"Eat bacon, don't jog and NEVER eat fruit"
Eat bacon, don't jog and NEVER eat fruit: Health guru
reveals the 10 surprising ways YOU can shed the pounds and get fit. Grant Petersen is author of the best selling book Eat
Bacon, Don't Jog. He advocates a low-carb diet where most of the calories
come from fat. This puts the body in a state where it burns its own fat
for fuel, he says. Advises five-minuted bursts of intensive exercise rather
than jogging.
PUBLISHED: 08:08 EST, 19 October 2015 | UPDATED: 12:24
EST, 19 October 2015
Forget salads--bacon, cheese and cream are the key to
weight loss.
Eating fat--rather than carbohydrates--is the key
to slimming down, according to Grant Petersen, author of Eat Bacon, Don't Jog.
For years, Mr Petersen tried to lose weight in the
conventional way - through eating a low fat diet and exercising for up to three
hours a day.
While he says he wasn't fat by American standards, he
wasn't losing weight and became frustrated.
After researching different diets, he came to believe that
rather than being a simple matter of calories eaten versus energy expelled, the
hormone insulin affects weight loss.
When a person eats carbohydrates, they are broken down into
glucose in the blood.
The pancreas secretes insulin, which clears away glucose
from the blood into cells, so it can be used as energy. But insulin causes calories to be stored as body fat, and
prevents people using their own body fat as fuel, Mr Petersen
argues. Cutting out carbohydrates and eating all calories from fat
lowers insulin levels, and therefore weight gain.
Eating no more than 50g of carbohydrates a day - the
equivalent of a slice of bread and a banana puts the body into a state known as
'ketosis', in which it burns its own fat for energy, he says. It also prevents hunger, which mostly comes from craving
sugar, he maintains. Here, Mr Peterson explains why people should stop eating
fruit, add oil to their morning coffee and exercise so intensely they are
gasping for air...
1. Eat fish, meat, avocados and macadamia nuts.
The good fats are those that have a healthy ratio of
omega-6- to omega-3- fatty-acids.
These include fats from:
A) Cold-water fish
B) Avocados.
Avocado contains monounsaturated fat, which has many
health benefits. Fat from salmon, sardines, herring, anchovies; shellfish
like crab, shrimp, scallops, and oysters. They are low on the food chain and die young so they don't
have time to accumulate mercury the way big old predator fish like tuna and
swordfish do. These are high in omega-3s, low in omega-6s.
Grass-fed animals. They also have a good ratio of omega-3s to omega-6s,
although not as overwhelmingly good as oily fish. Fats from olives, avocados, and especially macadamia nuts. These fats aren't high in omega-3s, but they have better
omega-6 to omega-3 ratios than do most fatty foods. The dominant type of fat in both olive oil and avocado
oil is monounsaturated, which provides health benefits that make up for the
unimpressive ratios for omega-3s to omega 6s.
2. For breakfast, drink coffee with fat
Put three or four tablespoons of butter, ghee, cream,
and/or coconut oil in your morning tea or coffee. This is a perfect breakfast.
If you're just starting out on the low-carb way of life and
still crave solid food in the morning, replace that muffin and coffee with two
or three eggs and four or five slices of bacon along with your tea or coffee.
As you get into ketosis, you'll find you're not so hungry
when you wake up and won't need all that food until later in the day. Once you get over not eating in the morning, a hot fatty
drink like this will feel normal, even indulgent.
3. Fruits are just 'juicy sugar orbs'
Before agriculture, fruit was seasonal, small, sweet only
when compared to meat and greens, and rare. Now it's selectively bred to be huge, supersweet, and
abundant; and no matter where you live, you can buy South American grapes in
November.
Fruit is abundant in the sugar fructose - which goes
straight to the liver.
Fruits are universally considered natural and healthy, but
compared to their ancient relatives, today's fruits are pretty much just juicy
sugar orbs that, from a health perspective, look good only when compared to
grains and donuts. Read this out loud: 'Fruit makes me fat.' It's not just the quantity of sugar, but the kind. Glucose, lactose, sucrose, and other sugars get metabolized
(used as fuel) all over your body, but fruit sugar - fructose - goes straight
to your liver. Since your liver didn't evolve to handle huge doses of
fructose, it turns it into triglycerides (dangerous fat) and sends it out into
your blood, to your arteries, and onto your hips.
4. Try 'fasting' - while eating bacon.
Whatever spiritual, bowel-cleansing, detoxifying, and
generally suspect benefits the Eastern mystics and fasting fanatics may tout,
the undeniable benefit of fasting is a lowering of blood sugar and a consequent
lowering of blood insulin. When you cut out all food (including carbs), your
blood-insulin level will drop, you'll start to burn body fat, and you'll stop
being hungry. But starvation, even if only for a day, is a dreary and
unnecessary way to get there. Besides, when you starve one day, it's easy to eat too much
the next day. If you want to fast to reduce insulin, there are two ways
that work just as well and don't make you miserable with cravings. The first is to clump all high-fat, low carb eating into
any six-hour period; 8am to 2pm, 12 to 6pm, 6pm to 12pm, any you like - and
then fast for the subsequent 18 hours. The second option is to eat nothing but fat, whenever you
like, for 24 hours. For an entire day, eat only cheese, homemade unsugared
whipped cream, coconut oil, olive oil, butter, bacon, 2 to 4 ounces of fatty
meat, or up to six eggs, depending on how big you are.
5. Dark bitter vegetables are best.
Dark, leafy vegetables tend to have more nutrients and
taste more bitter than lighter vegetables that grow in heads, like cabbages and
iceberg lettuce. Broad, exposed leaves like kale, endive, collards, chard,
spinach, watercress, dandelion greens, and mustard greens reach for the sun and
lay out flat like a 1950s sunbather.
That exposure helps them develop phytonutrients and
antioxidants that protect them from pests. The phytonutrients give them their familiar, bitter taste
that most kids hate but adults have learned to tolerate—no doubt in part
because they feel virtuous eating them.
6. Never eat an egg white omelette or potatoes.
The yolk is the best part of the egg. It's 50 percent of the
egg's protein and all of its fat. Most people think the cholesterol in the yolk
will clog your arteries, but it won't. Yolks get a bad rap because they contain cholesterol, but
there is no relationship between cholesterol in the egg yolk and the cholesterol
clogging your arteries. High bad-cholesterol numbers are driven by carbohydrates
and omega-6 oils, not the healthy fats in egg yolks. Bereft of most nutrients except potassium, potatoes are way
too starchy for human health. If you're serious about health, regard all potatoes - even
those presented like healthy, whole gems -like fast-food French fries.
7. Coconut is god.
Coconut oil . . . contains medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs). These fats are good because they are metabolized differently than other fats. They're easier to burn as energy, and when you do that you make ketones, an efficient fuel for body, heart, and brain functions.
Coconuts are a great source of medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), which are 'fat royalty' as they are readily burned as energy. Coconut is right up there with salmon in the 'not magic,
but damn close to it' category, partly because it's so low in carbs for a
nonleafy plant, but mainly because it's such a great source of medium-chain
triglycerides (MCTs). Coconut oil is 66 percent MCTs. MCTs are fat royalty
because they aren't stored in the body the way other fats are. They're readily burned as energy and, in the burning,
produce more ketones (cell fuel alternative to glucose) than any other kind of
fat.
Greek yoghurt contains less carbohydrates as the sugary
whey has been drained away. MCTs are being used in treatments for obesity, cancer,
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other neurological diseases that typically rely
on a steady supply of glucose. MCTs aren't easy to come by, and coconut products,
especially coconut oil, have far more of it than any other food.
8. Eat Greek yogurt.
Greek yogurt is regular yogurt that's been drained of
some of its juicy whey to make it thicker. The milk sugar (lactose) is in the whey, so as it loses
whey, it loses carbs. But among Greek yogurts, there's a wide range in carb
contents, so read the labels and get the one with the fewest per cup. Between 5 grams and 9 grams is good; over 15 grams is too
much. Always go for plain— anything added means more carbs. You'll notice that craters in the tub of yoghurt fill with
liquid whey. Dump it out. The whey is sour and has lactose (milk sugar) -
double whammy there - so get rid of it and the yoghurt will be milder for it. Full-fat yogurt tastes better, is richer than low-fat and
nonfat yoghurts, and on a super low-carb program, it'll fill you up without
making you fat from the extra calories. If you're used to fruit-flavoured, still buy it plain, but
add a few berries and/or a little xylitol or stevia.
9. You CAN drink alcohol.
If you were concerned about calories, you'd have to give up
the empty ones from alcohol, but on a low-carb diet that doesn't count
calories, as long as your total carbs are low enough, it doesn't matter where
they come from. The goal is to limit carbs to whatever quantity your body
can tolerate while still burning fat for fuel, and maintaining a state of
ketosis often enough to lose weight and be healthy—and that depends on your
insulin sensitivity.
If you get fat easily, you may have to limit yourself to 20
grams of carbohydrates per day; if you don't, you can probably eat 50 grams of
carbs per day. This is good news for booze fans. Spirits are the lowest in
carbs, beer is the highest, and always skip the mixers if they're sweetened.
Essentially zero carbs:
Whiskey, gin, rum, tequila, Scotch, vodka — as long as
they're unsweetened and not mixed with sugared soda.
10. Don't jog.
Short, intense exercise that makes your muscles burn and
makes you gasp for more air to supply the burning muscles with oxygen. It has to be hard. If you can talk or watch TV or maintain
the effort level for more than five minutes, it's too easy. If you want maximum return on your exercising minutes - so
you can make it as short as possible -you need to work as hard as you can.
This idea is antithetical to the 'exercise is fun' notion
that drives the exercise industry, but let me be clear about this. Skiing, hiking, riding a bike, and surfing are fun, but the
exercise is incidental to the fun. Fun is great, but it's an inefficient way to get fit. I'm
not saying don't do it - that stuff can be the best part of your life. I'm just saying that when the goal is improved
cardiovascularity [strengthening the heart and blood vessels], stronger
muscles, and injury resistance, then short, superintense exercise works much
better and much faster than play or recreation. Maximally efficient exercise is barely bearable, and not
even close to fun.
Extracted from Eat Bacon, Don't Jog by Grant Petersen
(Workman, £9.99). Copyright ©2014.
