Note: There is a TON of more advanced nutrition strategies to come in later modules of The Energy

Blueprint. This is just to get you started. I am going to build on this foundation in upcoming modules
and incorporate lots of cutting-edge advanced nutrition secrets for boosting energy levels.

You’re also going to get a bonus supplement guide with lots of info on powerful supplements you can
use alongside these nutrition strategies. And you also have the cookbook that takes all these principles
and shows you the exact meals to make to boost your energy levels.

What You Will Learn In This Module

I will get into some truly cutting-edge science on how to increase your energy using nutrition that you
have never heard before.

• The science on what diet is best for health

• Nutrition and orexin
• How calorie FLUX affects your energy
• Nutrition and circadian rhythm
• How much proteins you need
• Carbs and fats
• Meal timing and frequency
• Meal composition
• Managing your blood sugar levels
• How to put it all together

You are not going to hear me:

• Blame all of your diseases, obesity and lack of energy on specific foods, nutrients or food
groups (e.g., carbs, sugar, dairy, gluten, grains, etc.).
• Make vague allusions to “toxins” and “detoxes” without showing you science around specific
toxins and how they affect you.
• Talk about GMOs. I need more science on this to have an informed opinion, but my personal
stance is naturalistic.
• Give recommendations based on pseudoscience and hear-say or what’s the popular nutrition
zeitgeist today. This is the real science.
• Give a one-size-fits-all blanket recommendation to adopt one specific dietary pattern (e.g., low-
fat, keto, Paleo or vegan diets). I am fine with you doing any of those approaches—regardless
of what foods you do or don’t eat, I am going to show you how to take your nutrition to another
level!

Before I get into the nutrition strategies specific to energy enhancement, I first need to go over the
foundation. What’s the foundation? It’s learning what the science says about the best nutrition
approaches for HEALTH, disease prevention, and longevity.

The Different Dietary Patterns

I will not go into all the details here around the science on each of the different dietary patterns
(please watch lesson 1 – The Science On What Diet Is Best For Health, for in-depth information) but I’ll
just briefly summarize:

There are 7 main dietary patterns:

• Mixed, Balanced
 • Low Fat (LFHC)
• Low Carb (LCHF)
• Low Glycemic
• Mediterranean
• Paleolithic
• Vegetarian and Vegan

David Katz, MD and his colleagues conducted one of the most important studies in the history of
nutritional science. It’s a systematic literature review of basically ALL of the thousands of relevant
scientific studies on the health effects of these 7 different dietary patterns. It’s called “Can We Say
What Diet Is Best For Health?” (Here is the full text of the study published in the journal for those who
wish to read it.)

As I said, I won’t recap all the science on each of the 7 diet types as I did in the video, but here’s the
bottom line summary…

The winner of "the healthiest diet" contest is...

There is no winner.

There are not nearly enough head-to-head dietary trials comparing the different diets to make any
determination of this sort.

But... There is a winner to the contest for "the healthiest dietary pattern"!

"The aggregation of evidence in support of

a. diets comprising preferentially minimally processed foods direct from nature and food made
up of such ingredients,
b. diets comprising mostly plants, and
c. diets in which animal foods are themselves the products, directly or ultimately, of pure plant
foods—the composition of animal flesh and milk is as much influenced by diet as we are...
 These findings are noteworthy for their breadth, depth, diversity of methods, and consistency of
findings.

The case that we should, indeed, eat true food, mostly plants, is all but
incontrovertible."

As long as you follow this advice, you can veer in the direction of ANY of the 7 dietary patterns (i.e.,
low carb, low fat, vegan, keto, etc.) with great success.

Now that you understand these principles, I’m going to look at how to actually structure a meal on a
practical level with the goal of eating for optimal health.

You might be wondering, how is it that diets that are so radically DIFFERENT can all lead to good
health?

If they follow this FOUNDATIONAL RULE, they are going to have health benefits.

RFMP

Real Food, Mostly Plants

If you follow this rule, you can be anywhere on the spectrum and do very well.

The 5 Main Ways Food Affects Your Energy

Levels
There are several different layers to how food affects your energy levels...

1. The direct and immediate impact of a meal based on the hormonal responses to the specific
nutrients in that meal – orexin.
2. The overall energy supply and energy balance (and the effects of that on hormonal and
neurotransmitter systems).
3. The long-term and subtle impact of your food and nutrient timing on circadian rhythm (meal
timing, calorie timing, feeding/fasting windows, and meal regularity).
4. The inflammatory and anti-inflammatory components of the diet
5. The effects of nutritents and eating patterns on mitochondrial size, health, and mitochondrial
biogenesis.

Orexin
Orexin is the single most important compound to understand when it comes to how food impacts your
energy levels. Yet, it is something most people have never even heard of!

Whenever you are tired or fatigued, orexin is suppressed.

It is the single most important stimulator of wakefulness, alertness and energy.

There are, of course, dozens of factors that impact your energy, but a lot of those factors affect your
energy by affecting orexin, and food is one of those.
The orexin system in the brain is central to you functioning and performing at your best, as well as
being in a good mood and having high energy levels.

Without a well-functioning orexin system, you are not going to feel very good.

Likewise, if you do not have much energy, it is a sure bet that your orexin system is not functioning
well.

Orexin influences virtually all the major physiological systems of your body, but is especially important
to your wakefulness, arousal state, mood and energy level
Orexin is impacted by many different factors, including circadian rhythm, sleep, light, emotional state,
energy balance, and specific macronutrients and micronutrients.

First, let me briefly go over some of the non-nutrition strategies you can use to impact orexin.

This is just a brief overview, as I am going to cover these in a lot more in depth in later modules.

1. Get Rid of Inflammation

• This is actually the most important factor in orexin being suppressed: chronic inflammation.
• Virtually everything you can do that has anti-inflammatory effects will positively impact
orexin levels.

2. Get Morning Sunlight or Use A Bright Light Device

• Light modulates orexin profoundly.

• Recently it has been demonstrated that light increases orexin and is the likely mechanism by
which it is effective for depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
• Light controls the circadian clock, and a disrupted circadian clock will impair orexin secretion
in the brain.

3. Improve Body Composition

• High levels of body fat produce chronic inflammation and inhibit orexin.
• Leptin resistance (and chronically elevated leptin) will also impair orexin.
• Losing body fat and moving towards a healthier body composition can profoundly lower
inflammation in the body and increase orexin levels.

4. Exercise and Movement

• Exercise and physical movement will increase orexin. (Some types more than others).
• I am going to cover this in a future module.

5. Passion, Sex, Connection, and Play!

• Studies have found that anything which stimulates the reward center in the brain
(pleasure) will activate orexin.
• A study found having fun or play was able to increase orexin, while the same level of
exercise didn’t raise orexin. The study concluded that motor and cardiovascular changes are
not sufficient to elevate orexin greatly, so they theorized that the emotional aspect of play
was the cause.
• If you hate your life, and you are chronically deficient in doing things you love and that you
are passionate about, your orexin system will be inhibited.

Nutritional Factors That Affect Orexin Levels

Carbs and fats
Both carbs and fats will tend to suppress orexin in large doses.
I.e., If you have a meal very high in either carbs or fats (especially refined carbs or fats), expect your
orexin levels to take a dive.

Note: This is the primary reason people feel tired/fatigued after meals.

Large glucose surges will negatively affect orexin levels.

Note: As you are going to see later, large amounts of fats can also suppress orexin, so the story is
more complex. For some people, carbs may suppress orexin more, and for others, fats suppress it
more.

Protein
Amino acids excite orexin neurons through several different mechanisms.

Amino acids block the glucose suppression of orexin. They stop glucose from telling the neurons that
there’s enough energy around.

Some research suggests that you are programmed from evolution to eat until your protein needs are
covered, termed the “protein leverage hypothesis,” so if you constantly undereat protein you might
overeat on fats or carbohydrates until you get sufficient amounts of amino acids.

Lactate
Lactate is another critical cellular energy source and a regulator of the orexin system and the brain’s
energy supply.
Supplying orexin neurons with lactate can stop glucose from blocking orexin neurons.

Lactate disinhibits and sensitizes orexin neurons for future excitation.

One study hypothesized that orexin neurons only ‘see’ glucose changes when the levels of other
energy molecules are low, whereas high energy levels can stop glucose from regulating orexin cells.

Sources of lactate:

• Sauerkraut, pickles, and fermented foods

• Probiotics – lactobacilli produce lactate
• Kombucha
• Exercise
• Fruit
• Sourdough bread
• Calcium lactate
• Calcium pyruvate
• Magnesium lactate

Overweight
The more overweight you are, the more you will benefit from carb restriction.

Large glucose excursions (large increases and subsequent decreases) in the blood tend to suppress
orexin levels.

They do so much more strongly the more:

• Overweight you are

• Insulin resistant you are
• Fatigued you are

If you are very overweight, carbohydrate restriction (and being very selective about your carb sources)
will likely help bolster your energy levels.

Fiber and resistant starch

GLP-1 is a hormone produced in the gut that can increase orexin. Resistant starch/prebiotic fibers are a
good way to increase GLP-1.
How to Design Your Meals for Maximal Postprandial (Post-Meal)
Energy Levels
Orexin turns out to be by far the most important factor that stimulates wakefulness, increases body
temperature and is central to having high energy levels, as well as generally being happy and in a
good mood.

Consumption of a high protein meal results in steadier glucose and insulin levels, higher satiety scores
and a higher body temperature. More importantly, the positive mood and cognitive benefits are
significantly higher compared to a meal with low protein (below 10-15% of calories).

The leaner you are, the more you will notice having less energy after eating high-fat meals.

This is also confirmed in controlled human studies, where high-fat-low-carbohydrate (LCHF) meals
induce fatigue, lethargy, less vigor, and overall lower mood scores.

On the other hand, if you are very overweight and insulin resistant, you may notice that you feel
better with lower carb, higher fat meals.

Importantly, energy levels are most definitely not just about carbs and fats. In fact, compared to food
quality (whole foods vs. processed foods), the amount of carbs vs. fats that you eat is likely a minor
player in your energy levels.

Much more important is where those carbs or fats are coming from!

Eating blueberries and carrots (both carb foods) is VERY different from eating doughnuts, breakfast
cereal and cookies.

Likewise, eating avocados and almonds is VERY different from eating pizza, burgers, french fries and
ice cream (or any other fatty processed food with lots of added fat).

The lower glucose density of plant based carbohydrates, such as low-sugar fruits and berries and
tubers/roots, provides fullness and satiety while reducing glucose excursions.

More specifically, you can eat to fullness and still not go into a carb-induced coma, which is more
common to those who start the day with higher glucose dense processed foods such as breakfast
cereals, white bread and fruit juices loaded with high-fructose corn syrup.

Most people are also prone to sit or lie down after having a large meal, and then get sleepy or doze off.

An easy way to prevent this, when you know that glucose excursions are tied to inhibition of orexin, is
to go out for an easy walk instead of sitting or lying down.

Research confirms that leisurely walking for only 15 minutes after eating will significantly improve
glucose control.

In my experience, just going out for a walk around the block after even the heaviest meal will maintain
a high energy level.

Points to take away:

• High carb and/or high fat meals that are low in protein are problematic for most people.
Eat whole, unprocessed carbohydrate foods in proper balance with protein foods to fullness, and
you will automatically ensure that orexin production is uninhibited from glucose excursions,
while at the same time allowing orexin to be boosted maximally by protein.
• Be active between meals. Being more active will make you feel better every time you eat.
 • Losing fat can improve metabolic health and make you more energetic. Feeling great every time
you eat whole food meals while being more active, will make overweight people lose weight,
thus making them feel even more energetic!
• If you are a leaner and/or very physically active person, you will likely have better energy levels
by eating meals rich in whole food carbohydrates (plant foods) combined with lean protein
sources.
• Whereas if you are very overweight and/or insulin resistant, you may feel best by keeping your
intake of carbohydrates lower (eating mostly leafy green veggies) while eating meals richer in
animal foods and fattier plant foods (like avocados, olives, nuts and seeds).

FLUX and Your Energy

After orexin, the next important layer of how nutrition impacts your energy levels is overall energy
balance and a concept called FLUX.

How The Body Fat Set-Point System and FLUX Control Your
Energy

In the video I talked about how your brain regulates your body fat and energy expenditure (including
your physical ENERGY LEVELS), through a network of brain regions in tandem with several hormones
and neurotransmitters. This summarizes what I talked about:
When you are undereating due to diet or famine:

When you are overeating:

 Low Energy Supply → Low Energy
If you are chronically restricting your food intake (or you just eat VERY little food each day), your brain
will downregulate the energy-producing systems of the body.

This is the body’s way of ensuring you do not do lots of physical activity and burn up lots of
calories, which would amplify the starvation!

When you are forcibly restricting calories below your body’s needs, it makes it extremely difficult to
have good energy levels because your body downregulates the energy burning systems (the
metabolism, the ability of muscles to work effectively, and your energy levels).

Where Does Flux Fit Into All This?

FLUX is a critically important concept to understand when it comes to energy levels.

Flux is simply a way of describing what is going on with the energy balance equation.

Specifically, it is the relationship between the total amount of energy/calories being ingested and the
amount of energy/calories burned off through the sum total of your metabolic activity.

You might be thinking at this point “Ok, so all this is just calories in, calories out? Yeah, I already know
that! Yeah, yeah… eat less and do more exercise. This is nothing new.”

Hold on just a minute there, smarty pants!

Calorie Deficit vs. Calorie FLUX

Actually, no—it is not nearly that simple! And that is not where I am going with this!
The concept of “calories in, calories out” that people are familiar with is:

CALORIES IN – CALORIES OUT = CALORIE DEFICIT

FLUX is a different equation. It is:

CALORIES IN + CALORIES OUT = FLUX

That simple matter of whether you use a minus sign or plus sign makes a huge difference in what I am
searching for. Let me explain why…

Flux is the term that describes whether a person has trained their body into regulating energy balance
at a high calories in and calories out, or at a low calories in and calories out.

To ground this in some numbers just to make this concept click in your mind:

• LOW FLUX = 1,400 calories in, 1,400 calories out

• HIGH FLUX = 3,000 calories in, 3,000 calories out

(This is just an example using random numbers. There is nothing special about these particular
numbers I am using. It is simply meant to illustrate that higher calories in and calories out = higher
flux, and vice versa).

Here is a more detailed chart of the spectrum of very low to very high flux levels for various body
sizes:
Why is the concept of FLUX so important?

To show you why, let me take two hypothetical scenarios, where a person establishes a 500 calorie
deficit per day, but in two different ways.

PERSON 1 - LOW FLUX DIETING: - This person starts in a situation where they are consuming and
burning 1,500 calories a day. Then they go on a diet and start eating only 1,000 calories per day.
(1,000 “calories in” and 1,500 “calories out” = 500 calorie deficit).
PERSON 2 – HIGH FLUX DIETING: - This person starts in a situation where they are consuming and
burning 3,000 calories a day. Then they go on a diet and start eating only 2,500 calories per day.
(2,500 “calories in” and 3,000 “calories out” = 500 calorie deficit).

Classically trained dieticians, personal trainers, and doctors will tell you that there is no difference
between the two states at all. At the same calorie deficit of 500 calories, most fitness and nutrition
professionals will tell you that

“Same calorie deficit = same results.”

Right? It has to be this way—the simple math of thermodynamics proves it so, right?

In reality, these two situations are not the same at all!

The research actually shows that there are massive differences between low flux and high flux
physiology—even at the same exact calorie deficit.

People at high flux can expect:

• More fat loss and less muscle loss

• Greater ease of fat loss
• More satiety
• Far less suffering through hunger (the single most critical factor dictating whether fat loss lasts
or you regain everything you lost)
• A faster metabolism
• Higher energy levels (another important predictor of fat loss success)

In other words, FLUX affects how tightly your body regulates your
metabolism and energy levels.

You may be worried that I am recommending you consume more calories, and that if you do, you will
put on weight. You might think that people who consume more calories are invariably fatter and people
who consume fewer calories are leaner. So here is a little shift in thinking for you:
These are people who eat far more than you but are far leaner. (Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps,
who is pictured above, is known to eat over 8,000 or 10,000 calories a day!)

What is their secret?

They have trained their bodies to function on higher and higher levels of calories in, calories out.

The Low Flux Trap

Many people fall into the low flux trap. Either because they are intentionally trying to lose fat by
pursuing a path of more and more dietary restriction – calorie restriction, carb restriction etc. Or,
because they did a downward spiral of more and more sedentary living combined with fatigue.

They eventually train their body into chronic LOW FLUX, and their metabolism and energy suffer as a
result.

One of the most essential steps to increase your energy levels is to increase your FLUX.
The higher the FLUX, the more you are working with your biology instead of against it—the more
willing your body is to be lean and maintain high energy levels.

In short, remember this: Higher Flux = More Energy

The higher the FLUX, the less likely your body is to downregulate your metabolism and energy levels.

The benefits if higher FLUX

• Faster metabolism
• Improvements in insulin sensitivity
• Less hunger
• A body more willing to release excess fat
• More energy!

Why does FLUX cause so many benefits?

1. Starvation mode threshold changes

2. Psychological benefit of getting to actually eat a lot of food while losing fat
3. Enhanced nutrient partitioning
4. Enhanced micronutrient and phytonutrient status
Now that you understand why flux is so important and how it works, I’m going to talk about the
practical steps to increase it. There are 3 main methods to increasing flux (each with its own set of
pros and cons):

While method #1 works great for young healthy athletes, it does not work well for people struggling
with fatigue.

What I want you to do is a combination of #2 and #3. (A special, unique combination of these two
strategies). You are going to focus on gentle movement (not intense exercise) combined with the
increased consumption of specific foods.

However, I want you do to it in a specific way.

Step 1 – Add in at least some small amount of gentle movement each hour of the day.
Step 2 – Add more protein into your diet at each meal.
Step 3 - The veggie challenge. Try to DOUBLE or TRIPLE your intake of plant foods (veggies) at
each meal.

FLUX Recap
1. Having adequate calorie intake is important for your neurological and hormonal systems to tell
the cells “it is okay to produce energy and burn off energy.”
2. Having adequate micronutrient intake does the same thing.
3. Having adequate phytonutrient intake does the same thing.
4. FLUX is key to being able to do #1-3.
5. FLUX basically unlocks your metabolism and your cells’ capacity to produce energy.
6. Start increasing your FLUX now through gentle movement + protein + tons of plants.
 Circadian Rhythm and Nutrition

The 5 Layers Of Nutrition And Energy

1. The direct and immediate impact of a meal based on the hormonal responses to the specific
nutrients in that meal – orexin.
2. The overall energy supply and energy balance (and the effects of that on hormonal and
neurotransmitter systems).
3. The long-term and subtle impact of your food and nutrient timing on circadian rhythm (meal
timing, calorie timing, feeding/fasting windows, and meal regularity).
4. The inflammatory and anti-inflammatory components of the diet (and oxidative stress induced
by the diet – more on this in Module 6).
5. The effects of nutritents and eating patterns on mitochondrial size, health, and mitochondrial
biogenesis. (Hormesis, more on this in Module 6.)
Much like light, nutrition also impacts your circadian rhythm, which also influences your energy levels
(and numerous other aspects of your health).

When your nutrition habits are not dialed in, it blunts your circadian rhythm and orexin systems, which
lowers your energy levels.

When your nutrition habits are dialed in, it amplifies your circadian rhythm (and orexin). That means
better sleep at night and a better mood, better mental and physical performance, and more energy
during the day.

Protein
Our DNA holds the blueprint to create more than 25,000 protein-based compounds that are involved in
countless essential functions, including growth, movement, and the regulation of metabolism.

Due to the important role of protein in our body, not eating enough protein has widespread health
consequences, including muscle wasting, lethargy, weakness, hormone imbalances, poor immune
function, accelerated aging, heart problems, mood disorders, bone loss, hair loss, impaired healing,
and so forth.

All protein, whether in our body or that in our food, is created from a combination of 20 amino acids.
Nine of these amino acids are called essential amino acids (EAAs) because we cannot make them
within our body and therefore must consume them in the diet. The other 11 amino acids we can make
from other compounds, and are therefore considered nonessential amino acids (NEAAs).

At times, a nonessential amino acid may become conditionally essential due to a health state or
genetic condition that impairs our ability to synthesize it. For example, glutamine is conditionally
essential for burn victims because they are using more glutamine than they can synthesize, and
tyrosine is conditionally essential for people with phenylketonuria because they lack the machinery
required to create tyrosine from its precursor, phenylalanine.

The body uses amino acids to create proteins it needs to function around the clock. It pulls these
amino acids from the amino acid pool, which represents the totality of amino acids available for your
body to use for protein synthesis and other functions. This pool is replenished when we eat dietary
protein, but also through the breakdown and recycling of old dysfunctional proteins within the body.
The continual process of breaking down and building bodily proteins is called protein turnover.

Protein turnover and the amino acid pool

The breakdown of old dysfunctional proteins is mandatory for optimal health by providing a quality
control mechanism that selectively eliminates dysfunctional or damaged proteins that have arisen by
mutations, biosynthetic errors, damage by oxygen radicals, or by denaturation.

However, when we replenish the amino acid pool through protein breakdown, about 85% of the amino
acids come from skeletal muscle, called muscle protein breakdown (MPB). Muscle mass plays a major
role in the prevention of many metabolic disorders, such as obesity, type-2 diabetes, and osteoporosis,
and the age-related loss of muscle mass, called sarcopenia, is a widespread health concern with
devastating consequences on survival and quality of life.

The only way we can build more skeletal muscle is through eating protein and stimulating muscle
protein synthesis (MPS).

Protein Requirements
An analysis of 229 hunter-gatherer societies found that dietary protein intake made up 19–50% of
caloric intake, depending on geographical location and seasonality. This range supports prior research
estimating that primitive societies consumed an average of 34–37% of calories from protein.

Protein intake in the U.S., for example, averages 15–16% of calories. This discrepancy is likely owed to
what most people today eat — 63% of calories are obtained from processed foods like added fats and
oils, sugars, and refined grains.

Comparatively, half of hunter-gatherer societies obtained more than two-thirds of their calories from
animal foods.
The lower protein intake of modern humans, combined with a hyperpalatable food environment, has
been proposed as a driver of obesity through what has been coined The Protein Leverage Hypothesis.
Basically, everyone seeks a certain amount of protein to satisfy their requirements, and will continue to
be hungry and eat until that amount of protein is obtained. When food is low in protein, this requires
eating more of it, and usually more calories too.

Base Protein Intake On Weight, Not Calories

An important concept to understand about figuring out how much protein we should eat is that our
requirements are going to be based on our body weight, not our caloric intake. That’s because
protein’s role in the body is largely structural and biosynthetic, meaning that our requirements are
going to be somewhat consistent regardless of how many calories we eat.

You’ll see protein expressed as grams per kilogram body weight (g/kg). If you weigh 100 kg and need
1.5 g/kg of protein, then that means your protein intake goal would be 150 grams per day. Having
protein intake based on body weight not only makes it incredibly easy to calculate, but is also far more
accurate than basing protein intake on your caloric intake.

Further down, you will be able to see an overview of the recommended protein intake you need based
on your current lifestyle.

Minimum Protein Requirements

To start, let’s set the floor of protein intake for most people. This will serve as the minimum amount of
protein you should be eating each day. It may not be the optimal intake level for many, so look at this
number as a lower threshold that you don’t want to fall beneath.

A number that gets thrown around by many dietitians and doctors is 0.8 g/kg. This is the
Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) established by the National Academies of Science and represents
“the lowest daily intake value for a nutrient that will meet the need… of apparently healthy individuals”
(pg. 610). Conceivably, then, it would be an appropriate minimum intake level.

But it’s not.

An alternative method for determining protein requirements, called the Indicator Amino Acid Oxidation
(IAAO) technique, has been developed to overcome many of the shortcomings of nitrogen balance
studies. For example, it allows for the assessment of protein requirements within 24 hours. Research
using the IAAO method has shown that the RDA for protein for healthy young men, older men, and
older women should be around 1.2 g/kg.
The final piece of evidence we need to shut the door on the current RDA for protein is a study in which
healthy adults were locked inside a metabolic ward that allowed researchers to have complete control
over their physical activity and food intake. Over eight weeks, these people were fed 40% more
calories than they needed to maintain weight while eating 0.7, 1.8, or 3.0 g/kg of protein per day.

As we would expect from an eight-week gorge fest, all three groups gained considerable amounts of
body fat, about 7.5–8 lbs. However, while the two higher protein groups also gained 6–7 lbs of lean
mass, the group eating close to the RDA for protein (0.7 g/kg) lost 1.5 lbs of lean mass. Clearly the
RDA for protein is not sufficient, even when overeating.

Based on all of the above, a safe lower limit for protein intake should be around 1.2 g/kg.

Overweight and Obesity

For those of you who have some extra weight you are trying to lose, an optimal protein intake will be
that which best aids your fat loss journey. It’s an important health-oriented goal because being
overweight or obese greatly increases the chances of developing type-2 diabetes, developing and dying
from cardiovascular diseases, and dying from any cause.

Overall, consuming 1.2–1.6 g/kg of protein per day is ideal if you’re overweight or obese and trying to
lose some fat mass. We can’t really say whether eating more than this would be beneficial because
none of the studies looked at higher intake levels. Like most things, it probably depends on you.

If you find that eating more protein than this helps with appetite and hunger, then by all means go for
it. However, keep in mind that protein does provide calories and would need to replace other food in
the diet to maintain a similar rate of fat loss. Since dietary adherence is the most important aspect of
any fat loss plan, eating more protein to see if it makes dieting easier or more enjoyable is certainly
worth it.

Healthy Weight
For those of you who are at a healthy weight and just looking to improve overall health and energy
levels, an optimal protein intake will be that which maintains a healthy weight and maximizes muscle
mass and function.

If you haven’t started exercising regularly yet, then protein requirements are not going to be much
greater than our minimal requirements because exercise is necessary to maximize muscle growth and
development. If we look back at the overfeeding study mentioned previously, we can see that there
wasn’t any benefit for lean mass above 1.6 g/kg.
Accordingly, aiming to eat 1.2–1.6 g/kg of protein per day is a reasonable goal.

Athletes And Active Adults

of 1.6–2.2 g/kg of protein per day allowing for optimal training adaptations. It may be prudent to aim
on the higher end of this range, especially as activity levels increase and if engaged in regular
resistance training.

From Lean To Leaner?

If you are someone who is lean and active and interested in becoming even leaner, then protein
requirements are going to increase above that needed to maintain a healthy body composition and
allow for optimal training adaptations.

Muscle protein breakdown when dieting becomes greater the leaner you get, a concept referred to as
the P-ratio, or ratio of protein loss relative to fat-mass loss. Compared to a guy with 20% body fat, a
guy with 10% or less will lose nearly twice as much lean mass, simply because he was leaner to begin
with.
A review of dieting studies in lean athletes reported that consuming 2.2–3.3 g/kg of protein per day
was the most consistently protective against lean mass losses, as compared to lower intake levels. ‘

If you are a lean individual looking to push the boundaries of leanness, then eating 2.2–3.3 g/kg of
protein per day seems to be the optimal intake level for preserving muscle mass while dieting.

Bulking Up And Overfeeding

Like with dieting, eating 2.2–3.3 g/kg of protein per day appears optimal, this time by minimizing fat
gain rather than promoting additional lean mass gains.

Pregnancy
For women who are pregnant, an optimal protein intake is going to be that which best supports the
growth and development of the baby-to-be. The National Academies of Sciences has set the RDA for
protein in pregnant women at 1.1 g/kg, which is marginally higher than the 0.8 RDA for adults. It
seems prudent to error on the side of caution and eat 1.8–2.2 g/kg of protein per day during
pregnancy.
 Carbs And Fats

Essentiality
As discussed in the previous lesson, optimal health demands we eat a certain amount of protein each
day based on our weight and health goals. It’s really easy to fall short on this one because we have
large protein requirements and not all foods are excellent sources of protein.

So, what about dietary carbohydrates and fats?

From a survival standpoint, neither are realistically essential. The body is able to synthesize enough
carbohydrates to satisfy its basic needs, even during complete starvation, making it unnecessary to eat
any carbohydrate in the diet.

As for fat, there are two so-called essential fatty acids (EFA): the omega-6 fatty acid, linoleic acid (LA),
and the omega-3 fatty acid, alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). I say “so-called EFAs” because it took 50 years
of research to finally establish their essentially due to difficulties in causing an actual deficiency. Our
daily requirements for EFAs are so low, and they are so abundant in foods that is is almost impossible
to be deficient.

Of course, survival needs can’t be confused with what is required for optimal health.

This is where things become tricky. There are so many factors that contribute to our ability to properly
use dietary carbohydrates and fats that there is no possible way for research to directly investigate
every possible scenario. So, consider this lesson to serve as more of a template, one that will
ultimately require further tailoring to your individual needs and preferences.

Fat Loss
Considering how important obtaining a healthy body composition is
for health and energy levels, looking at how dietary carbohydrates
and fats impact fat loss is a great starting point.

From a purely scientific standpoint, there doesn’t appear to be a

meaningful difference between low-fat and low-carbohydrate diets
for fat loss or energy expenditure. Back in 2017, obesity researcher
Kevin Hall published a paper that aggregated the data from 32 calorie- and protein-equated studies
comparing diets with varying amounts of fat and carbohydrate. Not only were protein and calories
matched between groups, but all food was provided to the participants to ensure complete dietary
adherence. Hall found that low-fat diets resulted in greater fat loss by an average of 16 grams per day,
and greater energy expenditure by an average of 26 calories per day.

At that rate, you would lose an extra pound of fat every 24 days. Not very meaningful.
 The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model Of Obesity
On this note, we should address the persistent belief that carbohydrates and the insulin response they
evoke causes fat gain and obesity, something called the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity (CIMO).

The CIMO hypothesis goes like this: dietary carbohydrates elevate insulin, which suppresses the
breakdown of body fat and promotes fat storage. The resulting decrease in circulating fat reduces the
energy available for the body to use, causing a reduction in energy expenditure and increase in
appetite. Therefore, obesity is the result of carbohydrates and insulin driving fat storage and appetite
while suppressing energy expenditure.

Proponents of CIMO commonly juxtapose it against what they term the “conventional model”, which
they describe as the belief that body composition is not biologically related and can be altered simply
through using willpower to “eat less, move more”. This view of energy balance is inherently flawed,
though, as no expert actually believes that obesity is that simple.

The Endocrine Society, for example, clearly states that “obesity is a disorder of the energy homeostasis
system, rather than simply arising from the passive accumulation of excess weight,” with known
neurobiological and hormonal involvement.

Accordingly, there can possibly be some role of insulin resistance and blood sugar levels in appetite-
regulating centers of the brain. Certain forms of carbohydrates can also play a role in obesity by
facilitating overconsumption. What we are arguing here is that carbohydrates and insulin as the per se
causes of fat gain and obesity is not supported by available evidence.

As already mentioned, highly controlled studies manipulating the carbohydrate and fat content of the
diet result in comparable fat loss and changes in energy expenditure provided calories and protein
intake are matched. Similarly, less well-controlled studies of free-living people suggest that all diets
are similarly effective when adhered to.

Moreover, if carbohydrates and insulin cause fat gain, then why are the indigenous Kitivan population,
who eat a diet of at least 70% carbohydrate, “characterized by extreme leanness (despite food
abundance)?” Why did the Japanese not develop obesity until they migrated to the U.S. and began
eating a Western diet higher in fat compared to their traditional rice-based diet? These observations
are difficult to reconcile with CIMO.

Finally, if one doesn’t eat carbohydrate, then it must be replaced by dietary fat assuming that protein
and calories stay the same. Yet, when overeating diets rich in carbohydrate or fat, dietary fat gets
stored as body fat with 90–95% efficiency, compared to 75–85% efficiency for carbohydrate.

DIETFITS
Further evidence against CIMO comes from an $8 million study out of Stanford called the Diet
Intervention Examining The Factors Interacting with Treatment Success (DIETFITS) study. Its goal was
to test whether people with certain genetic factors that affect insulin secretion, or whether the
magnitude of an insulin response after a glucose challenge, predicted weight loss success over a one-
year intervention with either a low-fat or low-carbohydrate diet.

DIETFITS involved just over 600 obese adults who met regularly with dietitians to promote adherence
to the intervention, were encouraged to get 60–90 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per
day, and instructed to “maximize vegetable intake ... minimize intake of added sugars, refined flours,
and trans fats; and ... focus on whole foods that were minimally processed, nutrient dense, and
prepared at home whenever possible.”

Both groups were told to restrict their “low” macronutrient (carbohydrate or fat) to less than 20 grams
per day for the first two months, and then add them back in increments of 5–15 grams per week until
they reached the lowest level of intake they believed could be maintained indefinitely. Neither group
was told to restrict their food or calories otherwise.

Both groups lost 12–13 lbs after the year-long intervention, and neither genotype nor insulin secretion
predicted the weight change in either group. There were also no difference between groups for energy
expenditure. Not only does DIETFITS not support the CIMO hypothesis, it shows rather clearly that
people can unintentionally reduce calories and lose weight on both low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets.

Of course, not everyone lost weight. Many people experienced only marginal changes, and some even
gained. So, we are again back at the age-old advice to pick a diet that you can stick with.

Insulin Resistance And Diabetes

Now, although low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets are similarly effective options for fat loss, there may
be reason to pick a low-carbohydrate diet if you have type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, or other
issues with glycemic control.

Having too much fat mass is the main cause of insulin resistance, and an excess build up of fat around
organs like the liver and pancreas is central to the pathology of type 2 diabetes. Fat loss not only
improves glycemic control and quality of life, it can reverse and cure diabetes too.

So, any diet that allows you to successfully lose fat mass is a first priority since it will get to the heart
of resolving insulin resistance and diabetes and restoring health. Low-carbohydrate diets simply have
specific benefits for glycemic control, especially in the short-term, such as reducing post-meal spikes in
blood glucose and insulin levels.
 Athletes
For those of you who workout regularly, the choice of a low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet will depend on
your goals. If you simply want to enjoy life and be healthier, then it doesn’t matter. However, if you
are aiming to be competitive in sports or maximize your performance, then we need to be more
conscientious of where we get our calories.

The low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet has been gaining attention in the sports world for its purported
ability to boost exercise performance. However, this interest appears to based on enthusiastic claims
and anecdotes rather than a strong evidence base. Although a low-carbohydrate diet increases the use
of fat as an energy source, it does not appear to confer a performance benefit and may instead
decrease one’s ability to perform at high intensities.

Carbohydrates are the predominant fuel source the body relies upon during performance events lasting
up to three hours.

Again, this only applies to those who want to be as competitive as possible. If winning isn’t your goal,
then this doesn't matter so much. Most sports require relatively short-duration, high-intensity efforts,
and it is these periods of increased exercise intensity that often determine the eventual race outcome.

Foods Versus Macros

Before we close out this section, a final important point needs to be made about not missing the forest
for the trees. We are talking about macronutrients because they matter, they do; they just aren’t the
only thing that matters. A focus on macronutrients without acknowledging the foods supplying them is
myopic and misguided.

Generally speaking, you would probably agree that whole-grain steel-cut oatmeal is going to be
different than some Wonder bread white toast, both of which would be different from an apple or a
baked potato. Yet, all of these foods could be easily consumed on a low-fat diet. On the flipside, a low-
carbohydrate diet could be built around bacon and burgers, or seafood and nuts.

Any diet can be followed in a healthy or unhealthy way depending on food choices. We tend to
hyperfocus on macronutrients, but that is short-sighted when optimal health is the goal.
Although macronutrients may help guide food choices, those food choices still matter. The overarching
theme of eating a plant-rich diet with adequate protein is pivotal for health regardless of whether you
decide to follow a low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet.

As discussed in lesson #2: Nutrition and Orexin, macronutrient combinations within meals do affect
energy levels through their impact on the important neuropeptide: orexin. These macronutrient
combinations will matter regardless of whether the overall fat and carbohydrate content in your diet.

Meal Timing And Frequency

Modern Eating Habits

Up to now, we have been talking about what to eat. We are now going to shift our focus to when to eat
by addressing meal timing and frequency.

To start, let’s take a look at what is clearly not working: the standard American diet.

An analysis of over 62,000 U.S. adults revealed that only 60% eat three traditional meals (breakfast,
lunch, and dinner) per day, but that 90% eat at least one snack per day, and 67% eat two or more
snacks per day. Overall, the average person couldn’t make it more than 2.5 hours between eating
episodes and ate all their food within a 12–13 hour window.

Breakfast was typically consumed around 8:00 am, and of the 80% who eat breakfast, 13% have a
snack beforehand, usually around 5:00–6:00 am. Dinner was eaten around 6:30 pm, and of the 92%
who eat dinner, two-thirds eat a snack afterwards, usually around 8:00–8:30 pm.

An important limitation of these findings is that they were self-reported, which can introduce errors
from innocent acts like forgetting the handful of doughnuts you had before bed.
To see what Americans were truly up to, a group of researchers from the Salk Institute in California
recruited a couple hundred healthy adults to use a smartphone app to track their food intake for three
weeks. To ensure reporting accuracy, the participants not only had to take pictures of everything they
put in their mouth regardless of size, they also received those annoying “push-notification” reminders
every 30 minutes asking if they ate or drank anything since the last reminder.

Unlike what people reported to eat in their food questionnaires, the researchers found that a traditional
three-meal-per-day eating pattern was largely absent — the least frequent eaters still ate an average
of 3.3 times per day, while the most frequent eaters ate an average of 10.5 times per day.

Less than 10% of the participants ate all their food within a 12-hour window — about 85% of the ate
for 13–16 hours per day. Moreover, nearly 40% ate something within 30 minutes of waking up, and
20% ate something within 30 minutes of going to bed. Half of the participants had their last meal
between 9:00 and 11:30 pm.

To sum up, the standard American diet is characterized by frequent eating for most of the day and well
into the night. Given the discrepancies between self-reported and smartphone app documented eating
habits, it appears that most people don’t know they are eating in this way.

Circadian Considerations
The big issue with modern eating habits is that they don’t mesh well with our circadian system, a
collection of biological clocks that orchestrate metabolism, physiology, and behavior in a daily cycle of
circadian rhythms.

The circadian system consists of two parts: (1) a central clock located in the suprachiasmatic nucleus
(SCN) of the hypothalamus, and (2) peripheral clocks located in virtually all other tissues of the body,
including the liver, pancreas, gastrointestinal tract, skeletal muscle, and fat cells.
The central and peripheral clocks work together to sync our biology to the outside world. The timing
(phase) of each circadian rhythm is determined by both internal (e.g., hormones and
neurotransmitters) and external factors (e.g., light, sleep, physical activity, and eating) in a process
known as entrainment.

The central clock is entrained primarily by light (especially blue light) and releases hormones and
neurotransmitters in response to this external input. Our peripheral clocks are entrained by the
hormonal and neuronal signals put out by the central clock, as well as external factors, the most
important being food.

Daily rhythms in metabolism are produced by the central and peripheral clocks working in concert.
Fundamentally, this means getting bright light exposure and eating during the daytime, and sleeping
through the night.

When the central and peripheral clocks get out of balance with one another, through light exposure
and eating during the night, or sleeping during the day, our health can go sideways. There’s a reason
why night-shift work is the only occupation to be classified as a probable human carcinogen.
The implications of circadian disruption are rather severe. One of the best-characterized metabolic
consequences is disrupted glucose metabolism, which can predispose one to developing diabetes and
cardiovascular disease. This occurs through both direct mechanisms, like impaired pancreatic and fat
cell function, and indirect mechanisms like dysregulation of the gut microbiome, immune and
endocrine systems, and satiety signalling.

Importantly, disrupted circadian rhythms have been shown to promote a chronic state of low-grade
inflammation, which helps explain its link to most every degenerative disease afflicting the modern
world. Not just obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but also cancer, psychiatric disorders, intestinal
problems, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

And of course, there is the lesser appreciated interaction of circadian rhythms with our sleep-wake
cycle. A disrupted circadian rhythm will not only mess with our sleep, but poor sleep hygiene will mess
with our circadian rhythm. If one gets screwed up, both start feeding into one another and snowballing
the health consequences — like daily fatigue and lethargy, increasing our risk of developing fatigue
syndromes like burnout syndrome, stress-related exhaustion disorder, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Now, there are a lot of nuances to circadian rhythms and their control of energy metabolism (and our
physical energy levels), and we don’t know how relevant many of these nuances are for overall health
because many factors wind together to influence our body composition and energy levels. So, instead
of getting lost in the weeds, we are going to take a big picture approach and focus on making changes
that will give us the best return on investment.

Time-Restricted Feeding
One of the fundamental aspects of a healthy circadian rhythm is to maintain a constant eating pattern
within a defined time window of less than 10 hours. Colloquially, this is often called intermittent
fasting, but it is more accurate to call it time-restricted feeding (TRF).

TRF is important because our peripheral clocks respond to not just food intake, but food absence. The
time we spend fasting signals cellular nutrient deprivation through the activation of AMPK. This, in
turn, increases NAD+ and sirtuin levels, which fine-tune the metabolic status of the cell to circadian
rhythmicity and impact nutrient handling and mitochondrial activity.
Simply having people reduce their eating window from more than 14 hours to 10–12 hours results in
better sleep, less hunger, and more energy levels. Restricting the eating window to 8 hours reduces
blood pressure and insulin resistance. In both cases, calorie intake was reduced, and body weight
along with it.

That’s great from a down-to-Earth standpoint, but it does cloud the health effects of TRF per se, given
the known health benefits of calorie restriction and weight loss in people who carry too much fat.

Thankfully, we do have several studies in which the researchers take control of the participants’ diets
to ensure that they maintain normal food intake. One such study involving men with prediabetes found
that eating three meals within a 6-hour TRF window benefited glycemic control, insulin sensitivity,
blood pressure, and oxidative stress compared to eating those same three meals within a 12-hour
window.
The TRF studies conducted to date consistently point towards it having a variety of beneficial health
effects. Regardless of what you eat, optimizing health suggests that eating it within a 6–10 hour
window can help improve body composition, glycemic control, insulin sensitivity, oxidative stress, and
energy levels.

One Meal Per Day Too Far

Now, I know what you’re thinking: if a 6–10 hour eating window can improve health, why not push it
further? Many people claim to have success with eating one meal per day, and that’s to be expected —
it’s really difficult to eat a lot of food in a single meal.

One study in recreationally active men reported that calorie intake dropped by nearly 40% when they
were instructed to consume all their food within a 4-hour window. If that’s you, and eating one meal
per day makes fat loss easy, then by all means please keep doing your thing.

However, if you aren’t attempting to lose weight, or are able to lose weight while eating more
frequently than once per day, then there may be advantages to eating more than once.

In otherwise healthy adults, eating everything within a 4-hour window has been shown to impair
glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, and increase blood pressure, blood lipids, and hunger
compared to eating the same amount of food across three meals. Of course, these changes were
rapidly reversed when the participants went back to eating three meals per day, so there isn’t a risk of
long-lasting effects.

A different study of healthy adults reported that eating one meal per day impaired the body’s ability to
fight off infections. That is, the immune response towards pathogens was diminished with one meal per
day compared to three, setting them up for illness and fatigue down the road.

Like with TRF, there are limited studies on eating once per day without cutting calories, but the
evidence we do have suggests that it isn’t ideal for optimal health.

How Many Meals?

If we restrict our food intake to 6–10 hours, which tells us when we should eat, then we next need to
determine how frequently we should eat. Obviously, we have inherent limitations due to TRF, but there
is enough wiggle room to allow for some diversity in options.

And preference may ultimately be the deciding factor. A meta-analysis of 15 studies found that the
number of meals eaten per day did not have much of an impact on body composition.

But we still wouldn’t want to snack or graze on food constantly within the eating window because our
muscle tissue can become desensitized to the signals telling it to grow. Specifically, muscle tissue
becomes insensitive to stimulus of muscle protein synthesis (MPS) in what is called the “muscle full”
hypothesis.

Originally, researchers demonstrated that increasing amino acid concentrations in our blood, like what
would happen when you eat, increases MPS initially, but this increase only lasted for about two hours
before it declined back to normal, even if amino acids were still present in the blood. Two years later,
the researchers built upon this work by showing that MPS responded to changes in amino acid
concentrations outside the muscle fibers, rather than their absolute concentrations.
In other words, it is a change from low to high blood amino acid concentrations that stimulate MPS.
Since levels return to baseline after about two to three hours, consuming another protein-rich meal at
this time in a rinse-and-repeat manner would theoretically maximize MPS.

Since a larger meal can take up to five hours to move out of the
stomach, it seems reasonable to try and eat every 3–5 hours. This
works out to 2–3 meals in a 6–8 hour window, or 3–4 meals within an
8–10 hour window.

Importantly, depending on your health status and habitual eating

routine, you may need to ease your way into less frequent meals. That
is, starting with a 10-hour TRF window and eating smaller meals more
frequently within (e.g., four meals every three hours, at 0, 3, 6, and 10 hours), so as to have more
stable energy levels throughout the day. This is simply a transition period with the goal of building
metabolic flexibility, so that you don’t have to rely on frequent eating to feel energized.

Stoking The Metabolic Fire

It takes calories to metabolize and use the food that we eat. This energy expenditure is called diet-
induced thermogenesis (DIT). Although there are clear differences between macronutrients, with
protein having the greatest DIT, followed by carbohydrates, then fats, the notion that eating more
frequently stokes the metabolic fire is a myth.

The number one determinant of the amount of calories you burn with a meal is going to be how many
calories it contains. Larger meals result in a greater DIT, while smaller meals result in a smaller DIT.
Although several studies have suggested that the overall DIT is similar when the same foods are
consumed as one vs. two, two vs. three, and two vs. seven meals, aggregating their findings into a
meta-analysis suggests that eating larger, less frequent meals has a thermogenic advantage.

This advantage isn’t large, though, and amounts to about 10 calories. So, for all intents and purposes,
there is no meaningful difference between eating larger and smaller meals if overall calorie and
macronutrient intake between them is identical.

Is Breakfast King?
If we restrict our food intake to 6–10 hours, then there are going to be a variety of ways to set up our
meal structure. It isn’t uncommon for people to skip the morning meal and eat from lunchtime
onwards.

There are certainly advantages to doing this. Morning tends to be a time of business where not eating
can be a convenience, especially with coffee and other caffeinated beverages to help keep us buzzing
along without a desire to eat. It also allows for eating a normal dinner, which is traditionally a family
event for many.

The stress-relieving effects of convenience and social time can’t be overlooked. However, if those don’t
weigh heavily on your decisions, then is skipping breakfast ideal?

For people just getting started, skipping breakfast can be an easy way to start TRF and cut calories
without much conscious effort. For example, the average breakfast-eating American consumes 10%
less calories on the days they skip breakfast. They will tend to eat a bigger lunch to compensate, but
not enough to offset missing that entire meal.
Despite breakfast skipping reducing energy intake in both lean and obese adults, it also reduces
energy expenditure, mainly that due to physical activity in the morning. There is variability here, and
some people maintain their normal levels of activity, but overall it seems to decline. That’s not good if
the goal is weight loss because it means that we don’t create as large of a calorie deficit as intended,
and our energy FLUX is reduced. As we discussed in lesson #3, it’s healthier to eat more and move
more than to eat less and move less.

Let’s say you have the TRF schedule in place and are trying to decide between skipping breakfast or
skipping dinner. Which is better?

Short-term studies in healthy adults have suggested that skipping breakfast leads to greater post-
lunch insulin resistance and inflammation than skipping dinner, but that glucose control and insulin
sensitivity over the entire 24-hour day is similar. Similar observations have been made in people with
type 2 diabetes — better blood sugar control through lower glucose levels and higher and more rapid
insulin responses with a big breakfast compared to a big dinner. The opposite effect was seen when
participants consumed less than 15% of their daily calories in their morning meal.

These may simply be temporary effects as the body adjusts to the new eating regimen, however, as
people with diabetes who skip breakfast for several weeks begin to display improved blood sugar
control: lower post-meal blood glucose spikes and less glucose variation during the day, although
insulin resistance and inflammation remain unaffected.

This notion is supported by a study that assessed the post-lunch effects of skipping breakfast in people
who regularly eat breakfast and those who regularly don’t. The glucose intolerance to lunch doesn’t
occur in habitual breakfast skippers, only habitual breakfast eaters who skip.
Overall, it seems that the health effects of eating or skipping breakfast depend on what you are used
to doing. There seems to be a transition period where things may be a little wonky, but a new “normal”
will be established in a week or two once the body “learns” and adjusts to your new way of eating.

Meal composition

Modern Eating Habits

Now that we know what and when to eat, we are going to wrap up our eating habits by discussing how
to eat through manipulating meal composition. Like we did in the last lesson, let’s start by looking at
what doesn’t work: the standard American diet (SAD).

Most Americans report eating more than a third of their calories at dinner and a quarter of their
calories from snacks. When we document eating habits rather than relying on self-report, the average
American appears to eat less than 25% of calories before noon, while 37.5% are consumed after 6:00
pm and 12% consumed after 9:00 pm.

We know that the SAD is the poster-child for an unhealthy diet, and it isn’t hard to understand why.
Snacks contribute a quarter of energy intake, and the top three food groups making up American
snacks are desserts and sweets, salty foods, and sugar-sweetened beverages.

How Much Protein Per Meal?

One reason the SAD diet composition is unhealthy is due to its relatively low protein content and its
uneven distribution of protein throughout the day. As we discussed in lesson #5, the lower protein
intake of modern humans, combined with a hyperpalatable food environment, has been proposed as a
driver of obesity through what has been coined The Protein Leverage Hypothesis.

Below is the overview of the amount of protein you need based on your current lifestyle.
 The Fatty Carbohydrate Problem
Another one of the critical factors explaining why the SAD is such a disaster for health is that most
eating occasions involve eating moderate to large amounts of both fat and carbohydrate.

The first reason this combination is problematic is that it makes food hyperpalatable and easier to
overconsume. The second issue is that combining fats and carbohydrates cause a temporary state of
metabolic inflexibility. We’ll look at both in more depth next.

Hyperpalatability
We evolved to be prepared to expect periods of food deprivation by developing brain circuitry geared
towards eating more during times of food abundance. In today’s environment, however, food is always
abundant, causing an “evolutionary mismatch” between us and modern times.

Not only is food abundant, but it is designed to trigger our most primitive brain regions to promote
further desire and overeating. Specifically, it affects our limbic system, a collection of brain regions
involved in various aspects of emotion, reward, and motivation. This causes a type of food addiction
mimicking that of drugs.
The addictive potential of food means that the harder it hits our pleasure centers, the more we want to
eat it. In fact, a meta-analysis of 45 studies found that there is a strong effect of food cue reactivity
and craving on eating and weight gain, meaning that greater physiological and neural responses to
food result in greater food intake and, consequently, greater weight gain over time.

Other studies have suggested that added sugars may act as a vehicle for fat intake, encouraging
consumption by making the fat more palatable. For example, people who eat more sugar also tend to
eat more butter, and rats on eating a high-fat, high-sugar diet do not exhibit sensory-specific satiety.

Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine have argued that this combination plays a role in
obesity:

“We argue here that the obese, on average, experience less sweetness than do the non-obese;
further, the obese like sweetness and high-fat foods more. This makes the ‘synergism’ between
sweet and fat sensations easy to understand. Mixtures of sweet and fat combine two palatable
substances to make an especially palatable combination.”

These energy-dense, hyperpalatable foods drive feelings of deliciousness that ultimately cause a
Pavlovian conditioning towards them, meaning we begin to subconsciously “learn” that these foods
make us feel good and therefore crave them more often.

Now, not everyone succumbs to overeating when exposed to high fat, high carbohydrate foods, but it
does increase the likelihood of it occurring, especially if you aren’t one to track what you eat. But think
of all the best tasting foods you have ever had — pizza, pastries, fried foods, chips, etc. — most
contain an appreciable amount of carbs and fats.
The Randle cycle
Aside from hyperpalatability, eating foods rich in fat and carbohydrate cause a state of metabolic
inflexibility due to the biochemical competition between glucose and fatty acids for use as energy
within cells. This “glucose-fatty acid cycle” was proposed by Philip Randle in 1963.

Basically, using either fat or carbohydrate for energy directly inhibits the use of the other, so as to
fine-turn the interaction between our fat cells and muscle fibers. It shouldn’t be too difficult to see how
this would have implications for our health, body composition, and energy levels.

Inhibition of glucose utilization by fatty acids is a form of glucose intolerance that resembles, or may
lead to, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. It is well established that lowering the amount of fatty
acids in the blood enhances insulin sensitivity of muscle tissue and, consequently, glucose uptake.

We have an overwhelming amount of data showing that combining fats and carbohydrates in the same
meal causes the Randle cycle to show its face. This has been known since at least 1983 with research
showing that adding butter to a potato increases the amount of insulin required to dispose of the
glucose by 3-fold in healthy adults. The authors suggest that,

“These changes found after the coingestion of fat may indicate an acute insulin insensitivity or
at least a potentiation of insulin secretion which could form the basis of the insulin resistance
associated with the chronic consumption of high fat diets.”

One year later, the same researchers expanded upon these findings by showing that the same effects
occur when butter is consumed alongside lentils, a source of carbohydrate that is digested far more
slowly and contains far more fiber.
There does appear to be a “safe” level of intake, though, at less than 15 grams of fat with a high-
carbohydrate meal, in both people with diabetes and otherwise healthy adults. Consuming more fat
than this appears to extend hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia for hours afterwards.

The body is simply not adapted to handle large amounts of fat and carbohydrate simultaneously. It
was never an evolutionary necessity. With few exceptions, most foods contain predominantly fat and
protein (meat; eggs) and maybe some fiber (nuts), or carbohydrates alone (fruit) or with protein
(vegetables; tubers; grains).

Macro timing
Okay, so up to this point we have established that we should be eating protein at every meal and not
eat meals high in both carbohydrate and fat. This raises an important question about which
macronutrient (carbohydrate or fat) we should be eating earlier and later in the day.

The body has certain circadian rhythms in place for metabolism, including hormonal and biochemical
responses to eating carbohydrate and fat. It makes sense to take advantage of these natural rhythms
to maximize health and energy levels.

There is a lot of research in this area, but much of it is conducted in rodents, which differ in several
key ways from humans — such as being nocturnal and polyphasic (sleeping more than once per day).
It’s not clear to what extent that research would apply to us.

Accordingly, we are best served by simply avoiding it and focusing on what human research is
available, which was aggregated in an aptly titled review article, Circadian regulation of glucose, lipid,
and energy metabolism in humans.

Our glucose tolerance varies throughout the day due to to diurnal rhythms in insulin sensitivity, β-cell
responsiveness, insulin secretion, and insulin clearance. Glycemic control appears to be best in the
morning for healthy adults, but the differences between morning and evening wane with obesity and
insulin resistance. Similarly, our ability to handle dietary fat peaks around breakfast due to differences
in lipid synthesis, transport, and partitioning.

However, for both glucose and fat tolerance, there is a lot of variation between people, suggesting that
there may be be distinct circadian metabolic phenotypes. This would not be surprising and gets back to
our discussion on breakfast in the previous lesson: people adapt to their habitual eating routines.

So, the conclusion here is simple: eat your food during the day, in-line with your circadian rhythm, and
have the bulk of fat or carbs whenever you prefer.

Managing blood sugar levels

Circadian alignment
Up to this point, we have a covered a lot of information on how to optimize health, body composition,
and energy levels. In our final lesson before we put everything we’ve learned together, I want to talk
about some easy “hacks” to help keep blood sugar and insulin levels under control for those of you
who are concerned about them.

In this regard, the best starting point is going to be with our circadian rhythm. We’ve talked about it in
the past, and I want to emphasize it here because misalignment and dysregulation can really mess
with our glycemic control.

Time-restricted feeding (TRF) is going to be important. One study involving men with prediabetes
found that eating three meals within a 6-hour TRF window benefited glycemic control, insulin
sensitivity, blood pressure, and oxidative stress compared to eating those same three meals within a
12-hour window.
Similarly, a study in people with type 2 diabetes reported that eating two meals within a 10-hour TRF
window resulted in significant reductions in body weight and improvements in glycemic control and
insulin sensitivity compared to eating six meals per day across a longer eating window.

However, depending on your health status and habitual eating routine, you may need to ease your way
into TRF to avoid blood sugar swings and unpredictable energy levels. That is, starting with a 10-hour
TRF window and eating more frequently within it. This is simply a transition period with the goal of
building metabolic flexibility, so that you don’t have to rely on frequent eating to feel energized.

Whether you choose to eat most of your food in the morning or evening will depend on your
preferences. Although we have data in people with type 2 diabetes that shows better blood sugar
control with a big breakfast compared to a big dinner, we also have data showing that blood sugar
control improves with breakfast skipping over several weeks.

The body’s circadian rhythms are heavily influenced by the timing of food intake, so it makes sense
that our body’s will “learn” about our regular meal times and adjust its internal clocks accordingly.
That’s why regular breakfast skippers don’t show the same negative effects of skipping breakfast that
we see in regular breakfast eaters who skip.

Consistency is key, though. Having erratic and spontaneous eating times is a sure-fire way to cause
blood glucose swings, insulin resistance, and poor energy levels throughout the day.

Sleep hygiene
Part of ensuring a healthy circadian rhythm is ensuring proper sleep hygiene through being more
aware of your pre-bed and morning rituals.
Numerous studies have found that sleeping for less than 5–6 hours per night is associated with an
increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and that these short sleep durations reduce glycemic
control and insulin sensitivity. Poor sleep quality can be due to actual sleep duration, as well as
fragmented sleep, sleep apnea, and circadian rhythm disruption.

In fact, one meta-analysis found that difficulty initiating sleep increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by
55%, while difficulty maintaining sleep increased its risk by 72%. The risk of developing diabetes
associated with getting too little sleep (≤5 hours per day) or having poor sleep quality were greater
than that of being sedentary.

The insulin resistance promoted by sleep deprivation is directly linked with mitochondrial dysfunction
(even in the brain!) and means that the cell will have a harder time generating energy, which has
some obvious implications for your own daily energy levels.

Physical activity can help lessen the insulin resistance, but it can’t prevent it. These effects are owed to
greater cortisol and sympathetic nervous system activity throughout the day that promote a state of
chronic stress. These are the same mechanisms responsible for the insulin resistance and metabolic
disturbances caused by fragmented sleep and sleep apnea.

Common symptoms of sleep apnea include loud snoring, difficulty breathing during sleep, waking up
sweating during the night, morning headaches, daytime sleepiness and low energy levels, weight gain,
and worse cognitive ability.

We cover all the sleep and circadian rhythm habits in the first module. So if you haven’t already,
please go check module one.

Vinegar
 Our second little “hack” for optimizing blood sugar control is going to be a lot
easier than ensuring proper sleep hygiene and circadian alignment, although it
won’t return as big of a bang. Whenever you eat a meal, have a shot of vinegar
beforehand.

A meta-analysis of studies looking at how vinegar impacts blood glucose control

found that having 1–2 tablespoons before eating reduced the overall post-meal
blood glucose response by 11% and the overall insulin response by 16%.
What’s more, it didn’t matter if you had diabetes or were otherwise healthy —
vinegar benefited glycemia.

These benefits are likely owed to the defining characteristic of vinegar, its
acetic acid content. That’s what makes vinegar tart and acidic. Studies have shown that acetic acid
slows digestion and inhibits our digestive enzymes that break down starch and sugar. These effects will
cause a slower and less pronounced increase in blood sugar levels after eating.

More importantly, acetic acid increases the expression of AMPK and GLUT4, which are proteins that
increase glucose uptake and use in the body. Consuming vinegar increases carbohydrate storage in our
muscles as glycogen, even in people with type 2 diabetes. Additionally, vinegar has been shown
to stimulate vasodilation and increase blood flow to skeletal muscle, which are considered important
components of insulin-mediated glucose uptake.

In short, if you are going to be eating a meal that contains some carbohydrates, then consuming 1–2
tablespoons of vinegar is an easy way to increase your insulin sensitivity to the incoming glucose load
and keep the blood sugar swings in check. Any vinegar will work, although apple cider and red wine
vinegars tend to taste better.

What is “the mother” of vinegar?

On a side note, you will often see apple cider vinegars be

advertised as raw (unpasteurized) and unfiltered, thereby
preserving “the mother”. This is simply a nontoxic slime composed
of yeast and acetic acid bacteria that forms during the
fermentation process that creates vinegar.

The mother of vinegar appears to be a major source of bioactive

compounds and antioxidant activity in vinegar, as well as some minerals such as potassium,
magnesium, calcium, and iron. It remains to be determined whether consuming the mother has any
discernible effect on health, but if you have the choice, it seems prudent to opt for it.

Veggies first
Alongside that shot of vinegar, we can make a huge impact on our blood glucose control by simply
changing the order in which we eat our food during a meal.

Several studies in people with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, as well as healthy folk have found that
eating fibrous vegetables at the beginning of a meal, before eating starchy carbohydrates, reduce
blood glucose and insulin levels by 20–70% and 25–50%, respectively. Talk about low-hanging fruit,
especially since it’s the blood sugar spikes that suppress orexin in the brain and cause a food coma
after eating.
The design of all these studies were pretty simple: eat veggies before eating starchy carbohydrates, or
vice-versa. The food quality was good too, using foods such as grilled chicken breast, steamed
broccoli, salads, white rice, bread, and juice.

Now, obviously fibrous vegetables should be making up a bulk of your diet and be consumed at every
meal. But, in the off-chance life gets in the way and prevents you from eating fibrous vegetables, the
same benefits are observed with just eating protein before carbohydrate.

For example, one study looked at the effects of eating boiled mackerel or grilled beef before or after
steamed white rice in both healthy adults and people with type 2 diabetes. Eating either fish or beef
before the rice reduced the blood glucose and insulin responses compared to eating the rice first, with
the effects being most pronounced in people with diabetes.

Another cool finding of this study was that C-peptide was reduced with eating meat first. C-peptide is a
marker of insulin release by the pancreas, meaning that the pancreas didn’t need to work as hard to
deal with the carbohydrates. That’s especially great news for people with diabetes, in whom pancreatic
damage is a real concern that mediates the transition to a reliance on insulin injections.

We also see these glycemic benefits have a long-term benefit. It’s one thing to look at a single meal,
but it’s a whole other beast to see if these changes translate into appreciable long-term benefits for
glycemic control. And they do.
In one large randomized controlled trial involving 101 adults with type II diabetes, receiving advice to
eat eat veggies first and carbohydrates last in each meal was significantly more effective at lowering
HbA1c than having them follow the standard American Diabetes Association advice of using a diabetic
exchange food list.

The benefits was seen in as little as one month and lasted for at least two years when the researchers
stopped collecting data. Overall, HbA1c from this little trick was slashed from 8.3% to 6.8% — just
from altering the order in which the same foods within a meal were eaten. Essentially, the participants
moved from full-blown diabetes to the lower cut-off of a diagnosis (>6.5% is diabetes, 5.7–6.4% is
prediabetes, and 4–5.6% is considered healthy.

Another study in elderly adults with type 2 diabetes reported similar findings: eating high-carbohydrate
foods last within a meal significantly lowers post-meal blood glucose levels, blood glucose swings
throughout the day (meaning more stable energy levels), HbA1c, and fasting glucose.

So, eat your veggies first and your carbohydrates last when you eat a meal. This is as simple as having
a salad before the main course, skipping the pre-dinner breadsticks, or having the baked potato last.
Your glycemic control and energy levels will thank you.

Walking after meals

The final “hack” for managing blood sugars is simply moving throughout the day, especially after you
eat. Improvements in glycemic control have been seen with as little as 2–3 minutes of easy walking
after every 20–30 minutes of sitting in overweight-obese, healthy adults, and adults with type 2
diabetes.

Overall, a meta-analysis of 20 studies found reductions in blood glucose and insulin when prolonged
sitting was broken up with some form of physical activity regardless of its intensity, meaning that any
activity will do. The effects are most pronounced when physical activity is done after meals, though.
This isn’t high-intensity intervals, either; it’s going for a light walk.
It has been known for some time that glucose uptake into our muscles is stimulated by localized
muscle contractions. Plus, breaking up sitting with light activity has been shown to alter the muscular
expression of 75 genes involved in cellular development, growth, and proliferation, and carbohydrate
metabolism. These reasons explain why sitting for just several hours causes a temporary state of
insulin resistance.

So, not only does being regularly active throughout the day, particularly after meals, benefit glycemic
control, it also affects us on a genetic level. Plus, that non-exercise activity thermogenesis will
contribute to our daily energy FLUX and help us feel energized.

Summary
In short, there are two primary ways to optimize blood sugar levels, and prevent the sluggish fallout of
blood sugar swings. The first is to alter your lifestyle to promote a healthy circadian rhythm. This can
be done by ensuring good sleep hygiene and eating consistently within a time-restricted window of 6–
10 hours.

The second is to pick some low-hanging fruit around meal times. Start your meal with a shot of vinegar
(1–2 tablespoons) and all the fibrous veggies you plan to indulge on. In fact, consider having a salad
with a vinegar dressing before the main course. You can also eat your protein upfront, the most
important thing is to eat your starchy carbohydrates last (grains, tubers, and legumes). Then, when
you finish eating, go for a walk!

Putting It All Together