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”.