EVERY DIET IS A FAD DIET

Oh boy here we go again.  I’ve been on the nutritional fringe since 2002, because a lot of my early “education” in physical transformation came by way of the GameFAQs martial arts message board.  By 2002, I had already been engaging in regular exercise for over 2 years, and had lost 25lbs through portion reduction (still eating the same foods, just less of them) and had been training in Tae Kwon Do since 1994 while also being a massive video game nerd (among other hobbies), which is how I ended up in this specific corner of the internet.  And for reasons I myself am not particularly sure of, at this specific moment in history, the Atkins diet had gained a resurgence in popularity, and the loudest members of this corner of the internet championed it and ketogenic diets in general.  And exposed to this “radical” idea (in truth, my Grandfather and Grandmother had both already employed the Atkin’s diet a few years earlier and successfully lost a significant amount of weight with it, while my family considered them all nut jobs at the time), I drank up ALL the (low-carb) Koolaid, employed a terribly stupid attempt at it by living off of lunch meat and fast food burgers without the bun, and thus my journey into nutritional fringe was well underway.  And over 20 years later, I still find I prefer low/no-carb diets and tend to look, feel and perform my best in this manner, and I STILL find people chiding me for “falling for a fad diet”, to which I retort that, today: EVERY diet is a fad diet.

It's amazing how you had to be around in the 90s to even understand this

 

How so?  Well let’s examine the initial argument.  Those that deride low/no-carb/paleo/intermittent fasting/carb cycling/etc nutritional approaches tend to prose that the NON-fad approach to nutrition would mean simply counting one’s calories and eating the right amount of macronutrients based on one’s goals (weight gain, weight loss, or weight maintenance).  Some will simply end the conversation there, existing in a camp of “If It Fits Your Macros”, whereas some will further contend that it’s ideal to eat nutritious foods in this pursuit, which tend to be those foods that are NOT hyper-processed, and, instead, exist in a mostly whole/unprocessed state.  Eating in a manner OUTSIDE of this confine is considered a “fad diet”.

 

Ok, so now let’s look at what a fad is, and in doing so I’m going to employ the horrible trope of using the dictionary.  Oxford defines it as “an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities; a craze” and Merriam-Webster goes with “a practice or interest followed for a time with exaggerated zeal”.  So why are ketogenic diets, paleo diets, intermittent fasting, etc etc “fad diets” while calorie counting and macro tracking are non-fad diets?  Because of their recency in employment?

I have that talent

 

Well hold onto your butts folks: when did we discover the calorie?  In the early 1800s, Nicolas Clement created the definition of the calorie as it related to thermal energy, but it wasn’t until 1887 that Wilbur Atwater used a calorimeter to measure energy in food, and it wasn’t until the late 1890s that he published food composition tables to allow for the measurement of calories in food for public consumption.  When did we first see ketogenic diets employed?  The first documented case was Dr. Russell Wilder in the Mayo Clinic in 1921 YET we had William Banting recommending a low-carb/high-fat nutritional approach in his “Letter on Corpulence” in 1863.  This means that macronutrient restriction, as a form of nutritional intervention, predates calorie counting OR, at most, is only 30 years behind.  And when you factor in that we emerged as Homo Sapiens about 300,000 years ago, we really can’t let 30 years make or break what is and is not a “fad”.

 

But let’s go even FURTHER down that rabbit hole, shall we?  What of those that are claiming to quit being so weird about nutrition and just eat a healthy whole food diet?  Healthy whole foods ARE a fad.  If we’re judging fads as short-lived/followed for a time with exaggerated zeal, the modern food environment is INCREDIBLY faddish.  Because if you’re eating any vegetables TODAY, those things flat out were NOT around for our ancestors to eat.  Almost every vegetable we eat today is derived from Brassica oleracea, a type of wild mustard plant that we, as a species, SELECTIVELY bred in order to create the vegetables we WANTED to eat, vs what nature actually provided us.  Modern fruits are also a total abomination, with bananas that are almost pure sugar and seedless, compared to the heavily seeded bitter monstrosities that our ancestors had access to.  Apples have been engineered to ridiculous proportions, and we have grapes that taste like cotton candy for the love of god.  And don’t think I’m letting the carnivore community off easy here too: modern livestock and farming is abhorrent from a historical-biological perspective, with animals selectively bred to remove all biological defensive advantages and effectively only exist SOLELY as a food source, fed on a diet of bioengineered feeds and shot up with all manner of substances to improve their yield.  And even if you try to hunt, you’re STILL not out of the woods (pun partially intended), because your game meat is most likely getting into our frankencrops and eating that stuff.  I know the deer here get into the sweetcorn and will end up with marbling in their meat: that should NOT exist in nature.

Even Bobby can tell this isn't "natural"

 

And all of this is if you are TRYING to “eat clean, healthy whole foods”.  If you’re eating ANYTHING out of a box, you’re DEFINITELY eating a “fad diet”.  Food processing is a VERY modern advent as far as our nutrition goes, with the very basics of it dating back to dehydrating/salting meat to preserve it but the more contemporary approaches resulting in us having stuff like “blue raspberry pancake syrup” amongst other monstrosities.  Count your calories while eating your Pop-Tarts and explain to me how you’re not eating a “fad diet”.

 

Because we, as humans, have constructed an artificial food environment such that there is NO diet that ISN’T a fad diet.  If you look at any other animal on this planet, NONE of them have to think about how they eat: they just do it.  They know WHAT they’re supposed to eat, and they know how MUCH they’re supposed to eat.  The only fat animals that exist are the ones that we domesticate, and that’s primarily because we feed them the foods that WE made, similar to how we, as humans, have gotten fat and sick eating our own foods.  We, unfortunately, no longer exist in an environment where we can just eat what we’re supposed to eat until we’re done eating it and move on with our lives.  Unfortunately, SOME manner of nutritional intervention is necessary in order to survive this environment we’ve created, and ALL of them are fads.

Meanwhile, Crom laughs at your modern solutions

 

With that being said, it means there’s no shame in following a fad diet: simply follow the one that suits YOU.  EVERY manner of nutritional intervention that exists is a VERY recent form of intervention, for it’s only very recently that we’ve created this impossible environment for us to navigate.  300,000 years ago we arrived on the scene and knew what to eat and how  much of it to eat, but as time went on and we got “smarter”, we stupidly tried to circumvent the system and ended up with quite the Faustian deal.  So if your way of surviving is to try out this new-fangled calorie counting so that you can make sure you don’t eat too much of the weird mutant “food like substance” we have to live off of: go for it.  If your approach is “I’ll eat the animals but not the plants”, that’s cool too: you’ll probably avoid a lot of bad stuff by cutting out so much stuff.  If your approach is “I’ll only eat during THESE times”, you’ll probably eat LESS of that weird stuff, since you’ll be eating less in general.  And when the new fad comes out, give THAT one a go and see how you like it, because it looks like, for the foreseeable future, there really isn’t going to be any other solution readily available to us.             

BOOK REVIEW: THE VERTICAL DIET 3.0

I was a good boy for Christmas and this year Santa, by way of my in-laws, brought me Stan Efferding’s “Vertical Diet 3.0” paperback book.  I’m aware that Stan has gone on to release a 4.0 version, but it’s currently an e-book only, and those aren’t fun to unwrap on Christmas morning.

 

I promptly took this book with me on my family’s New Year’s Disney Cruise (which I’m sure I’ll also write up about) and read it in what was one of the finest bits of irony while dinning on keto bricks and biltong while traveling and enough meat and eggs to put Conan AND Gaston to shame.  But I read through the book quickly, because it was honestly very enjoyable and easily digestible, which, yes, is a wonderful and topical pun as it relates to the book.

 

Bottom line is: buy the book.  Again, I’m specifically referring to 3.0, which is available on amazon as a paperback for $25 as of my writing this.  As far as value per dollar goes, this is well within that range.  I cannot speak to the $100 4.0 e-book, as I have not read it.

 

WHAT I LIKE

I mean, yeah

 

·       You know my bizarre approach to nutrition, and its current state is very carnivore forward.  With that background, I very much appreciated how Stan approached the topic of nutrition.  He’s incredibly practical and pragmatic, and is willing to slaughter sacred cows along the way if it means getting to (what he proports) is the right answer.  He doesn’t say “eat your veggies: they’re good for you”, it’s “eat THESE specific veggies for THESE reasons, whereas THESE ones may be causing you some issues to watch out for”. 

·       This ultimately pulls from Stan’s motto of “compliance is the science”.  If you aren’t going to stick to the diet, it doesn’t matter if it’s “the best one”.  So Stan presents his reasoning and justification for what is and is not part of the Vertical Diet, and even provides some examples of acceptable substitutions, but ultimately drives to the reader the importance of being able to comply with the diet.  That said, he hopes to outfit you WITH a diet that CAN be complied with.  It aims to eliminate decision fatigue, flavor fatigue, and energy/satiety concerns that tend to come with nutrition plans.

·       What’s included in the plan seems quite beneficial as far as nutrition goes, with minimal controversy irrespective of where you fall on the nutrition spectrum.  I read this as a pro-keto/carnivore person, and could appreciate the arguments Stan made for what was in the book, and honestly felt like this was a great general nutritional protocol.  It’s also scalable depending on goals of gaining/losing/maintaining weight. 

·       Despite being called “The Vertical Diet”, Stan goes on to discuss sleep protocols, resistance training, cardiovascular training, injury recovery, etc.  It’s not QUITE an all-in-one manual, as there isn’t an actual workout split/protocol provided for the resistance training, but enough of an overview to get just about anyone going.

·       There is also a recipe section in the book, which I’m always a sucker for.  They are simple, but that’s kind of the point: it’s not a complex nutritional approach.  It’s sustainable.  Stan also includes instructions on ordering out and still surviving, along with traveling and staying on the program.

·       You also have to appreciate the source of the information.  Stan talks the talk, walks the walk, and has coached those in the highest levels to do the same.  And in that regard, he writes incredibly well: the book is VERY easy to read and enjoyable.

 

WHAT I FOUND ODD

I honestly don't know what I'm more afraid of

·       At the end of many sections of the book, Stan does a great job of providing a quick summary/checklist of all the points he covered.  In turn, I REALLY wish the end of the book contained this.  Basically, a “Vertical Diet Checklist”.  Primarily because, I felt like the most valuable part of the book was the HORIZONTAL diet that Stan lays out: all those foundational foods that you SHOULD eat before you focus on getting your macros from steak and rice.  In the book, Stan lays out all this information, but that’s the thing: it’s IN the book.  When I finished reading, I remembered things like, I should eat potatoes…but how many per day?  Bell peppers were recommended: what amount?  How many baby carrots?  How much Greek yogurt?  I can easily go back to theses sections, re-read them and take notes to compile all of this in one handy spot (and I intend to), but it would have been a great way to end the book with an overview.

 

·       In that regard, the sample diets that Stan provides are an absolute trip, because there’s no internal logic/consistency to guide them.  It’s awesome that he provides sample diets in 250 calorie increments starting with 1500 all the way to 4000, but when examining each “step” of the diet, there doesn’t appear to be any logical method on HOW to advance the 250 calories up.  The primary example is that the 2750 calorie diet has the HIGHEST protein total of any other diet in the book, to include the 4000 calorie diet.  In the book, Stan recommends pushing protein up to increase satiety if the goal is to lose fat, but what if the person eating 2750 calories was actually doing so to GAIN weight?  In a similar manner, because the protein is so high, the carbs are far lower on this diet compared to the 2500 calorie diet right before it, whereas the 1750 calorie diet and 2000 calorie diet have almost matching carb totals.  I understand these are just sample diets, not gospel, but for someone looking at how to progress their diets upward or downward depending on their shifting goals, it doesn’t really lay out a practicable example of what changes to make along the way.  There are enough words in the book to help guide a trainee, but this was just tricky to sort out.

 

·       In the exercise section of the book, Stan has some photos of band exercises that are incorrectly labeled.  This honestly stands out just because the rest of the book is very well edited.  As an exercise nerd, I knew what he meant, but a newb would be left stranded.

 

·       Stan brags about how the Bibliography in the book has over 200 sources, and he’s absolutely right.  It’s massive…and never once within the book is any of it referenced.  It’s on you, the reader, to go look up every single study/source listed there and see how it applies to the book.  I’ve got a Masters Degree: I can tell when someone is academically filibustering/bluffing.  Jamie Lewis has managed to cite his sources in his own works: I know Stan can too.  And maybe he did that in 4.0, and maybe that’s why it’s $100.

 

·       Stan must have gotten burned bad by a physical therapist at one point in his career, because his view on their value as far as injury recovery goes strikes me as bizarre.  He appears to be opposed to their worth, claiming that whatever aid they provide is temporary and can make problems worse, and that most injuries will resolve over time without intervention.  Part of me feels that the issue may be that Stan is only approaching this from the lens of a back injury, as that is what he discusses as his own personal experience.  He goes into further detail on recovery of back injuries, how stretching does not help back injuries, how back injuries require stability, etc.  All of this may be true, but as someone that has had surgery on their shoulder and knee alongside chronic knee pain: I’ve absolutely experienced the benefit of physical therapy first hand, and it SHOULD be doing the things that Stan advises FOR recovery: strengthening weakened areas and improving mobility.  I think it’s good that Stan addresses injury recovery, but I feel personal bias may be clouding his judgement.

 

·       I’m not a fan of what Stan recommends for improved satiety to improve compliance with the diet.  Specifically when he discusses employing water and roughage as a means to fill the stomach to increase satiety.  We’ve observed enough that this just plain doesn’t work: at most, it provides a VERY temporary relief from hunger, but more often it causes severe digestive distress as one fills their stomach capacity to fullness while they STILL experience hunger because they are lacking in nutrients.  Stan addresses the difference between hunger and appetite (the former being physiological and the latter being psychological) elsewhere in the book, and I feel he should lean further into that.  If you’re HUNGRY, you need to eat something with NUTRITION in it: not lettuce and water.  If you’re BORED, you need to figure out something to occupy yourself that ISN’T food.

 

IN SUMMARY

 

I mean, it's good enough for these two...

It seems like I wrote a lot of negative stuff about the book, but that’s honestly a bit of “survivor bias” at play there.  The book itself has so many positives that it’s hard to dial it down to just one thing, whereas the negatives are so precise that it’s easy to discuss them.  “The Vertical Diet” would be the perfect gift to anyone struggling with “how/what do I eat”.  The horizontal structure it lays out provides an excellent general purpose guidance for eating to be healthy and energetic, and the vertical framework provides a way to eat toward more specific goals.  The emphasis on general activity and resistance training gives helpful guidelines to achieve the majority of one’s goals, in a manner similar to what Dan John prescribes in his Armor Building Formula and Easy Strength books.  In fact, this would be a wonderful pairing of such books, giving a well fleshed out nutritional protocol and training protocol for “real people”.

FAILURE IS A PYRRHIC VICTORY

As anyone who has been in the physical transformation space for a few decades will note, trends are cyclical, and what’s old is new and vise versa.  Hell, anyone who has read this BLOG has already noted that, for I started off an advocate for abbreviated training, went through a phase of absurd volume and frequency, and have settled back to abbreviated training (almost as though there was some form of periodization at play…).  In turn, it appears that the likes of Mike Mentzer and the HIT crowd have popped back up in popularity as a result of TikTokers attempted to fleece undiscerning babes in the woods with “cutting edge” 1970s methodology, attempting to market it as “training secrets from 50 years ago that the pros DON’T want you to know”.  I, personally, am a fan of Dave Tate’s philosophy in that the reason things ARE “training secrets” is because they sucked back then so we all forgot about them, but let’s explore just a little bit here.  The principle, I find, that is causing the most difficulty with new trainees is the overvaluing of training to failure, seen as THE sole method necessary in order to secure sweet precious “gains” from training.  Training to failure is THE objective of training, according to those “in the know” on such matters, and whenever someone is NOT obtaining results, it’s purely because they’re not training hard enough.  I, of course, am a fan of a “no true scotsman” whenever encountered in the wild, because the circular reasoning is the perfect defense for attacks against the efficacy of one’s method.  “Oh no, the method definitely works: you were just doing it wrong”, which was the calling card for many an Aikido practitioner (shots fired!)  However, let me discuss WHY it is that the very PURSUIT of failure is, in itself, a pyrrhic victory.  Even when we win: we lose.

Keep chasing after failure and you eventually catch it

 

Ok, so first, the phrase “training to failure” is already way more of a clusterf*ck that it ever really should be.  There is only ONE way to fail: unsuccessfully attempt to succeed.  What does that mean?  That means, you have the bar on your back for a squat, you squat down, you attempt to stand back up, but you don’t make it.  You either dump the bar over your head (poor form in a competition) or it falls behind you or crashes onto the safety pins, but in either capacity, you FAIL the rep.  That’s training to failure.  …right?  No!  In order to make “training to failure” more approachable, we’ve decided to allow MULTIPLE definitions of failure to exist in the sphere of physical transformation.  Apparently, you can have “technical failure”, which means once you’re so fatigued that you can no longer execute a repetition with perfect technique.  Folks, you’ve most likely SEEN how my technique looks: if I operated off technical failure, all my sets would end at the first rep.  And if we’re advising new trainees looking to grow to train to TECHNICAL failure, they’re simply NEVER going to achieve any manner of meaningful training volume, because they’re going to cut ALL their sets short.  Some, instead, decide to focus on bar speed, and say that we’ve reached failure once we experience a significant slowdown in repetition.  Once again, I stand before you as the mutant that proves the rule, because I am effectively slow twitch given sentience, and even my warm-ups move slow.  But I also know I’m not the only one out there.  We are legion: those of us that can take the first rep and have it look like a 1rm only to manage to eek out 8 more reps.  If we terminated the set based on slowdown, we, simply, would never train.  So, already: failure has failed us.

 

But it gets worse my friends!  Let’s say a trainee DOES decide to take “training to failure” to it’s most literal (and correct) definition: we find that these trainees construct the TRAINING to suit the method, rather than the other way around.  What do I mean?  I gave the example of a squat for training to failure, and with that, you can already see the issue at hand.  If we’re training 3x10 in the squat “to failure”, this means, on set 1, we attempt to squat the weight, fail, let the weight crash onto the pins of the safety bar, strip all the weights off the bar, re-rack the bar, reload the bar, and then repeat this WHOLE process for 2 other sets, before moving onto the rest of our workout.  For one, this is going to flat out be EXHAUSTING, and for two, your gym owner is most likely going to kick you out of the gym after set 2.  So the method is non-viable right?  WRONG!  The solution is simple: let’s just pick ONLY movements that we can “safely fail” on.  What does this mean?  Basically all machines and isolation exercises.  Failing on a bench press can quite literally end your life: failing on a set of lateral raises results in a small cramping sensation in the deltoids.  There’s practically ZERO risk of injury…and practically zero opportunity for success…

Whereas some movements have no opportunity for success but MASSIVE risk of injury

 

Folks, I don’t care who this upsets: a program of all machine isolation exercises is NOT going to result in successful physical transformation.  I don’t want to denigrate exercise: if you’re getting out there and being active, I am happy for you.  HOWEVER, if your goal is meaningful physical transformation, such an approach is NOT how you get there: it’s more suited for senior citizens looking to stave off sarcopenia.  Look at ANYONE that has ever achieved meaningful success in regards to physical transformation, and almost 100% of them have spent SOME time under a heavy barbell with a set of squats, or did SOME manner of heavy pulls, or in some way, shape or form, performed training with a movement that was NOT ideal to train to absolute failure.  These big, heavy and hard movements FORCE the body to grow, because they place such a significant demand on the body to change, whereas a set of curls with an elastic band until you “feel the burn” is most likely just going to cause you some elbow tendinitis.  But again, because the trainee has prioritized failure above all else, they are excluding the very movements that are crucial to their development BECAUSE they can not use them to achieve failure.

 

Because what is fundamentally happening is that trainees are seeking “feedback” WITHIN the training session, due to our intense need for instant gratification and inability to appreciate long term investment/growth.  The reality is, the mark of success from a training program does not occur WITHIN the workout, but OUTSIDE of it.  We grow when we RECOVER from the training: not within the training itself.  This, in turn, means monitoring and tracking our outcomes to determine the efficacy of our training…which is wholly unsatisfying for a trainee who “wants it now”.  Instead, it’s FAR more satisfying to completely obliterate a muscle by smashing it to failure, walking out of the gym and saying “I had a good workout: my muscles are exhausted”.  But did we come here to exhaust our muscles…or did we come here to grow?  And if it’s the latter…is that happening?  Or are we, instead, just constantly exhausting our muscles in our pursuit of failure and achieving exactly that which it is that we pursue: failure.  Perhaps, instead, a fight wherein we “live to fight another day” is more what we shall endeavor to?

If you know, you know

 

Training to failure is a TOOL in our toolbox that we can employ in order to achieve a desired outcome: it is not the outcome itself.  If all we do is chase after failure, we will eventually catch it.  Instead, we must understand the context wherein such an approach CAN work, which is, most likely, within a limited window of a training block.  It must be employed strategically, within a given context, under the consideration of recovery, with a goal of achieving growth.  Look at male gymnasts, weightlifters, powerlifters, sumo wrestlers, American football players, etc: we can clearly see many instances wherein strong, muscular bodies were built WITHOUT needing to approach failure in training.  Training to failure can be A way, but it is certainly not THE way: don’t let it get in YOUR way.