Feel stressed about choosing what to eat several times a day.

To better illustrate how it works, let’s compare two common breakfasts and how they act within the body.

Both of these meals probably look pretty familiar to you. If you’re a veteran of the Paleo lifestyle, one probably looks like a common morning in your past, while the other looks like a more recent morning.

Meal #1 is what we’d consider a “healthy breakfast” if we’re following CW, which assures us that eating a low-fat meal rich in whole grains will provide lasting energy and nutrition to power us through the morning. Since CW also tells us that saturated fat and cholesterol are unhealthy, we’re left with few options for breakfast. If we’re not eating eggs, what else is there for breakfast besides grains and fruit? Perhaps processed dairy like non-fat or low-fat yogurt? (For an egg-free breakfast plan, see here.)

WHAT ABOUT FRUIT?

Fruit is a real, whole, natural food, and if you aren’t concerned with dropping much body fat, avoiding it isn’t a big concern. However, if you want to lose significant amounts of body fat, I recommend avoiding it. Eating too much of anything sweet, even fruit, can cause higher blood sugar levels than you want.

MEAL #1

MEAL #2

1 cup of cooked oats + 2 Tbsp of raisins + 2 tsp of brown sugar

12 ounces of orange juice

16 ounces of coffee + 2 ounces of skim milk + 2 teaspoons of sugar

3 whole eggs

1 cup of cooked broccoli

1/4 avocado

2 large slices of tomato

16 ounces of coffee + 1 ounce of half and half*

Calories: 473

Total Fat: 4g

Saturated Fat: 1g

Cholesterol: 1mg

Total Carbohydrates: 102g

Dietary Fiber: 5g

Sugars: 33g

Protein: 12g

Vitamin A: 13%

Vitamin C: 266%

Calcium: 17%

Iron: 16%

Calories: 468

Total Fat: 32g

Saturated Fat: 10g

Cholesterol: 655mg

Total Carbohydrates: 22g

Dietary Fiber: 8g

Sugars: 7g

Protein: 26g

Vitamin A: 80%

Vitamin C: 186%

Calcium: 24%

Iron: 20%

Meal calculations are made using nutritiondata.com
*Note: heavy cream was not available in the database at the time of calculation or it would have been used.

meal #1 in your body

If you’ve made yourself Meal #1, congratulations—you’ve just created a lovely bowl of sugar, topped with sugar, and finished off with sugar, with a glass of sugar and some coffee with sugar and sugar added. Was that what you intended to do this morning? Sit down to a gigantic breakfast of sugar?

How do you feel after that breakfast? Pretty good, right? Sugar tastes good and I’ll bet you feel amped up and powered for the morning … until about an hour later, maybe two or three hours at the most. Then, what happens? If you’re like many of my clients, you’ll say, “I’m hungry again.” And all from your purportedly healthy low-fat, high-carb oatmeal breakfast.

How’s that working for you? It certainly hasn’t worked for the thousands of people I’ve counseled over the years. For many, they’re more than just hungry; they’re shaky and even irrational, desperate to find something to eat.

When you crash from eating that oatmeal breakfast, you probably reach for whatever is around, which is usually more carbs, such as a granola bar, crackers, or nonfat yogurt to get you through until lunch. Then, noon hits, and the lunch truck rolls around. You munch on your whole wheat and turkey sandwich with chips and an iced tea. That’s healthy, right?

Then, at about 3:00 p.m., you need an afternoon pick-me-up. Maybe you reach for a skim milk latte and a pastry from Starbucks. Come on, who doesn’t love their Starbucks fix? Plus, it’s an excuse to get out of the office.

The end of the work day arrives, and you’re feeling pretty hungry again, unsure how to make it either through your 6:00 workout or the ride home in traffic before you can get to a plate of pasta for dinner. So you grab a handful of nuts on your way out of the office (finally, some fat!).

Your entire day has been a rollercoaster ride, climbing up and down the steepest of hills, and rushing back down. The flat parts of the ride are when your body can relax and burn fat for energy. When you eat your oatmeal (or other high carb, low-fat) breakfast, however, your blood sugar levels climb way up high until you head down the other side of that steep hill about an hour later when the crash of low blood sugar comes. Not as much fun as a real rollercoaster ride, is it? To your body, each part of the ride is a negative stressor.

If you continue to eat similar meals, which are high in carbs and low in fat, you’ll take that rollercoaster car right back up another hill. When it comes to blood sugar regulation, that flat part of the ride before and after the hills is where your body wants to stay. Luckily, getting off the rollercoaster is easy.

Simply put, you need fat and protein to feel full for a long period of time. This feeling of fullness isn’t about filling your stomach, though! Don’t be fooled by the silly notion that “bulk and fiber” are what fills you from a meal. It is the nutrients that make you feel satisfied, and it is protein and fat that pack the most powerful nutrient-rich punch. The nutrients, in turn, allow your body to have a healthy hormonal response to your food. Ultimately, it is this hormonal response that determines how full you will feel in an hour, two hours, three hours, and even longer after a meal.

meal #2 in your body

Let’s take a look at how your morning goes if you eat Meal #2, the real food Paleo meal. You eat this breakfast of eggs, veggies, and coffee at about 7:00 a.m., and two hours later, you feel fine. Three hours pass, and you’re still fine. Four hours approach, and you may start to notice some hunger.

Noon rolls around, and you have a container of leftovers from last night’s dinner ready to go. This includes some roasted chicken (recipe here), perhaps over some leafy greens with carrots, avocado, and homemade dressing made with extra-virgin olive oil and lemon juice. Easy!

The end of your workday comes, and you head to the gym or drive home, feeling like you could eat but won’t pass out if you don’t. Whether you work out or simply drive home, you never feel shaky or disoriented from low blood sugar.

This is the difference between fueling your body primarily with sugar or carbs as opposed to fueling it primarily with proteins and fats. Remember, this doesn’t mean you should never eat carbs! It simply means that you want to eat good carbs in an appropriate amount for your lifestyle. When you are fat-adapted, your body can access stored body fat for energy when you haven’t eaten. If you never allow your body the break from burning carbohydrates as a primary fuel source, it never has the opportunity to burn fat for fuel.

The goal of most people on low-fat diets is to burn stored body fat. But these diets never give your body a chance to learn how to use fat as energy. Your system simply becomes accustomed to fueling on carbs. When you get hungry, which happens quickly since carbs are swiftly cleared from your bloodstream, your body is not in a hormonal state to allow stored body fat to be accessed as energy. This is a fantastic way to live and eat only if you want to keep Big Food companies in business by buying their cereal, granola bars, breads, crackers, cookies, and pastas.

So how can you plan a breakfast that will keep you satiated until lunchtime? Plan your meal around protein first, and make sure you also add good fat, followed by carbs:

Protein: Serve yourself a breakfast consisting of at least 20g of protein for women, 30g for men.

Fat: Make sure there is adequate, naturally occurring or added fat in the meal—roughly 30-50g.

Carbs: Any carbohydrate you add to the meal should be considered in terms of your activity levels during the day. Eat roughly 10-20g of carbs in your meal if you are less active and 30-60g if you are more active.

Then, balance the rest of your meals according to your activity level. You can use the same ratios as for breakfast, shifting them slightly depending on when you exercise. Perhaps you exercise in the evening, so your breakfast and lunch have fewer carbs, while your post-workout dinner may contain a higher amount of carbs to replenish what was depleted during exercise. Again, the meal plans to come will help you make smart choices based on the information you learn in this chapter.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14