The Minefield of Nutrition

Nasty Politics and a New Perspective

In the “minefield” of nutrition, people are bigoted, prejudiced, opinionated, obstinate, and downright nasty when the fitness topic turns to nutrition. Positions are staked out and defended to the death. Entire industries have sprung up catering to erroneous nutritional philosophies based on faux science. Fortunes have been made and are being made duping the public. When vast amounts of money are involved, ethics go flying out the window, replaced by over-promising, exaggerations, and outright lies.

Institutions are equally bigoted. Governmental agencies and the mainstream medical establishment can be dismissive of nutritional strategies outside the official orthodoxy. Counterarguments are too often ignored. Opposing viewpoints are too often mocked instead of examined. Money taints and perverts everything in nutrition. As Dylan once observed, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears.”

Scientists, Fundamentalists, and Nutrition Dogma

A scientist is endlessly curious with a viewpoint that is always unfolding and evolving. A fundamentalist has purposefully frozen and fossilized viewpoints. Fundamentalist dogma permits no variance and opinions are not allowed. The scientist lives empirically and is intuitively flexible. The fundamentalist is intuitively inflexible and has a philosophy that must be accepted; non-believers are branded as heretics.

Science welcomes new opinions and encourages opposing viewpoints in the hope of improving the method, mode, product, or philosophy. The fundamentalist silences opinions and allows no viewpoint other than the holy sacred gospel. Once the dogmatic philosophy has been formed, enshrined, and deified, there is no further need for differing opinions.

Nutritional fundamentalism, as I use the phrase here, is represented by the “settled science” that champions low-calorie / low-fat dieting while tolerating and encouraging many refined carbohydrates: pasta, bread, factory foods, and industrial low-fat foods presented as healthy and superior.

Low-Fat Dogma and the Carbohydrate Problem

The low-calorie / low-fat orthodoxy remains, for nutritional fundamentalists, unassailable and unchallengeable. This philosophy created a billion-dollar industry catering to “lite,” “low-fat,” “low-cal”, and “fat-free.” If calories are bad, if fat is bad, why not create “healthy” low-calorie / low-fat industrial foods? These industrial concoctions are cooked in vats and loaded with additives, preservatives, and refined starches, then presented as healthy and superior.

Also recommended, or at least tolerated, are refined carbs, manmade artificial foods, sugar foods, and foods loaded with high-fructose corn syrup. Nutritional heretics and rebels rudely draw attention to the inconvenient truth that low-fat / low-calorie eating is not working for many people. It is considered inappropriate and impolite to point out that the nutritional emperor has no freaking clothes.

Here is the practical nutritional point: many refined starches and sugar-heavy foods are quickly broken down into glucose and stored or used as carbohydrate fuel. Sugar and refined starch can spike blood sugar and insulin. Frequent insulin-spiking meals can make fat loss harder for many people, particularly when those foods are combined with inactivity and excess total intake.

That said, insulin is not a cartoon villain and fat loss is not controlled by one switch. Food quality, total intake, training, sleep, stress, muscle mass, timing, medical status, and individual physiology all matter. The old-school lesson remains useful: if a person’s diet is built around refined starch, sugar, and processed low-fat foods, do not be shocked when leanness proves elusive.

Body Fat Is the Real Target

The goal of diet and exercise is not to lose body weight; the goal of diet and exercise is to lose body fat. The fundamentalists fly off the rails when they champion foods that spike appetite, blood sugar, and cravings while pretending that food quality is irrelevant.

Starvation is not the answer either. If you starve the body, catabolism can occur. Muscle loss is a horrific metabolic event when the body, sensing shortage and stress, strips muscle tissue of amino content to cover the shortfall. Losing scale weight while losing muscle and performance is a bad bargain.

From a scientific viewpoint, nutrition should be fluid and flowing. Real science, rooted in empiricism and actual results, provides an alternate route, a different pathway, a radically different way of navigating through the minefield of nutritional possibilities.

Protein, Fiber, Fat, and Carbohydrates

The practical fat-loss diet, in the old-school bodybuilding sense, is formed around foods that help control hunger, support muscle, and avoid constant blood-sugar spikes: protein, fibrous carbohydrates, and carefully chosen fats.

Fat, protein and fibrous carbs can dampen the blood-sugar hit associated with starch carbs. Ergo, many carbs other than fiber carbs are best eaten in combination with foods that slow digestion and improve satiety.

For hard-training athletes, protein and fiber-carb intake should usually remain high year-round. The wild cards, depending on the goal, are how much calorically dense fat is consumed and how much natural starch carbohydrate is eaten.

Humans tend to fall into one of two broad categories: those that prefer carbs versus those that prefer fat. Determine which of the two categories you fall into. If you prefer natural starch carbs over fat calories, then limit fat intake. If you prefer fat calories over natural starch carbs, keep carb intake lower. One or the other. Mixing high fat and high starch in large amounts is where many people wander into the minefield.

Fasting, Re-Entry, and Bodybuilding Leanness

Another old-school dieting tactic is beginning a weight-loss, lean-out regimen with fasting. Some experienced trainees use a fast to draw a hard line between old eating and new eating. That does not make fasting a medical detox, and it does not make fasting automatically appropriate for everyone.

Coming off a 3- to 4-day fast, some physique athletes reintroduce food carefully: low-carb protein powder with cold water, light clean protein such as eggs or fish, and fiber carbs such as broccoli, green beans, carrots, onions, spinach, and salad greens. Protein and fiber go together like “peas and carrots,” to quote the Zen master Forrest Gump.

Fiber supports digestion, satiety, and food quality. Elite competitive bodybuilders often make lean protein and fiber the nutritional backbone of their “get ripped” strategies. Many physique athletes live on lean protein and fiber as the competition approaches.

Bodybuilders will often slowly reduce starch calories. Fat calories may be adjusted as starch is reduced. This switch-out trick is used in an attempt to retain hard-earned muscle mass while body fat comes down. There are variations, twists and wrinkles, yet the core nutritional fat-loss template is easy to understand and incredibly difficult to adhere to.

Fasted Cardio as a Bodybuilding Tactic

One successful tactic pro bodybuilders use is to engage in a high-intensity cardio workout first thing in the morning, before breakfast. The body, coming off the sleep-fast, is low on readily available fuel. A torrid, sweaty cardio session can burn through residual carbohydrate stores and encourage stored body fat to be used as fuel.

This is not magic. This is not for everyone. This is not a license to starve, overtrain or ignore warning signs. It is a bodybuilding tactic used by disciplined athletes who coordinate training, food, recovery, and goals.

This is not a new perspective about nutrition and losing body fat. This approach has been obtaining real results for real people for decades. The path to leanness is well traveled, but not for the faint of heart or weak of mind.

Safety Note for Nutrition, Fasting, and Fat-Loss Strategies

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW perspective on nutrition, low-fat diet dogma, insulin, protein, carbohydrates, fats, fasting, and bodybuilding-style leanness. It is not individualized medical, nutrition, diabetes, eating-disorder, contest-prep, or weight-loss advice.

Extended fasting, severe calorie restriction, fasted high-intensity cardio, major carbohydrate restriction, and aggressive fat-loss strategies are not automatically appropriate for every person. Minors, pregnant or breastfeeding people, underweight people, people with eating-disorder history, diabetes, kidney disease, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disease, medication concerns, blood-pressure concerns, or significant medical conditions should seek qualified guidance before major diet changes.

Do not treat fasting as a universal detox or cure. Stop or seek qualified guidance for dizziness, fainting, confusion, chest pain, unusual shortness of breath, severe weakness, hypoglycemia symptoms, rapid unexplained weight change, disordered eating patterns, severe gastrointestinal distress, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Image Credit

Photo Credit: Special thanks to Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler for allowing us to use this image.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of numerous books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.