Section 2: Creating an Energy Deficit

Why Am I Not Losing Fat? Why Am I Skinny-Fat?

I’ll cut right to the chase with this post.

  1. You’re eating the wrong foods
  2. You’re eating too much
  3. You’re giving your body the option to stay fat
  4. You’re doing too much cardio

1. You’re eating the wrong foods

If you’re eating anything that doesn’t spoil or become nasty in one way or another if left unrefrigerated for more than a couple of days, chances are your diet isn’t optimal. My idea of a “Will It Rot” diet cuts pretty much to the core of the issue. Bread, cereal, grains in general, candy, cookies, pastries, other dry and refined carbs like chips, pretzels, granola bars, energy bars, etc. It’s also worth noting that if you can afford to purchase organic produce, you probably should [it’s a travesty that in the U.S. only those of us who can afford it don’t have to make the decision between feeding themselves and their children pesticide-laced food and paying the rent.] The first time I bought organic potatoes I was astonished by how quickly they sprouted eyes and went bad as compared to conventionally-grown and treated potatoes.

2. You’re eating too much

Low-carb, high-carb, low-fat, high-fat, low-protein, high-protein. I’ve found that it generally doesn’t matter. I don’t think about the marcronutrient composition of my diet anymore. For me, it became time consuming and annoying. I find that letting my tastes and appetite guide me works better. But the food selection should still follow “Will It Rot?” guidelines. Consuming only foods in the “Will it Rot?” group dramatically and positively alter craving patterns and satiety, and are typically nutrient and water dense and calorically lighter. There’s no magic here. You know this. It’s difficult to consume a diet high in carbohydrates if all the foods you consume fall into the “yes, it rots” grouping. Daily fasting (skipping breakfast or both breakfast and lunch) is also an exceptional way to control food intake. Eating six small meals per day to be “healthy” or to keep from getting hungry is ABSOLUTE BULLSH*+. Doing the exact opposite is far more effective for weight management, craving management/ blood sugar stability, mental clarity, metabolism, hormonal balance, you name it. You can read more about that here (I’ve been fasting 20 hours daily now for three years).

3. You’re giving your body the option to stay fat by 4. doing too much cardio

You’re ready to lose some fat. You consume less energy than you expend. Your body needs to make up the energy deficit. It will use body fat for that, right? Not exactly. Muscle is metabolically expensive to maintain. Muscle maintenance requires calories. Even if it’s just 10 or 15 calories per pound of muscle per day, it adds up. When you’re chronically energy (food) deficient, your body sheds muscle along with fat. If you’re doing moderate to high-intensity cardio and are NOT lifting heavy weights, this effect is intensified, i.e. more muscle loss. Fat is more than twice as energy dense as muscle and costs nothing for your body to hold. It is the ultimate survival ration. Accordingly, your body retains it for as long as possible at the expense of muscle. This can manifest as a “skinny-fat” body, where you’ve lost weight, but your body composition has changed for the worse. For example, let’s say you start at 150 lbs and your goal weight is 130. You do lots of “fat burning” cardio and no weights and you eat fewer calories than your body requires to maintain your current weight. You do this for a few months and you hit 130 lbs. You’re slimmer, but your body looks almost gelatinous. It’s not just that you have little muscle tone, it’s actually worse. You’ve either lost weight and your body fat percentage increased, stayed the same, or not decreased in proportion to the weight you’ve lost. This is why losing fat and losing weight are not synonymous.
To flip this process, your body needs a stimulus to preserve muscle and consume fat. The stimulus provided by heavy weight-bearing activity does that. The associated hormonal response forces your body to preserve or build muscle (providing there’s a caloric surplus), leaving fat the only option to use as fuel. Although the process isn’t as simple as this, i.e. where you’ll burn pure fat vs pure muscle, heavy lifting with limited cardio while in a caloric deficit works exceptionally well (especially for untrained individuals), and produces a much more favorable and healthy body composition. “No cardio” doesn’t mean no activity; it means nothing intense or structured, like walking, swimming, light biking, chasing your kid around, doing housework, etc. It also doesn’t mean “no sprinting”.

The Six Best Grain-Free Carbohydrate Sources for Lifting Energy

Like grains? So do I, but I don’t eat them because I believe they’re objectively not great for optimal health and just feeling good. I’ve experienced a host of positive changes in my body since I stopped eating them more than a year ago (except for the odd bowl of oats and an occasional helping of white rice). But if you’re lifting heavy and you’re thinking about dropping or heavily limiting grains, where are you gonna get those carbs? I’ll tell you where.

The holy quintet. Clockwise from top: kabocha squash, cassava, sweet potato, white potato, yellow plantain.

The holy sextet. Clockwise from top: kabocha squash, cassava, sweet potato, white potato, yellow plantain. Yam not pictured.

1. Cassava a.k.a. yucca a.k.a. manioc.

With a whopping 38g carbs per 100g serving, cassava is the king of natural, unprocessed, unrefined carb sources. It’s packed full of starches that go to replenishing muscle glycogen, and contains very little sugar. I personally love its dryish texture. Make sure to peel it, cut into large chunks, then boil it until fork tender. Cooking is very important because it contains cyanide-containing compounds that are destroyed in the process. I like to boil mine in salted water, drain and just eat like that, or dip in mayo mixed with sriracha, fresh lime juice, cumin and chili powder.

2. White potato

The classic. A 100g serving contains around 31g carbs, almost 85% of which is starch and the rest of which is fiber and a little sugar. I’m about easy, so I just wash it with soap (organic potatoes are better), pierce with a knife, microwave on high for 3-4 mins and eat out of hand like an apple.

3. Yam (not in photo)

Don’t get it twisted: yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing; yams contain more starch and virtually no sugar. At 27g carbs per 100g, yams get you those killer carbs you need to replenish after a session of big, heavy compound lifts. Pierce with knife a few times and microwave on high for five minutes or until tender.

4. Plantain

I prefer yellow ones, but they do contain more sugar and less starch than the less ripe green version. Yellows contain around 30g carbs per 100g, about half of which is sugar (I don’t pay much attention to sugar content if the food is whole and completely natural without any refinement. Processed sugar and sugar naturally occurring in whole foods affect me in two totally different ways). They have an earthy-sweet-tart flavor that’s totally unique to them. Plantains must be cooked (unless completely black). The easiest way is to trim the ends off, pierce through the skin a few times with a knife, wrap in a damp paper towel, and microwave on high for three minutes. Once cooked, remove peel. I like to slice into 1/2″ discs, toss with butter and sprinkle with a little salt. It’s my favorite snack right before bed.

5. Sweet potato

The dessert tuber. 100g of sweet potato has around 21g carbs, only around 35% of which is starch, with another 30% as sugar and a decent hit of fiber. While it’s not as effective for glycogen restoration as king cassava or the white potato, it’s great for fat loss, because it makes you full with a relatively light weight to calorie load. Pierce with a knife, microwave on high for five minutes or until tender.

6. Winter squash (butternut and kabocha)

Ok, you’ll have to eat a lot of kabocha to get a lot of carbs, but that’s only because it isn’t a calorie-dense food. Virtually all of the calories it does have come from carbs. It’s about a 50-50 split between starch and sugar, but you can eat an absolute sh*tload of it without breaking 200 calories. It’s another great fat loss option because it’s so filling, nutrient dense, and calorie poor, and lets you get some carbs in. My favorite way to prepare is to cut in half (need large sharp knife and strong arm), gut seeds, peel, cut into ~1-inch cubes, toss in coconut oil, kosher salt and cinnamon and roast at 400 degrees until tender (around 35-40 mins). The texture is soft/ fluffy/ pillowy and the taste is sweet.

Butternut squash is another winner–higher in calories than kabocha and packing three times the carbs with less sugar, it’s a very good non-grain carb option (10g carbs per 100g serving, two of which come from sugar). Same preparation as kabocha.

Ripped Recipe: Thai Italian Sausage Green Curry

Thai Italian

I really like combining flavors, especially Asian and Italian. I don’t have a photo of this Thai Italian Sausage Green Curry, but you’ll have to trust me, it’s excellent. Every time I eat it I tell my wife it’s my favorite thing ever.

I also have to preface this by saying that when I cook, I cook big. I usually make one huge thing on a weekend that will last four to five days and then one smaller dish during the week that will last for two. So be warned, the recipe below is for a gigantic load. Let’s all get ripped eating this together.

Ingredients
1 lb hot Italian sausage AND 1 lb sweet Italian sausage, removed from casing and pulled into chunks
700g eggplant (one large), cubed to ~3/4 inches
650g sweet potato (two large or three medium), cubed to ~3/4 inches
600g zucchini (a few medium), cubed same as above
1 large Vidalia onion, rough chopped
1 large red bell pepper, large diced (preferably organic cause the non-organic version is heavily sprayed)
180g or so carrots, sliced ~1/2 inch thick
1 large can (28oz or 790g) diced tomatoes (I prefer the Muir Glen organic variety)
2 cans lite coconut milk
1 cup unsalted chicken stock
2-3 Tbsp honey
1/4 cup arrowroot flour (you can use corn starch, but I’m not really into grains so much)
2 or so stalks of lemongrass, split and cut into 4 or 5 inch-long pieces
3-4 kaffir lime leaves (can be found in any good grocery)
1.5 or 2 Tbsp ground coriander
1-inch chunk of fresh ginger, minced
3-4 cloves garlic, smashed
2 Tbsp Thai basil
2 Tbsp sweet Italian basil
2 Tbsp oregano
2 Tbsp Thai green chili paste
2 Tbsp Sriracha (or to taste)
1 Tbsp chili flakes (or to taste)

Preparation

  1. Brown sausage chunks in an 8qt stock pot.
  2. Once sausage is browned, remove from pot and add onions to remaining pork fat. Cook until lightly browned.
  3. Add garlic, both basils, ginger, coriander, oregano, chili paste, Sriracha, chili flakes. Sautee for a few minutes over low heat to release oils from everything. Don’t burn it!
  4. Put sausage back in pot. Add both cans of lite coconut milk, chicken stock and can of diced tomatoes. Also add kaffir leaves and lemongrass. Increase heat, cover, and let mixture come to a simmer.
  5. Once simmering, add eggplant and honey and simmer covered for 30 minutes. The eggplant should get really velvety and soft.
  6. Add carrots and sweet potato. Wait 10 minutes and add zucchini
  7. When sweet potatoes are tender, mix arrowroot flour with a little water or chicken stock to form slurry. Stir into pot and cook on low heat for another minute or so. Do NOT boil. It will destroy arrowroot’s thickening properties.
  8. Make sure to remove kaffir and lemongrass before eating, unless you actually like eating leaves and sticks :).

This can be eaten as-is, or served over rice, spaghetti squash, kabocha squash, rice pasta, or even regular pasta (I ain’t into wheat, but you do you, not me).

Nutrition info
One serving is ~2.3 cups. ~420 calories, 15g protein, 20g fat, 35g carbs

Ripped Food: Hami Melon — The Most Awesome of Melons

I like melons. I do. All kinds. And until two days ago, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about them. I was wrong. At the grocery store the other day, I noticed a basket of these large, oblong fruits posted with a sign saying “Hami Melon” on it. It took me by surprise because 1) I’d never seen them before, and 2) they were $2.50 each, and I’ll buy any kind of melon for $2.50. Maybe even a rotten one. Anyway, this has become my favorite, favorite melon of all time. It tastes like a combination of a honeydew and cantaloupe and has the light, crispy texture of–wait for it–an Asian pear!! WhAAAAAtttt!?! Amazing.

The WIRIAM (Will It Rot in A Month?) Diet

This post isn’t about a diet–it’s about an approach to eating. Deep down in my heart, I know there is an objectively best way to eat. About 14 months ago, I decided to go grain-free because of the wealth of clinical studies I’d read that clearly demonstrate [at least to me] the detrimental effects of all grains on human health. We’re not talking about the carbs here–we’re talking about compounds within grains that trigger bizarre immune responses–compounds like phytates, lectins and saponins to name a few. And this doesn’t just affect individuals who might have overt sensitivities to these compounds (like those with Celiac disease to gluten)–from what I have read, it affects everyone. Even a modest immune response can produce symptoms you might never have realized were related to the consumption of grain.

Anyway, I maintained a grain-free diet for more than six months. But the demands of heavy lifting had me craving and needing carbs, so I let oats and white rice back in. Then I let corn back in because I love peanut butter Puffins so much (made with corn and oats). Never mind the fact that I wasn’t thinking so critically and missed the fact that there are plenty of non-grain foods high in carbs. When I went back on oats and [processed] corn [cereal], I absolutely noticed changes in my body, including water retention, less restful sleep, and mild bloating/ gassiness, slight eczema in my elbow creases after sweating (although I think that was mainly the processed corn. I’ve read that oats and rice elicit less of an immune response than other grains.). I began to realize that those physical issues I used to think were normal actually weren’t since I had my grain-free time to compare things to.

I’ve recently decided again to go grain-free because I objectively feel better without them. And along with that, I realized something else: I could eat anything I want as long as the answer to the question, “Will it rot in a month if left unrefrigerated?” is “yes”. This eliminates foods with long shelf lives, including anything in a box, chips, nuts, legumes, and all grains. These foods also happen to have the highest antinutrient content (those compounds I mentioned before). It’s true that many of the deleterious compounds in these foods can be rendered inert or at least less bad through soaking and fermentation, but I’m not into that cause of the prep time it takes (you can Google all this stuff). Anyway, I began asking myself that question and only eating those foods that resulted in a “yes”. Meat? Yes (organic). Dairy? Yes (organic). Vegetables? Fruits? Yes, yes. Let’s look more specifically at foods high in carbs–white potatoes? Yes. Potato chips? No. Sweet potatoes? Yes. Cassava (my favorite ultra-high carb tuber)? Yes. Plantains? Yes, definitely. Taro, spaghetti/ kabocha/ butternut squashes, carrots, parsnips, beets? All yesses. Pasta? No. Bread? No. Cereal? No. Popcorn? No. Peanut butter is a no also. Nuts? No. Wait, what? No nuts or peanut butter? What’s interesting is that the same foods that won’t go bad in a month if left unrefrigerated also tend to have higher concentrations of phytates, lectins, gluten and other stuff that’s likely not so conducive to optimal health. The only exceptions to my rule are coffee, 100% chocolate a.k.a. baking chocolate (fair trade only because child slavery is HUGE in the cocoa bean business), coconut oil and olive oil.

I think this is a really simple, maintainable way of eating that’s easy to remember and that forces your diet to revolve around foods that contribute to ideal health and well being. It also keeps you away from processed sugar.

Getting Ripped: “The Opposite of Common Sense” Series, Part III — Eat Plenty of Carbs

The trend of vilifying carbs is hotter than the dot com boom and shows no signs of letting up. Yeah, and it’s totally wrong. Energy balance is the only thing that matters. You will lose weight if you burn more calories than you consume. That’s it. It’s the first law of thermodynamics. But notice, I said “weight” not “fat”. “Weight” could mean any combination of muscle and fat. I explained in part II of this series that the key factor involved in regulating the type of weight you lose (i.e. muscle vs. fat) is heavy resistance training in addition to an energy deficit. Technically, you could eat only Saltine crackers and still lose weight, and specifically fat.

Having a large proportion of your calories come from carbohydrates is really important while cutting because we know that it’s super important to keep lifting heavy and with a lot of effort during a cut. But remember, you’re going to be in an energy deficit, meaning that your capacity to move the weight will be diminished. The problem with cutting carbs while cutting is that your muscles will quickly become depleted of their favorite and most accessible fuel source, glycogen. If you reduce carbs, you reduce muscle glycogen and your capacity to move the weights right along with it. When lifting, if your body is depleted of glycogen, energy will come from fat. But fat and glycogen metabolism each occur through two mutually exclusive pathways. The bottom line is that the fat pathway doesn’t provide anywhere near the immediate energy that muscle glycogen pathway does. You will be at a real disadvantage if you rely on fat metabolism for the acute energy requirements of a set of heavy squats.

But what about the people who say carbs are different that the other two macronutrients (fat and protein) because they just somehow make you fat? There’s been a classic argument going on between Jillian Michaels (of Biggest Loser) and Gary Taubes (an anti-carb researcher); Jillian says carbs are just like any other food and losing fat is about energy balance, while Gary basically says carbs are the enemy. Check out this YouTube vid for some clips of the argument. The way I see it is that they’re talking right through one another and they’re both right. If you you eat lots of carbs, but accurately monitor your calories in and out and eat below your maintenance calories AND lift heavy, you will lose fat. I’ve done it many times while eating ice cream, cereal, fruit, potatoes, oatmeal and rice. So clearly this would indicate that Gary Taubes is wrong and Jillian Michaels is right, right? Yes and no. Taubes’ entire argument against carbs is based on the mechanism of autoregulation, whereby the body sends the appropriate satiety signals to the brain at the appropriate time. In essence, it’s the body’s natural “stop eating” signal. With a diet comprised of the right foods, this autoregulation mechanism works well, and people won’t become fat. I agree completely. Taubes says that when carbs–particularly foods made with refined cereal grains–are introduced into the diet, the autoregulation mechanism breaks because these foods create disproportionate insulin responses, which drives blood sugar through the floor and creates more hunger that is out of line with real energy requirements. That false hunger breeds more eating and potentially fat gain. I agree with all of this. I can feel this… like what happens to my body when I eat rice, which makes me hungry. I know this, but I like rice and I eat it with other stuff to buffer those effects and I also know what “false hunger” feels like and when to ignore it.

The point is that if you if you understand your body, if you understand how different foods work, if you calculate calories and maintain an energy balance, you can eat whatever food you want and override the autoregulatory inhibition that some carbs cause (although from the micronutrient standpoint, it’s not a good idea to eat refined foods). With the right carbs in your diet, you’ll have to do less overriding and more letting your body guide you.

Why Red Wine is Important

Of course red wine isn’t important unless you want it to be.

Eating vs. Experiencing: I do both to stay ripped

I take time to schedule time to focus on savoring and engaging with the food that’s in front of me… but that’s only if the food in front of me is worth experiencing.

Here’s an example: tonight I might have a chicken breast with a heap of braised cauliflower, a few ounces of roasted kabocha squash and a baked potato. These are all foods I enjoy eating, and together they also present a nice nutritional profile; that’s great. My primary goals in eating are that 1) I’m consuming something that I think tastes good, and 2) I’m getting the right amount of calories from primarily whole sources. But the foods I typically eat for these purposes are also less complex from a gustatory standpoint. I’ve always referred to them as “face foods” i.e. foods that I can just pound into my mouth without really thinking about their flavor profiles, namely because they’re either sort of subdued or not exceptionally complex. Like rice pasta in red sauce with spinach and meatballs tastes really good to me, but I don’t consider the flavors to be exceedingly complicated or especially noteworthy. For me, a food that just tastes good is very different than a food that makes me stop and think about the way it tastes when I put it in my mouth–a food that creates an experience.

Foods meant to be experienced, not just eaten.

Foods meant to be experienced, not just eaten.

Strong, pronounced flavors are deeply satisfying and are a great tool for helping me keep ripped

Foods that create the most intense experiences for me are those with very strong and/ or complicated flavors. 100% dark chocolate. A fine imported salty prosciutto with sweet honeydew. An ounce of fatty Italian salami. A few shavings of black truffle. A tablespoon of a small-batch, high-quality peppery organic olive oil, sipped as if it were never meant to be consumed another way. A three or five-year old Gouda. An espresso, black. A complex red wine like Rioja or a deep, inky petite syrah. I make time to eat these foods when I know I won’t be distracted and can focus on them alone and experience their unique scents and flavors. I don’t consider myself a foodie, but I can certainly appreciate when something has an exceptional flavor according to my taste buds. Sometimes I feel as if I fall into an almost meditative trance when engaging with food in this way. Not only is it immensely satisfying, but it’s also a way for me to satisfy my soul without going overboard on calories, since I’m slowly consuming relatively small amounts of food. If I can, I enjoy breaking my daily 21-hour fasts at least a few times per week through this experiential style of eating.

High Fat, Low Sugar is Best, and Why Pinkberry Isn’t Healthy
15g sugar, 14g fat per 1/2 cup serving. An excellent dessert option.

15g sugar, 14g fat per 1/2 cup serving. An excellent dessert option.

It’s no secret that I’m not afraid of fat. Actually, I’ll qualify that. Trans-fat, yes, afraid. Fried foods, yes, afraid. Oils (except for non-heated extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil), yes, afraid. Naturally occurring saturated fat? Not afraid of it at all. Although I don’t consume them in enormous quantities, organic eggs, butter, milk, cream, cheese, lard and tallow are staples in my diet, and I make sure that around half to two-thirds of the fat I consume is naturally saturated. This works out to 60-80g of saturated fat per day, which is way higher than our government’s recommendation. Clearly, I take the government’s idea of what we should be eating with a grain of salt… or a gram of lard. There are many reasons why I believe saturated fat is not only healthy to consume, but necessary. My opinions have been shaped by a good deal of my own research. I won’t preach about it here any more than I already have, but you should feel free to do some Googling if interested.

Anyway, I do believe that simple sugars (especially fructose) are unnatural (and counterproductive at best, damaging at worst) in concentrations any higher than they might occur in fruit. That aside, I’m an ice cream freak, a condition at odds with my beliefs about sugar since ice cream contains, ummmmmmmm, sugar. What to do?

Read the label

Brilliant idea, right? If you take the time to compare the labels of different ice cream brands and flavors within brands, you’ll see that the sugar content varies massively between them. Calories tell almost none of the story. The difference in sugar content between one flavor in a brand and another can be double, but the calories might still read the same if the one with more sugar has less fat than the one with less sugar. This is very common with flavors that contain lots of mix ins, as well as with frozen yogurts, which are typically marketed as a healthier alternative to ice cream. This can be potentially misleading because they tend to (or at least can) contain more sugar.

Pinkberry–A wolf in sheep’s yogurt

Take this example: I recently found myself in a Pinkberry (frozen yogurt seller) when on a short vacation in California. In my opinion, Pinkberry attempts to market its products as healthy, although they don’t say it outright. Maybe that’s just me reading into it, but I think when most people think of Pinkberry, they think of a food product that’s not bad for them, and with all the hype around the probiotics their products contain, maybe even good for them (there are plenty of better ways to get a dose of probiotics). Anyway, of course I had to download the PDF containing complete nutrition for Pinkberry’s entire line of flavors (it’s literally 44 pages). I discovered that the majority of its offerings contain inexplicably large quantities of sugar. I calculated that across 35 flavors the average sugar content per 100g (or 1/2 cup) is around 22g, yet there’s no fat in most flavors. Without a good dose of fat to buffer that sugar, most of Pinkberry’s products are efficient insulin bombs (although there is the notable exception of Pinkberry’s plain Greek yogurt with only 6g sugar). That’s without any toppings, nearly all of which are unabashed sugar missiles. One serving of, say, the chocolate chip cookie dough topping is 12 grams and contains 5g of sugar. “Ok, 5g isn’t terrible”, you say, but do you have any idea how tiny 12 grams of cookie dough is? That’s less than 1/2 of one ounce. You almost can’t see it when it’s in the cup! Drop a couple of ounces of those on and you can VERY easily hit 60g of sugar in your final product, if not more.

There’s another frozen yogurt company out there called Red Mango that offers true “frozen yogurt” that really tastes like yogurt (tart) and has much less sugar than what we normally think of as frozen yogurt. I have to admit that I’m not fond of the flavor of this “real” frozen yogurt (I prefer to eat regular non-frozen yogurt), but I think that their products (or at least many of them based on what I can see on their website) are actually healthy.

Eat Ice Cream (or at least something with more fat and less sugar)

So in light of my opinions about natural fat (like the fat in a quality ice cream) and sugar, you can understand why I prefer not to eat frozen yogurt unless it contains less fat and less sugar than its ice cream counterpart, which is rare indeed. When I buy ice cream, I look for something with 13-15g of sugar per 1/2 cup serving and anywhere from 10-16g fat. I’m wary of ice creams with lower fat. Some companies create lower fat ice creams mechanically by churning air into their products (which then have to be called frozen desserts because they contain too much air to be legally deemed ice cream). Others add fillers, stabilizers and thickeners like carrageenan, mono and diglycerides, various gums, starches and who knows what else. I’m fine with extra air, but not with fillers. The frozen dessert in the image at the top of this post is awesome for several reasons. First, its base is coconut cream, which is exceptionally nutritious. Second, it contains 15g of sugar per 1/2 cup serving, which is acceptable to me. Third, it has 14 grams of fat, which is very satiating and helps moderate the insulin rush. Fourth, there’s scotch in it, and boy, you can taste it.

Caloric Manipulation and Intermittent Fasting: Understanding Volume and Density

I touched on this topic in a prior post here: https://rippedforever.com/2014/07/02/how-to-get-ripped-unprocessed-foods, but I wanted to spend a little more time on it because I’ve found it to be really important with respect to intermittent fasting.

I’ve mentioned in many prior posts that I practice a style of intermittent fasting (IF) that entails not eating for approximately 21 hours every day. This is my preference primarily because 1) it’s convenient not to have to think about food until the evening, a time when I can really enjoy it, 2) it produces a hormonal response favorable to retention of lean mass, and 3), it’s a really easy way to control calories.

For cutting fat, IF is a fantastic tool because it’s so easy to keep caloric intake well below maintenance. But there’s also another side to it: if you’re not careful with IF, you can end up squandering your hard work at the gym because it can be difficult to get enough calories in for muscle growth, especially if the eating window is very tight. I recently learned this the hard way when attempting to increase calories without regard for the energy density of the foods I was consuming.

Here’s what happened.

Last week I wanted to increase my caloric intake up to maintenance for a few days, so I figured I’d just eat more of what I normally eat. But I wasn’t at all thinking about the energy density of those foods. So in addition to the absolutely enormous salad I eat after my small dinner, I was pounding extra popcorn, then having an avocado banana protein pudding , then a huge bowl of oats and berries right before bed. My stomach was so astronomically full that I went to bed literally in pain on those nights. I also woke up with heartburn, a condition which I experience exceedingly rarely. My best guess is that I forced such a high volume of food into my body so quickly that the sphincters throughout my digestive tract couldn’t fully close, which might have allowed some digestive juices through to go places they shouldn’t have. With all that, I still didn’t hit my maintenance target.

The sliding scale: eating window vs. caloric density

There are two ways to address this issue. The first is to open the feeding window from three to, say five hours. But since I don’t like eating during the day, I prefer to keep my feeding window to around three hours. The second option is to eat more energy dense foods during the window while also reducing the intake of high volume foods. So now on days when I want to boost calories (like on lifting days), I decrease my salad size by half, replace popcorn with 1-2 servings each of cheese, nuts and eggs, replace the water in the avocado banana pudding with organic whole milk and add natural peanut butter to it, and replace the bowl of oats with a cup of ice cream (but NOT Ben and Jerry’s–something with less sugar per serving like Turkey Hill or Breyer’s). You probably realize that these foods are higher in fat; that’s where the energy density comes from. These are all low volume, high energy items that allow the intake of more calories while saving the stomach from splitting. While protein can also be great for curbing hunger, it’s not great from an energy density perspective. It’s not just the fact that a gram of it contains 4 kcal to fat’s 9, but it also requires far more energy to metabolize than fat or carbs, which further degrades its energy density.

Ripped Recipe: Lemon Mint Ricecream and a rant against fructose and high-density ice cream

As the name implies, Lemon Mint Ricecream can be a calorie bomb

I deploy ricecream strategically for one or a combination of the two following reasons: 1) I’m totally burned out i.e. I’ve depleted most muscle and liver glycogen walking 20,000 steps while fasted or after having put in a particularly grueling lifting session, or 2) I’m mentally burned out and need a soul massage.

Ingredients
Cooked rice (with a little salt), cooled to room temp (whatever type and however much you want)
Vanilla ice cream
Juice of a quarter lemon
Chiffonade of several mint leaves
Cinnamon to taste

Preparation
Put rice in bowl. Mix with mint and lemon juice. Put vanilla ice cream on top. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Maybe let ice cream melt a little. Maybe mix ice cream and rice. Eat like a freaking wild animal then drink red wine then go right to bed.

Ice cream density is the devil

First, let me say that Ben and Jerry’s makes me angry. There’s no reason ice cream should be that rich. If you take a look at the weight of one serving (1/2 cup) of a “simple” Ben and Jerry’s flavor, like chocolate or vanilla, you’ll notice that it’s approximately 100 grams. Compare that to a less rich ice cream like Turkey Hill chocolate or vanilla, and you’ll see that the same 1/2 cup serving weighs around 60 grams. That means it’s less dense. Ok, fine, but that also translates into Turkey Hill containing about 60% the fat and 50% the sugar of the same volume of Ben and Jerry’s. Sure, you could eat only a quarter cup of B and J’s, but why the heck would a human want so little ice cream? I don’t know. This gets me all nice and hot for my next item, a rant against fructose.

Fructose is toxic

In my opinion fructose should be classified as a toxin and only be permitted to be used by a skilled practitioner who is well in tune with his or her body. Agave syrup should be banned outright, for it is 70% fructose, higher in fructose than any other substance other than pure fructose. You can hate me for despising agave syrup; I’m at peace with it. Based on my own research, I believe that fructose is so fantastically bad for the body for so many reasons. Yeah, sure it doesn’t elicit much of an insulin response (which is totally ironic), but for me, its number one offense is that the form of glycogen into which it’s converted by the liver cannot be stored in muscle which should be our primary carbohydrate storage tank (most people — at least Americans — eat way too much food, carry too little muscle, and don’t deplete their glycogen stores regularly enough for this mechanism to be effective, so they store most excess energy as fat). But I digress. I was saying that the form of glycogen into which fructose is converted can only be stored in the liver, which holds less glycogen than all the muscle in the body. As soon as the liver’s full of glycogen, which for the average, non-fasting, less active person it almost always is, that fructose is converted to triglycerides and stored as fat. Ever heard of high circulating triglycerides and how bad that is? Fructose, not saturated fat or cholesterol is one of the major contributors to the condition precisely because of way it is metabolized.

If I eat something with sugar (sucrose, which is half fructose by weight) in it, I make damn certain I’ve done everything I can to deplete my glycogen stores. That statement is a bit of a straw man; since I fast 21 hours every day and walk or lift or a combination of the two during my fast, it’s never an issue. This is yet another reason why fasting regularly for an extended period can be so incredibly powerful.