60 DoD Week 2: Eating for Health and Fitness

Use this thread to post your 60 DoD progress. Where are you succeeding? How will you maintain? Where are you failing? How will you persevere?

60 DoD Week 2: Diet

This week in 60 DoD we are going to talk about dietary options.

A lot of guys who turn up in MRP (hell, a lot of guys in general) struggle with weight. Even after significant muscle gains it is still easy to have too high of a body fat percentage, making one look like a fat weightlifter rather than a hawt guy who gets laid. While there are wildly divergent opinions on what works for fat loss (particularly fat loss without losing muscle), and while I am not an expert in this area, I nevertheless sought to review a few of the more popular dietary options available. This, like the lifting thread, will probably bring the evangelists out from the woodwork. Simply reply to the thread with your alternate programs and I’ll endeavor to update the thread at the end of the week to include the good ones.

(Note that throughout this post the word “diet” is used to denote “a way of eating”, not something that bitches do when they want to lose a quick 10. While some of these may be useful for quick weight loss, our goal as men should be to find a stable, long-term “diet” that enables our goals and keeps us healthy. So no talk about “You shouldn’t diet you should have a food plan...” That’s exactly what I’m talking about here, asshole.)

1. Ketogenic diet. The idea here is to cut carbohydrates out of the diet, either completely or near-completely. The theory here is that in absence of carbs the body will produce ketones via the liver, which will switch you over to metabolizing fat for energy instead of carbs. Check out r/keto for more.

2. The Carb Nite Solution. A twist on ketogenic diets wherein one eats keto, but has a carbohydrate binge every 5 to 7 days. John Keifer, the author, has a MS in Physics, making a book on dieting seemingly an odd choice for him. Nevertheless, he claims his plan is based on reading hundreds and hundreds of scientific journal articles, and he has a number of devotees. Check out Kiefer’s website at carbnite.com.

3. Paleo. This way of eating is again similar to ketogenic diets, but the idea is that one should “eat like a predator, not like prey.” This translates to having a meat-centric diet, no sugars, no grains. Carbs should be limited, and come from plants (fruits and veggies) rather than seeds. The thinking is that this takes advantage of our millennia-old, unevolved metabolism. You can learn more at r/paleo.

4. Leangains. A program designed by Martin Berkhan, a self-proclaimed “nutritional consultant, magazine writer and personal trainer.” The idea here is intermittent fasting, with 16 hours of not eating combined with an 8-hour eating window. The system is designed to enable muscle gain and fat loss simultaneously. Dive in at r/leangains.

5. Avatar Nutrition. Layne Norton, a bodybuilder, nutritional coach, and PhD in Nutritional Sciences developed a web application that takes in information about your goals and your current anthropometrics, and uses them to set macro targets for you. As you use the system you provide weekly weigh-ins, and the macro targets are redrawn depending on your progress and adherence to the system. The central idea is that macro balance is what counts, and one must eat to the macro targets, not under them. See more at Avatar Nutrition.

6. u/redneck001 explains how to count calories and lean out. Could it be this simple? Try it and see.

So there are a few solid options. Post your personal progress from Week 1 and any other worthy dietary programs below.