Renaissancemen.org

I strongly believe that inside of 5 years, MOST people will be eating like I am now.  That is, low carb, medium protein, and high fat.

Most of you still hear “high fat” and you are conditioned that, of course, fat makes you fat.  You are conditioned to believe cholesterol in your diet will clog your arteries.  You are told you need to eat every few hours or you will be catabolic and lose your muscle.  You are told you need to eat 6 meals a day to be healthy.

What if I told you that was a lie?

This is the cover of Time Magazine in the early 80s, when they “discovered” that the cholesterol in eggs is bad for you and killing you.  Problem is, a few years ago, they went “oops.  Our bad”.  Turns out our body produces a ton more cholesterol than we eat, and our dietary cholesterol intake has nothing to do with the cholesterol count in our bloodstream.  In fact, the latest and greatest science is saying that your cholesterol number really has nothing to do with heart attacks.  The best indications the below talk about is your triglyceride to HDL ratio.  The better the number, the lower your risk for heart disease.

The problem is, the science in the last 10 years has been extremely impressive, and, along with the internet – there is now a ridiculous amount of evidence mounting that for most people a low carb/high fat way of living is the way to stay trim and lean.

So this might be more than 4 people on my Rushmore, but these people have made compelling cases.  In totality, along with the million of people losing weight, they have been making an almost bulletproof (pun intended) case that what we have all been conditioned to believe is a fairy tale.

Below, I’d like to walk you through the people who have been an incredible influence on me.  I’d like you to discover what I have.

Gary Taubes – Gary is a science reporter.  I believe he was a physics major at Harvard and then became a science journalist.  He has written many books and articles, but “The Case Against Sugar” is without a doubt, one of the most compelling reads on the planet.   Gary points out that just over 100 years ago, diabetes was a pretty rare diagnosis and today it affects one in two.  He goes through the HISTORY of how people started getting fat.  He presents evidence as if it’s a court case.  He also spent 5 years writing it and the amount of sources are insane.

Take a look at him on Rogan.

Mark Sisson – Mark Sisson is a former marathon runner and Ironman athlete.  He spent so many years in pain with arthritis and IBS.  As soon as he went low carb, everything cleared up.  He’s 63 and JACKED.  He leads a movement called “primal” which essentially is a low carb lifestyle with a framework of rules to live by.  He recommends keto to become fat adapted, but then recommends people limit their carbs to 100-150 a day and maximize their life.  His books are incredible, and the 2009 book “The Primal Blueprint” was updated in 2016 and I’m currently well over halfway through it.  Fascinating!!

Take a listen to Mark on Joe Rogan.  It’s compelling.

Dr. Stephen Phinney (MD, PhD) and Jeff Volek (PhD) – I am labeling these two together because they are pretty much linked in most publications.  They discuss specifically the performance of people on low carb diets, and they have been instrumental in showing how ketosis spares muscle glycogen.  It was thought that low carb would lead to “lack of energy” and have significant performance issues against “sugar burners”.  The problem was, early studies did the comparisons when people were on low carb for 3-6 weeks.  It may take 6-12 months to become “fully fat adapted” and reap the major benefits of burning fat as a primary fuel source.  Today, you have people like Zach Bitter breaking endurance run records – and he’s a low carb athletic performer.

Jonathan Bailor – for ME, he’s a big deal.  He’s not nearly as well known as the others, but he contributed a LOT to my health the last 8 months.  He did a YouTube video about 4 years ago called “The Calorie Myth” and he wrote a book on it.  He spent 10 years researching and writing it.  For me – THIS was the major disconnect between food and calories.  After reading his book, I put down the calorie counting apps and have taken off an additional 40 pounds.  His mantra – if you take care of the QUALITY of the food you eat, it will AUTOMATICALLY take care of the QUANTITY of what you eat.  He is mostly a paleo advocate, but his approach has freed me from ever having to count calories and I continue to lose weight.  Lifesaving shit.  Take a look at a one hour lecture that changed my life.

Dr. Tim Noakes (MD, PhD) – he literally wrote the book on eating carbs with running, called, “The Lore of Running”.  About a decade ago, he had put on a lot of weight and got diabetes, despite being a pinnacle of health with running.  He felt he was overwhelmed with mounting evidence that he was wrong all along – and came out and fervently admitted he was wrong.  He is now a leading voice in the low carb/high fat movement.

Dr. Ken Berry

Dr. Berry is a YouTube guy who has gotten a ton more followers the last 6 months.  He is a medical doctor who has been highly involved with keto and I have valued a ton of his videos.  Recently, he wrote a book called “Lies my doctor told me” which I need to buy!

Honorable mentions:

Dr. Dom D’Agostino – cancer researcher.  Has shown that low carb/high fat diets can prevent/reverse certain cancers.  He does research for the US military.

Eric Berg – He’s all over the internet.  Lots of good low carb high fat information.  He’s a chiropractor, not an MD.  Most people don’t realize that MDs do not have a ton of nutritional education as part of their MD.  They also have to follow strict guidelines as to what they were taught.  Many internet personalities have come out of the woodwork and share results of recent studies.  Berg is one of them.

Thomas DeLauer – He lost over 100 pounds and has a ton of content.  The problem I have with DeLauer is that he gets over-technical to the point where if you aren’t connecting the dots and taking notes, you’re lost.  And I have 10 years of college.  His writers tend to go too far into the weeds and I end up missing the big point.  That being said, he does follow the latest research and shares with us.

Keto treats

I wrote this because there are so many people who want to make a change in their lives – and so many people are getting bad information.

“But I just can’t give up chocolate!  I love French Fries too much!!”

So don’t.

People want to say things like:

• That’s not keto!!
• You can only have 20g of carbs per day!

As long as you’re having about 50g of carbs per day, you will be producing a good amount of ketones and using fat as your primary fuel.  Maybe on a Saturday you bump up to 75 or 100g.  THE HORROR!!  “It kicked me out of ketosis!!”

So what.

The problem is when one cheat meal becomes a cheat long weekend which becomes a cheat week, and suddenly you are back to burning sugar as a primary fuel.

But occasionally hitting 60?  75?  100?  Not a big deal.  If you are having a heavy exercise day – maybe you lifted heavy with the legs and biked for an hour.  You have a LOT more flexibility to have more carbs those days and STILL stay in ketosis.

Two examples below – chocolate and French fries.

If you have a typical chocolate bar, you’re looking at 40-80g of sugar.  It’s easy to overeat these treats!  But what I have done is find 85% dark chocolate that is about 1g of carbs net per square.  After a dinner, I might have 8-12 squares with some peanut butter.  It’s not low calorie, but I eat one meal a day – sometimes my dinners look like this:

These range from 500-1400 calories, depending on how much olive oil, avocados, cheese, or meat I put in these.  Calories are not what you should be focusing on, but they DO matter.  As Bailor said, if you focus on the QUALITY of your food, it will automatically take care of the QUANTITY of your food.  Calories are in the back of my mind, but they are not the primary focus.  I inherently know that the salad on the left is 500 and the salad in the middle is maybe 1000 whereas the one on the right is closer to 1400.  So I know that maybe if I’m having the one on the left or the middle, I might be able to sneak in some chocolate!!!  If I’m having the one on the right, maybe I just have some pecans or a handful of berries.

I didn’t do a ton of sweets back in the day.  My poison was usually pizza, breads, and pasta.  However, when I did eat sweets, the chocolate peanut butter was my kryptonite!!  The day before I started keto, I pretty much ate a whole box of chocolate peanut butter covered pretzels.

When I found this dark chocolate last week – the game changed forever.  I like this BETTER than anything I’ve ever had with chocolate and peanut butter.  So my serving after dinner might be 8-12g of carbs with the peanut butter.

My overall point is that you can find things with keto/paleo that fit YOU without all of the sugar.  THIS is now my favorite of all times – no need to go back to Reese’s peanut butter cups!

What about French Fries?

With fries, you’re looking at two issues: they are starchy tubers that are pretty high in carbs but also they are usually cooked in hydrogenated vegetable oil.  This equals trans fats and these will most definitely kill you.  When people talk about fats on keto, they are NOT referring to trans fats and “vegetable” oils.  These things are highly inflammatory and will contribute to an early death.

But they aren’t keto!  Right?

What if you cut some up yourself and fired them into an air fryer?  Maybe not as tasty as Wendy’s, but you also remove all of the trans fat and 800 chemicals to make it taste the way it does for your brain to light up.

Each russet potato is about 33g of net carbs.  So the day I had this, I had OMAD.  My dinner was 6 eggs with 3 pieces of ham in it over 2 TBSP of butter along with my primal kitchen ketchup.  Maybe 700-800 calories and less than 10g of carbs.  So I had French Fries with it later!!!

Total carbs for the day was still under 60.  No trans fats.  No sugar in my ketchup.  Tasty!  We still have to refine the process here to make these, but you get the idea.  You can do this with sweet potatoes as well.

So I wouldn’t do this on a day where I already had 75g of carbs.  Additionally, it might be best to do a meal like this after some vigorous exercise which uses glycogen.  Why?  You are depleting your glycogen stores.  When your body gets hit with this 30-40g of carbs, it will put it back into your glycogen stores rather than on to your belly.

I am really interested in the “primal” way of living Mark Sisson discusses.  He put together this exercise pyramid that I’m interested in trying to live by.  Monday I have off from work, so it’s going to be 45 degrees and I’m hoping to get a 2 hour hike in!!