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By
Phil Stevens |
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Something that came up in conversation
today with Charles, myself, and a client...simple dietary
basics. Meaning, just fundamental habits. It is easy to forget
that a large part, or the majority, of the population simply
doesn’t know, register, or use, simple solid habits.
Its easy to lose sight of this
when you're around, and dealing with people that have been
in the game a long time. Even then many of us lose sight of
things and try and make diet and training more complicated
then it has to be.
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Honestly. In a world obsessed with
speed and results. Wanting them from little to no work. Its amazing
we have both lost a grasp of simple basics and also developed a
society that sweats the smallest of minutia and detail that is meaningless
and un-needed for the VAST majority. If everyone were to stick to
a few very simple rules then honestly 99% of people lives, and for
99% of the goals they have, there is NO need for such stress, confusion,
and time wasted on small details.
Unless your looking to get to the
VERY extremes of body composition and or strength and performance,
there is NO need to complicate things further then they have to
be. Even when reaching for the extremes you MUST have a firm and
comfortable foundation in the basics and those are still where you
spend 95% of your time.
So what are the basics of nutrition??
And why are they so elusive to the whole?
Do a Google for search for diet basics
and your inundated with 893,000 hits most of which are loaded with
the next magic pill or potion.
Hoodia
Gordonii - The
latest and greatest weight loss supplement?
Whittle that down and you find several
thousand that actually take the time to give some pertinent information
on dietary habits, yet still loaded with minutia that many people
don’t need, want, will stick to, or it is simply outdated,
or blatantly ignorant claims.
For efficient weight loss you must
comply to the ten fold principles of balancing your macros in a
very scientific pattern, along with proper micronutrient intake
and…….
With further investigation you then
begin to uncover some solid plans and habits that continually pop
up time and time again. We begin to get to some nice solid foundations.
Broad habits that can be built upon. Yet some are still a bit to
broad, or incomplete in my opinion and can be even further filtered
to core habits of dietary intake.
- Eat more fruits, vegetables and
whole grains.
- Reduce intake of saturated fat,
trans fat and cholesterol.
- Limit sweets and salt.
- Drink alcoholic beverages in moderation,
if at all.
- Control portion sizes and the total
number of calories you consume.
With that I'd like to give is 3 very
simple suggestions for dietary habits that again EVERYONE should
base their intake on. Habits to reach ANY goal. Core simple principles
that simplify things. You can make it to a very high level without
getting wrapped up in the minutia at all. Without stressing over
the exact macro levels, weighing food, or even counting calories.
Only after making marked progress
and making core simple principles habit, and building a solid and
indestructible nutritional base that you can seamlessly and stresslessly
live should you even worry about getting more complicated. I don’t
care what anyone claims, solid dietary habits that will produce
VERY legitimate, impressive and advanced physique and performance
results are not rocket science its only the past fee decades that
it has been popular thought.
#1 Eat Real Food
Above all simply base intake on real
food, things that you can find in nature. Foods that grow, walk,
swim, fly, or come from things that fly. Beef, fruits, eggs, veggies,
milk, beans, poultry, fish, nuts, seeds, whole grains, spices, oils.
Basically eat things that you could go outside in nature and find.
Base your nutrition on those things, they should be the foundation
to each and every meal. Your staples.
The day there is a Twinkie tree, blowing
pastures of spaghetti, or you can hunt a wild flock of Tofurkey,
and drink from flowing streams of Pepsi is the day these should
be the staples of your diet. (While on that topic why do vegetarians
always process and craft their foods to taste and look like meat?
They are vegetarians, accept it and eat the vegetables how they
look? If not eat the damn cow instead of making some weird vegetable
voodoo doll)
I guarantee you will have to try DAMN
hard to get fat if you simply changed to real whole foods. Foods
that have not been ran through the wringer, stripped and then refortified
with Junk. Foods that are hard to digest and loaded with macro and
micro nutrients. These foods will have your metabolism burning like
a nuclear reactor, give you energy and the building blocks of a
healthy life.
Again this is a BASE principle. A
part of your foundation. You then adjust to your goals. Someone
looking to lose weight would stick to this simple habit 90% + of
all the food eaten. Someone Looking to put on, or hold a Large amount
of body mass, or an athlete with a high energy expenditure will
adjust to a greater % of simple foods that are easily digested and
pack a caloric punch. But they still have real food as a base
#2 Eat Protein with every meal
Plain and simple every meal should
contain a complete protein source. Anytime you put something in
your pie hole there should be protein to go along with it. I don’t
care how much or how little your getting. If you eat it at every
meal, every snack in some form you will go a long way in the right
direction to having enough or even a little excess without having
to stress over the macros. As well we all know protein has several
very desirable properties that we can tap into by having consistent
intake of it.
It has a High TEF, meaning simply
digesting it is hard costly and makes your burn more fuel to consume
it. Numerous amino acids ( the building blocks of protein) are vital
to a simply healthy life. We MUST get them through ingestion as
we cannot create them (much like EFA’s). Amino rich blood is
muscle sparring, or has a high potential to be the building blocks
for anabolism. Meaning we WANT them in abundance no mater the goal
be losing fat of gaining mass, they have great benefit.
If it was my choice each meal would
be of a complete protein, meaning things that walk, swim, fly, crawl,
make noise and move under their own power, or things that come from
them like eggs and milk. That however would complicate things. So
by all means be a vegan or base your protein intake on soy, bean
rice what have you, that leaves more of the good stuff for people
like me. Just get your protein in.
#3 Eat as MUCH as you can to make progress to
your goals
One of the most common mistakes I
see is also one of the most problematic as far as health and reaching
one goals and staying there. Making healthy continual major progress
for the long term. It is people eating like birds or starving themselves.
Even when on so called mass gaining phases men eating like a 12
year old girl from Ethiopia.
Eat as MUCH as you can to make progress
to your goals be it losing, gaining or maintaining weight. Most
often people decide to drop weight and go on a “diet.”
What do they do? Starve and deprive themselves. They go from pig
to chicken in one swoop. This massive dropping of calories give
and instant reaction to scale weight but the positive benefits are
short lived.
Soon they begin losing energy, catabolizing
expensive muscle mass that the body feels is a detriment to its
survival and storing life’s fuel, body fat. The metabolism
further drops, the very life processes being to slow, and a never
ending cycle of having to eat less to get the same results begins.
Same can be said for many people trying
to gain muscle. I see it time and time again. A person wants to
Get HYYYUGE!! And strong and they want it NOW. but they don’t
want any body fat so they train like a demon and add a few hundred
calories to their diet. They make little to no progress. 5 years
later these are the same people you run into still sporting there
extra small shirt touting how they made 4 lbs of 100% lean gains.
Leaving out the fact it took them the whole of 5 years to do it.
Eat as MUCH as you can to make progress.
Only drop your calories as low as you need to see body comp change
in the right direction when looking to shed fat. By keeping intake
UP you will preserve as much strength as possible and as much lean
mass as possible. Your health will stay up, your metabolism wont
crash, you will have greater energy for training and you will assure
as much of your loss as possible will be fat.
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For gaining, bite
the damn bullet shovel some food in and train HARD. The extra
intake will speed recovery and growth. Any fat gain will be
negligible and easy to take off later. The amount of mass
your able to gain in even months will eclipse what you would
have in years trying to do it 100% clean.
There you have
it. Its not an exhaustive list, its not complicated but honestly
from my experience, and experience with those I’ve worked
with and trained around I firmly believe it shouldn’t
be. That these simple core habits will allow people to stop
over thinking things, and reach a very high level goal set
in a short amount of time. Half of which would be do to just
simple time and stress saved from not sweating the minutia.
Please by all means
chime in. Get some good dialog going on. What do you feel
are the basics? How simple can we get it? Must we honestly
go into macros, and micro processing of daily diet on a year
or life long basis to make success in your opinion? I’m
all for trying new things and toying with the vast sea that
is nutrition, but I’m not sold on it being a must or
need for even the vast majority.
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About The Author
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Coach Phil Stevens is an accomplished
strength athlete with considerable experience in both powerlifting
and strongman competition. Phil is the 2007 APA World Champion
in the 242-pound class (total). He currently holds the APF
275-pound class raw National bench, squat, deadlift, and total
records. Phil’s marquis lift was his 700-pound raw deadlift,
performed on February 14, 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Phil has been ranked in the
“Top 10” in the deadlift Nationally across all powerlifting
federations, and in addition to his coaching duties at Staley
Training Systems, he also serves as the Arizona State Chair
for the North American Highlander Association, as well as
the founder of Lift For Hope, an annual strength-competition
with proceeds donated to Charity (www.Lift4Hope.org).
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