PERSONAL TRAINING: NUTRITION 401: The Caveman Diet
Expected Results
You should lose significant body fat when you go on a two-week carbohydrate fast. Your individual results may vary, however, and that variance provides us with excellent information in terms of how your metabolism is functioning. Doing the carbohydrate fast is especially helpful to clients who do not understand the importance of quality food because it proves to them that nutrition is a double-edged sword:
On the one side, it is what you put into your body.
On the other side, it is how your body is able to use what you put in.
When You Don’t Get Lean
I have seen people use this diet for fourteen days, follow it religiously, and make no significant progress in improving their body composition. If you do not drop one to two percentage points of body fat during this period, something is wrong. In this case, some immediate detective work is necessary to figure out why you are not losing body fat.
The possible reasons range from hypothyroidism caused by poor iodine absorption due to heavy metals toxicity, to dysbiosis in the gut due to infestation of candida or parasites, to leaky gut syndrome, or combinations of the aforementioned. If you have tried dieting before and not gotten a good result, this New York City personal trainer and strength coach specializes in getting his clients on the right track.
Cheating on the Caveman Diet
After the initial fourteen-day period, we begin to add carbohydrates back into the diet. Doing so ensures proper metabolism of amino acids, which is necessary to build lean body mass. The period that we put carbohydrates back into the diet is affectionately called the cheat meal, and not only allows for efficient metabolism, but also gives the client a reward for their hard work, and a mental break.
The cheat meal, or even cheat period, is individually based on the client’s body composition, and in some cases, so is what they can eat. In all cases, foods that cause allergic reactions are avoided.
When cheating, it is also best if the foods that you eat are as low on the glycemic index table as possible: ice cream is better than frozen yogurt; pizza is better than bread; dark chocolate with almonds is better than milk chocolate.
The caveman diet is your fastest nutritional pathway to the lean, strong physique that you always wanted. Its emphasis on high quality proteins, healthy fats, and low glycemic index carbohydrates is much closer to the way that our ancestors ate. When it comes to losing body fat; eat like caveman; don’t think like one.
