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This week's blog article is all about diet strategies that you may have heard of before and what they mean. The terms can be quite confusing to traverse, luckily - James Kennedy is here to help you out. So, for the article. What you need to know - Word Count - 1424. Time to Read - 4.7 minutes.  Recently, we have been focusing on how to set up a diet, with an appropriate calorie and macronutrient target for your training goals. We have also briefly discussed the relative importance of nutrient timing and meal frequency. In this article we will dive into popular ‘nutritional strategies’ i.e. the many different ways you can get your calories in. We will briefly outline what these diet plans involve, who they are aimed at, they’re general healthiness and how easy they are to do.
Whilst these different nutritional strategies all have their strengths and weaknesses, none of them are a magic bullet which will allow you to ignore the foundations of nutrition for strength athletes - calories and macros. **Disclaimer - I have tried nearly all these strategies at one point or another. The best strategy for me has been IIFYM with a diet coach** (Shameless plug). 1. IIFYM ‘If it fits your macros’ (IIFYM) is a nutritional strategy which allows you to eat whatever you want as long as it fits into your calorie and macronutrient targets. Obviously, this gives you a high degree of flexibility in the diet; there are no banned foods in this diet! This is IIFYM's greatest strength and also it’s great weakness. Whilst you can, and should, mainly hit your macronutrient targets through eating healthy foods it is possible to hit these targets eating junk foods. 1. Healthy The healthy version of IIFYM is not dissimilar to the Paleo diet. A healthy IIFYM diet would involve eating lean proteins, fruits, and vegetables. However, unlike the Paleo diet, you could also eat dairy and healthy ’post-palaeolithic’ sources of carbohydrates - rice, potatoes and whole grains. 2. Unhealthy An unhealthy IIFYM diet would basically be to eat whatever the hell you want as long as it fits your macros. Of course, this is the joy of IIFYM - if you want to eat doughnuts and pizza you can, as long as it can fit into the macro breakdown. Your body doesn’t know the difference between calories from a biscuit and calories from a kale smoothie. However, eating a diet high in processed, unhealthy foods will not set you up for long term success. Firstly, it can be difficult to actually hit your macro targets and still eat 2-4 balanced meals a day. Secondly, it is really difficult to get your micro nutrition in if you eat a lot of junk food. Does this matter in the short term? No. You can still get ripped eating Big Macs every day, In the long term however, your body will not recover or grow as well as it possibly could. IIFYM is by far the most flexible of the diet strategies we have outlined here. If used properly, it can be a healthy way to approach dieting, as you can eat a healthy diet most of the time, and still fit a higher calorie ‘cheat’ meal into the diet. However, it can be abused and some people may benefit from choosing a more restrictive diet to help improve discipline and diet adherence. 2. Paleo A paleo diet (or caveman or hunter-gatherer diet) focuses on eating food which would have been available to our early human, pre-farming, ancestors. Primarily, this involves getting much of you calories from lean meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, whilst avoiding grains, potatoes, legumes, dairy and processed foods. The Paleo diet is high in fruit, vegetables and lean protein sources, with clinical trials (references 1-4) finding benefits in:
These effects are not entirely surprising - a diet low in processed foods is going to increase your overall health. Following a Paleo diet will almost certainly help you if you’re trying to lose weight as you eliminate almost all sources of carbohydrates from the diet apart from fruits and vegetables. However, for those bulking the Paleo diet is too restrictive, as it will be difficult to get enough calories to maximise muscle growth. The idea of minimising processed food and eating plenty of lean protein, fruits and vegetables is good, however the elimination of healthy carbohydrates (rice, potatoes, oats, etc.) is unnecessary. Further, whilst this diet promises to tap into our ancestral caveman, a true Palaeolithic diet would have varied massively across the globe. Finally, the elimination of dairy products could potentially lead to problems in getting enough calcium into the diet. 3. Intermittent Fasting Intermittent fasting refers to a diet where you can only eat at certain times and fast in-between. This fasting period can be structured in a number of ways, but the most common way is a 16 hour fast with an 8 hour feeding window (so basically just skipping breakfast and eating a larger lunch and dinner). Intermittent fasting can be a very effective method for weight loss - restricting the amount of time you can eat a day makes it easier to manage a reduction in calories. A lot of people have had amazing results from intermittent fasting - it makes fat loss relatively simple and some people find skipping meals can help with productivity and focus. There are downsides to intermittent fasting. Some people find it very difficult to skip meals and if you are trying to gain muscle mass it can be difficult to eat enough in an 8 hour window to get maximal muscle gains. Also, only eating for a 4-8 hour window does not mean you can eat whatever you want. It’s still important to eat a balanced, healthy diet and track your calories and macronutrients. 4. Carb Cycling Carb cycling is an advanced variation of IIFYM, where your macronutrients vary based on the level of activity on a given day. Typically, protein is constant throughout the week, with carbohydrates (and sometimes fat) cycled. Generally, the days that you train are ‘high carb’ days and non-training days are ‘low carb’ days, with fat reduced on high carb days and raised on low carb days. This results in you eating more calories on training days and less on non-training days, which can help manage hunger. Carb-cycling is incredibly effective for both fat loss and muscle gain, but it is a complex diet. It requires you to plan your training sessions and meals out in advance each week, making it an advanced technique. For this reason, it’s not suitable for beginners who need to learn to track macros and calories without additional complications. 5. Ketogenic The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high fat diet which involves the elimination of nearly all carbohydrates from the diet in order to force the body into a state of ketosis - when it is forced to burn body fat for fuel. The ketogenic diet is often controversial (primarily because of its proponents), but it does have health benefits. Studies have shown that there are benefits to the ketogenic diets for weight loss and health outcomes, as well as potential benefits against diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimers (5-9). The typical ketogenic diet involves eating approximately 70% of calories from fat, 20% from protein and 10% from carbohydrates - primarily fruit and vegetables in order to get enough fibre and micronutrients into the diet. For lifters, who need to eat more protein, a high protein ketogenic diet would be used, with ~35% protein into the diet. Whilst ketogenic diets have been shown to be better than ‘standard’ diets for weight loss in non-lifters, the results in lifters are less promising. A series of studies and recent meta-analysis (10) have shown that, compared to non-ketogenic diets, the ketogenic diet leads to greater weight loss and greater loss in fat free mass. They also indicate that smaller gains in hypertrophy and strength gains occur during a ketogenic diet compared to more typical bodybuilder diets. Whilst a ketogenic diet is an effective fat loss tool for non-athletes, lifters aiming to lose weight want to maximise the amount of lean muscle mass they retain. For this reason, a ketogenic diet is not appropriate for lifters in a fat loss phase. Furthermore, it’s not ideal for bulking either - eating a more standard, moderate to high carb diet will allow you to build more muscle and strength. Summary This article has given a brief overview of five of the most popular diet strategies used in the health and fitness industry today. All of these diets have a place for lifters, but rely on manipulation of macronutrient and calorie targets in order to have success. There is no right way to diet - find the best method for you! References
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