Overall Approach
You are what you eat. You can’t out exercise a bad diet. Etc. Lots of advice, but what should you actually do?
The goal here is not for short term weight management, but rather for a sustainable, enjoyable approach for the next 50+ years. Thus no absolute restrictions or expensive ingredients. Instead, a set of principles.
Mediterranean diet
This is a lower carb, higher protein approach, cycled over two weeks.
It is NOT a ketogenic diet. Keto is too hard to get right, and too risky if you don’t (eg your lipid profile will go haywire).
Key Principles
- Don’t count our measure calories
- Reduce carbs whenever possible – simply avoid ‘anything white’. ie pick recipes without pasta, rice, bread, grains, potatoes
- Additional protein intake via supplementation. It is hard to get to 2.2mg of protein per kg of body weight. Have two protein shakes per day.
- Eat some servings of fermented foods to boost gut biome (yoghurt, Kefir, Sauerkraut and kimchi)
- Lots of Vegetables (esp cruciferous such as broccoli and cauliflower), beans, lentils. Avocados. And more beans and legumes.
- Fruit, but no more than 2-3 serves per day (too much sugar)
- Oily fish, esp salmon
- Some purely vegetarian meals
- Healthy snacks – tree nuts, fruit
- Hydration – 2.5+l of water
- Break all the rules once or twice over a two week period. Eat anything. Eat too much.
- The only strongly suggested exception is drinking sugar drinks. Whether this is a can of soft drink or fruit juice, just don’t. Empty calories, lots of additives
- Consider fasting one day per fortnight
- Consider Intermittent fasting, where you consume all your calories in a 6 (ideal) to 8 hour window each day (a relatively straightforward way to manage your weight and total calories)
- Eat until you are 80% full then stop
- No snacking after dinner
- Minimal alcohol
Implementation. JTMWTD
Simply follow the guidelines above
Plan over a 2 week schedule, aiming for a mix of the following primarily daily meals over 14 days
Main Course
Frequency over 2 weeks
Oily fish
3
Vegetarian 4
4
Chicken
3
Other meat eg steak
2
Cheat
1
Fasting
1
Recipe resource suggestions.
Anything in a Keto cookbook is a great starting point, even though you are not intending to get ketogenic
Anything Mediterranean is a good starting point. For example, Jamie Oliver.
[LINKS]
AV other ideas and todos
blueberries, macadamia nuts, and walnuts
Still, there’s evidence for the benefit of some that’s worth noting. There’s evidence that ashwagandha and the amino acid L-Theanine (both in Longevity Mix) may reduce stress and help sleep, which is beneficial for overall health and longevity (2, 3)
One of the pills in the regimen also has curcumin, the beneficial bioactive component in turmeric, which is associated with anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antidiabetic, antidiarrheal, antimicrobial, antiviral, and antioxidant properties. There’s also some evidence that it can “prevent/weaken pathological processes leading to age‐related dementia, cognitive decline, or depression.” (4)
Resources
Notes for Adrian:
Mention how vegetarianism/ veganism fits or doesn’t fit into our diet recommendations. Mention somewhere how chocolate/ pastries/ candy consumption is managed under these principles. Anything that needs a lot of detail will be made into a blog post, so take note if anything falls under that. If you have 2 paragraphs just on avocados, that means it needs its own blog which can be linked to from here.
For implementation: Creating/ linking to a downloadable calendar would work really well. Also a great call to action spot to join the app waitlist as we manage your diet for you.