diet compliance more likely, even though in some ways this is probably less optimal overall. Idealism is nice and all, but brutal realism is necessary when trying to make things work for the long haul.

Don’t misunderstand—I am not saying that I eat a bunch of junk food and then try to make up for it with supplements. Rather, it is more like I selectively supplement things that are tricky to get enough of without very specific dietary choices that I am not willing to make, for whatever other reason.

The core five things I supplement:

  • Omega 3’s (i.e., EPA and DHA directly, rather than plant-based ALA)
  • Vitamin K2 (Menaquinones)
  • Vitamin D3 (Cholecalciferol)
  • Magnesium
  • Zinc

Omega-3’s are mostly found in fish. Vitamin K2 is found in fermented foods (especially natto), egg yolks, butter, cheese, and grass-fed meats. Vitamin D3 is produced naturally in human skin upon sun exposure, and also found in animal-based foods like fatty fish, egg yolks, and liver (though vegan D3 derived from lichen is also available nowadays). Both Magnesium and Zinc are present in all sorts of foods, meaning getting at least some of them is not the problem, but getting enough of them. Between Magnesium and Zinc, the data seems to suggest that many more people are truly deficient in the former than the latter, but both have double-digit percentages of the population with sub-optimal intake = at least marginal inadequacies.

The reasons for supplementation are somewhat different across these cases:

  • For Omega-3’s and Vitamin K2, you will have a hard time getting large doses of these without eating fish and fermented soy foods, respectively. So in my opinion, if you aren’t willing to regularly eat those foods (which are close to the only whole food sources of them) but you still want to get enough of these micronutrients for truly optimal functioning, supplementation is your only route.
  • For Vitamin D3, if you get a lot of sun exposure and also eat a lot of fish, you might be OK. But, again, if you don’t want to eat fish (and/or go out of your way to get direct sunlight exposure, which can be tricky depending upon your climate and the weather and so on), it is a lot easier to just supplement it. According to the statistics, Vitamin D deficiency is extremely common—even in the developed world—so this one is kind of a no-brainer.
  • As to Magnesium and Zinc, some of the best dietary sources of these (like pumpkin seeds) have macros that are not great when cutting, because the percentage of calories from protein are too low. Also, there appears to be some research that people who train hard probably need more than the normal recommended amounts of them (which makes logical sense). But if you aren’t willing to specifically prioritize eating the foods that pack a lot of them, it will probably be difficult to get anywhere near those higher levels. But supplementing them means you can get to those higher levels without having to make compromises in food selection in order to prioritize them.

If all that isn’t inherently convincing on its own, to me, the best general argument for supplementing the above five things is that there can be a difference between getting enough to not be outright deficient and getting enough to support ideal functioning. Supplementing these things can basically ensure that you will always be taking in enough of these micronutrients for optimal functioning. So long as your supplements are not extreme in their dosing, there will basically be no risk of overdosing on any of these, so it is sort of just a form of “micronutrient insurance”.

Now you might “Why only these five things? Why not supplement more?” It’s a good question. The truth is, for most normal people, the data suggests that those five things are the most significant risk areas. Menstruating women, pregnant individuals, and strict vegetarians/vegans may want to consider supplementing Iron. Adults over 50 (due to declining stomach acid) and anyone avoiding animal products may want to consider supplementing Vitamin B12. And pregnant individuals and those who entirely avoid iodized salt, dairy, or seafood may want to consider supplementing Iodine. And so on. What I am trying to say is that it is not like there can never be a place for other supplementation. However, these other supplements are a whole lot more circumstance-specific than the main five from above, is the point.

In my view, for most people like me who aren’t willing to arrange their diets around these five micronutrients, ensuring that you supplement them (in highly bioavailable forms) is important, and then added stuff past that is sort of whatever. If the multivitamin you take happens to contain more things (like Iron, Calcium, Vitamin C, B Vitamins, etc.), that’s fine. If not, it probably doesn’t matter much.

The supplements I personally take:

My diet: cutting

Overview

When cutting, my diet takes the following form:

  1. A salad or burrito bowl for lunch
  2. A (relatively) low-calorie protein bar snack early-afternoon
  3. A low-calorie soup or mid-calorie soup snack mid-afternoon
  4. A jerky or biltong snack late-afternoon
  5. A beef burger or turkey burger or soybean pasta dish for dinner

On days that I ruck for cardio (which burns hundreds of extra calories), I will have a burger and a pasta dish for dinner. This is to make sure that I do not run so large a calorie deficit that muscle is broken down for energy, even in a deep cut. Not going overboard with the calorie deficit is proportionally more important the lower your body fat percentage is.

TODO: document how to properly estimate calories needed, based on:

  • Base metabolism, calculated based off of lean body mass
  • Calories from rucking
  • Calories form indoor cycle
  • Calories from strength training
  • Calories from ??? average hours of standing desk a day
  • Calories from 400mg/day of caffeine
  • Calories from only drinking ice-cold water. (Warming up the ice-cold water actually costs our bodies calories)

A salad or burrito bowl for lunch

Salad

Core ingredients:

Dressing options:

Always eaten with:

Burrito bowl

Core ingredients:

Always eaten with:

A (relatively) low-calorie protein bar snack early-afternoon

Options:

A low-calorie soup or mid-calorie soup snack mid-afternoon

Low-calorie soup

Core ingredients:

Soup options:

Always eaten with:

Mid-calorie soup

Core ingredients:

Soup options:

Always eaten with:

A jerky or biltong snack late-afternoon

Jerky

Options:

Biltong

Options:

A beef burger or turkey burger or soybean pasta dish for dinner

Beef burger

Core ingredients:

Condiment options:

Always eaten with:

Turkey burger

Core ingredients:

Condiment options:

Always eaten with:

Soybean pasta dish

Core ingredients:

Sauce options:

Always eaten with:

TOC