Evolutionary Nutrition: 3 Ways to Always be Prepared

"By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail" 

                                                          - Benjamin Franklin 

Preparation is Key
I've learned from my own experience and observed dozens of times that preparation is key when you are adopting a new way of eating. I really emphasize the importance of this with the people I work with because I have seen it derail people so many times.

Here's what I'm talking about: You're starting an evolutionary diet and aren't quite familiar with the foods you're going to be eating. You end up stuck at school or work with nothing on hand and not quite sure how to improvise. You're starving and end up grabbing a pack of doritos or a piece of pizza. Not an optimal situation, so here's how you deal with it.

There's a couple options, depending on your preferences:

1. Intermittent Fasting:

Martin Berkhan (on the right) has pioneered this approach, it works very well. 

Intermittent fasting is a very effective method of eating for fat burning and has numerous health benefits as well. If you know you'll be somewhere with quality food options in a reasonable amount of time and you can distract yourself from being hungry, just wait till you have access to good food.

This method is extremely liberating because food is never a constraint on your activities. 

Worried about "starvation mode", "metabolic slow-down", or "burning muscle for energy"? Don't be- these ideas are myths developed by supplement and snack companies to get you to buy their products. The research actually suggests that intermittent fasting protects you from muscle loss and can increase your metabolism. 

2. Snacks

Having some snacks stored at work or in your backpack can be a lifesaver. Here are my favorites:

• Hard boiled eggs
• Jerky
• Avocado
• Sardines
• Chopped veggies - carrots, celery
• Dark chocolate
• Olives
• Stick of butter - Nibbling on butter fills you up quick. Some people don't like this.
• Yogurt
• Cheese
• Nuts (in moderation!)
• Fruit (in moderation and depending on your goals)
• Lara Bars and Perfect Food Bars - not optimal but good enough. 

3. Tupperware Warrior

Your third option is to take some leftovers or make some food and throw it in a container and bring it with you. This is also ridiculously easy, but mildly annoying if you don't life bringing food containers with you.

These are my top snacks; tell me what yours are in the comments. 

My Take on Low-Carb Diets for Fat Loss

My progress pic: Evolutionary Nutrition + low carb

While the effects of low-carb dieting on health can be impressive as well, especially for people with metabolic derangement (insulin/leptin resistance), I want to stick to low-carb for fat loss at the moment. Just to be clear, an evolutionary or paleo diet is not by nature always a low carb diet, though it can be. 

Why are low-carb diets so effective for fat burning?

Without going in to the underlying hormonal causes, the real advantage of low-carb diets is the resetting of satiation signaling pathways. 

What I mean by this is that when you eat a diet low in carbohydrates, your bodies ability to send the signals to your brain that you are full, is greatly increased.

The end result of this is that people will feel full on less food.

In fact, several clinical studies show that subjects eating a low-carb diet until they are full often eat less than people on high-carb diets that are actively restricting calories.

This makes it relatively easy to lose fat when compared to a high-carb diet, because you simply aren't as hungry. 

However, it's important to remember that even if you are eating low carb, if you constantly eat past the point of feeling full, it is still possible to gain body fat. 

The other thing I want to emphasize about low-carb diets is that the majority of the health benefits that people see from them are likely because of the things they are not eating; the grains, legumes, sugars, etc. You will get a lot of the same effects of a low-carb diet by replacing these foods with safe starches.

Weight loss on a high-carb diet is possible, although I wouldn't recommend for most people. It usually leads to feelings of constant hunger, deprivation, and possible malnutrition due to a decrease in consumption of the most nutrient dense foods (meat, eggs, animal fat), which can results in fat-soluble vitamin deficiencies.

I will examine the underlying hormonal and metabolic effects of low-carb diets, and their relationship with longevity sometime soon.

Precision Nutrition on Low Carb Diets

PN on Low-Carb Diets

Precision Nutrition is a pretty good resource for most people, and it's what got me in to nutrition in the first place, over 6 years ago. I like that they are staying pretty up to date with the research, and are not afraid to say "New evidence has come out and we're updating our approach."

Although they haven't fully caught on with the grains and fats, it looks to me like they are heading in that direction. John Berardi (founder) is a smart guy and I'm guessing they will start implementing some of this stuff in the next couple years. 

Check out this article for a great summary of low-carb diets: Lean Liver With A Low-Carb Diet.

They also explain NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) and look at a study that used low-carb diets to treat it. 

I really like that they acknowledge that the increase in LDL cholesterol seen on a low carb diet is most likely NOT a bad thing, because it is the friendly Type A, large fluffy LDL, and these do not cause any damage to the blood vessels.

Here's what they say in the conclusion: 

In this study, a lower carbohydrate diet had a metabolic advantage over other diets due to more liver lipid oxidation, higher ketones and higher whole body fat oxidation.

Low carbohydrate diets in general have been shown to:

• lead to weight loss
• lead to fat loss
• improve blood triglycerides — a key risk marker for cardiovascular disease
• improve HDL-C — a key risk marker for cardiovascular disease
• increase or cause no change in LDL-C, though it seems to change the size distribution to a more favourable pattern (more large lower density LDL-C).

Optimal Level of Body Fat?

This question posted on PaleoHacks forum last week:

How lean can you get with strict paleo?

Let's hear some body fat percentages! Just how lean is everyone getting on strict paleo?

It seems like we see tons of success stories.. people dropping a ton of weight in going from obese to fit, but I haven't seen too many completely shredded people who are strict paleo.

I've actually gone up from around 8% to 9.5-10% in the year since I went strict (was working on low fat SAD with a calorie deficit with way too much activity and too little sleep before, so I am unquestionably healthier now).

Jamie Eason...

This is something I've thought about quite a bit, here are my current thoughts on this topic.

The evidence does show that an evolutionary or paleo diet is the healthiest diet possible, but when I think about leanness that leads to another question...

Is being ultra lean the healthiest state for your body?

Despite the instinctive appeal I (and many others) have for being in an extremely lean state, I doubt that this is the absolute healthiest state for the body to be in. Having a small amount of available body fat for hormone production, cell membranes, extended fasts, and other homeostatic functions is probably a good thing. This might explain your slight increase in body fat with a corresponding increase in wellbeing/health. 

However, it is certainly possible to get extremely lean by manipulating macronutrient ratios, exercise modalities, and maybe some intermittent fasting. How lean will depend on your individual genetics and desire. Eating slightly under maintenance calories while maintaining your muscles mass while result in fat loss, but I don't know if this is the optimal state for your body.

GSP - lean mean machine

This being said, I vary between 7-10% body fat, and many of my fellow athletes I have converted to an evolutionary diet are in a similar range.