10 Common Errors in The Anabolic Diet
Jun 29th, 2007 by Mehdi
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The Anabolic Diet has many benefits. However to some of you it can be hard to stay on the diet long enough to experience its benefits. Here are 10 Common Errors in The Anabolic Diet to avoid.
1. Not Eating Enough Fat. Stop believing in fat myths. You need fat, especially on the Anabolic Diet. Not eating enough fat leads to
- Muscle breakdown
- Fat storage
- Low energy
Don’t be afraid of fat, eat it.
2. Eating Only When Hungry. The high amount of fat in the Anabolic Diet will make you less hungry. This is a benefit, but also a risk. You need your daily calories. Eat every 3 hours, even if you’re not hungry.
3. Giving Up Early. The higher your current carb intake, the harder your first week on the Anabolic Diet. You can experience:
- Irritability
- Low energy
- Weakness
- Diarrhea
- Constipation
- etc.
It will take you 3 to 4 weeks to fully adapt to the Anabolic Diet. Persist.
4. Not Getting Enough Fiber. Your intestine will need to adapt to the high amounts of meat & fat. Diarrhea or constipation is common during week 1. Consume 30g of fiber daily. Two tablespoons Flax Seeds a day will help.
5. Not Eating Veggies. Veggies are healthy & will fill your stomach. Eat veggies with every meal: with your eggs, meats, fish, …
6. No Variety. Keep it interesting. Experiment. Change veggies, meats, cheeses, … Take a look at the 101 foods to eat on the Anabolic Diet post for inspiration.
7. Not Using Spices & Herbs. Give your food taste. Flavor your dishes. Learn to cook with spices & herbs. You can use all of them.
8. Not Eating Red Meat. You need animal fat for muscle mass, energy & fat breakdown. Turkey, chicken & tuna don’t work on the Anabolic Diet. Eat Red Meat: hamburgers, steaks, ribs, bacon, …
9. Weekend Junk Food. Control your Junk Food intake in the weekend. Junk food will make you reach the couch. Go for clean carbs: pasta, rice, potatoes, oats, …
10. Cutting or Bulking Too Soon. Start with 18x your bodyweight in lbs as daily calorie intake. Once you’ve adapted (4weeks later), you can start bulking or cutting.
These are some of the errors I made first time on the Anabolic Diet. If you’re a veteran of the diet, feel free to post your experiences using the comments.
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Mehdi,
On point #4, you say consume 30gm fiber/day, ok.
but then you say two tablespoons of flax seed a day will do it.
How is that possible when there are only 2-3 total grams of fiber per tablespoon? Granted it’s a superb choice to boost fiber, and has a nice mix of the two-1/3 soluble, 2/3 soluble, but Mehdi, two tablespoons will only get you 4-6 total grams fiber, which is quite a ways from 30gms for the day..
Just want to point that out, frankly it’s not easy getting to 30gms w/out raising carbs slightly as you go..
the veggies help too, but IMO, look at the numbers, they don’t add up quite as fast as you make it sound.
I eat a lot of veggies and do my flax and still struggle to get even 20gms let alone 30g.
Just my two cents bro..
Tony
My own update, my ground flax by Spectrum has 4gms total fiber for two tablespoons. 5gmCHO,4gmFiber,
5-3.5= total carb of 1.5.
7.5 times the two tablespoons gives ya 30gm. fiber if going w/flax alone …total carb for that would be 11.25gms also.
Good points about it, and there is significant help through the use of flax seed/ground seed. It also has high amounts of Omega 3 fatty acids, and lignans to boost too.
cheers, Tony
Anthony,
I corrected the sentence. 2 tablespoons flax seeds is close to 10g fiber as you point out (1 tablespoon = 15g). Thanks for notifying Anthony.
Getting the 30g fiber a day is easy:
-2 tablespoons flax seed
-500g spinach
-100g berries
-lettuce
-etc
Check nutritiondata for veggies high in fiber, low in carbs. Shouldn’t be very hard.
Have you received my e-mail yet?
To get 15 grams of fiber out of flax seed, you’ve got to eat over 50 grams of it! (27 gr fiber /100 gr flax seed). That’s a lot of flax seed!
Eq_909,
1 tablespoon = 15g of flax seed, which accounts for close to 5g fiber.
2 tbsp = 10g of fiber. Add to this your veggies and it’s ok. 50g is certainly too much & could lead to some accidents
Hey all, here’s some info to help everyone with selection of fruits, just as far as FIBER is concerned:
check carbs first.
FRUIT TOTAL FIBER SOL INSOL
bananna 7″long 2.8 .7 2.1
blackberries,1/2cup 3.8 3.1 .7
kiwi large 3.1 .7 2.4
mango medium 3.7 1.5 2.2
orange 3″diam. 4.4 2.6 1.8
peach medium 3.2 1.3 1.9
pear 3″diam. 4.0 2.2 1.8
raspberries1/2cup 4.2 .4 3.8
figs 3 small 5.3 2.3 3.0
Obviously some of these may be no good during the week due to a high carb base, but some like oranges and figs are definitely doable, esp after discounting all the insol fiber, and half the sol type… raspberries look good fiber wise, but couldn’t find their carb ratio at the moment..
the full list as well as content in other sources like cereal, veggies etc. can be found by googling Northwestern Nutrition and clicking on link of the same name home page. Affiliated with Feinburg school of medicine.
hope I helped someone out.
cheers Tony
Very cool of you Anthony to contribute with this list.
Here’s the direct link of Northwestern Nutrition
Thanks Tony. I’ve just sent you an e-mail btw.
I have an incredibly hard time eating vegetables. Is there anything else I can do so I can get the same benefit?
Thanks!
Jon,
Check the Anabolic Diet recipes. Learn to cook veggies. Learn to work with spices & oils. Experiment: cook a lot. The more you eat veggies the more you’ll like them. What’s important is to make it tasty.
I’ll caveat my comments with the statement that I’m not bashing the general approach of the Anabolic Diet, and I think what you are doing with this site in general is a good thing, and so I hope you see my comments as friendly concerns from someone who likes your site.
While based on the range of scientific studies I’ve seen (and yes I’ve seen Di Pasquale’s books and agree with some of what he says, but he ignores quite a bit of research that calls into question some of his conclusions and he overdraws some of his views from reading the same studies I’ve read) we’d disagree on some of your statements about fats. I’m not arguing low-fat, and we entirely agree on the junk food fats being an entirely different category. The main concern I have with your recommendations (& the good doctor’s) is that it doesn’t stress enough that if you are going to eat a diet heavy in animal fat you must be very, very careful as to how those animals were raised. This is especially true here in the U.S. where we lack some of the safeguards of the EU in regulating raising livestock, and are more lax in our regulation of imported food. Here in the U.S. it is fine to feed cows, pigs, and chickens rendered animal waste, rendered animal tissue of the same species, plastic in lieu of plant fiber, all sorts of hormones and antibiotics, and all sorts of other practices (like feeding corn to cows, which they can’t handle). A lot of toxins get and chemicals that mess with hormonal systems of the ultimate eaters of the substances that get into the meat (us), especially the animal fat. If you are going to consume a lot of animal fat, you need to be careful to make sure it is from animals that were raised in a cleaner manner. Look for organic, grass-fed or free-range livestock, animals that have been raised without hormones and haven’t been fed the tissue of their own kind, etc. While there are problems that make these practices less than perfect, they will tend to lead minimize one’s exposure.
Of course, some (but not all) of the concerns can be raised about eating grains, fruit, and vegetables that have been exposed to pesticides and herbicides. But even in this regard, the problem of bio-accumulation (a basic biological process) leads to concentration of herbicides and pesticides as you move up the food chain. Animals that eat pesticide and herbicide residues on the grain and veggies in their feed accumulate many of these in their tissue, and those that in turn eat them, get the accumulated doses.
My basic point is that one of the steps to eating and being healthy is to eat clean. This applies to all foods, but there are some additional cautions when eating animal fats.
Regards,
Dave
David. I enjoy people questioning my approach. It makes me think about what I do. I learned many new things like this. Never mind asking questions or even not agreeing with me. The more the better. I don’t know everything, learn new things every day.
About the fat. Back here in Europe they were a lot of problems during the last years with food & companies which went for the money rather than thinking about people’s health. People want cheap food. Companies follow. Dioxin & chicken. Creutzfeldt-jacob & cows. If you look into it, you’ll find plenty of stories.
You tend to forget how food really taste until you go to country’s outside of europe/north america, like africa, were you re-discover the taste of real food. Organic food.
Exercising & eating healthy is the start. Going organic is the next imo. Consider:
-supplements: processed, chemicals
-veggies/fruits: pesticides as you wrote
-meats & hormones
-fish & sea polution
-etc…
First thing I’ll do when I have the money is buy organic food only.
I am a bit lost, because the diet is supposed to be carb free? for 5 days? but then you all talk about eating vegetables and fruit? Are not vegetables and fruit carbs? so is this really a very low carb diet? how many carbs are ok? 30g? Arnold Schwarzenegger says in his body building bible that a minimum of 60g of carbs are necessary for basic metabolic processes. And from the looks of his diet; it is very similar to the one your talking about. (ie 1g protein for each lbs of body weight; 60g carbs and up to 50% of your diet in fat.) I know that this dietary recommendation also seems be contrary to the dietary fads. But in my experience diet is at least half the body building game; the remainder being rest and lifting. Anyhow I have read and reread the site looking to understand better, but I am at a loss. My diet journal says that my diet is 20% fat, 30% protien and 50% carbs. Now that is not the 20/40/40 my dietician put me on and I am not seeing the results that I want to. So I know I need to increase my protein. I was raised a vegetarian; so that seem to be the first thing that goes in my diet. I do eat a lot of vegetable fats though, Avacodo, olive oil, flax seed etc…. daily… boosting my protein is obviously going to rob from my carbs and no matter what diet your on - my carbs are to high. But I wanted to try the Anabolic diet as my modification because I am getting serious about my program again. Sorry for rambling - feel free to edit my post…
So back to the original question? zero carb?
and eating vegetables and fruits?
spinach for instance has as much carbs as protein. And spinach is a great food.
Dennis
@Dennis
Read this article. It’s zero carbs yes. You don’t count carbs from green veggies. Most fruit contain sugar so are not allowed on weekdays.
I love this diet, but the first time I tried it, I reduced my intake way to much from the beginning. I was a zombie, craving for sugar in the first few weeks. And, well, the carb-ups were a mess.
But the funny thing was, even then I lost body fat and built up muscles and strength. When I stopped counting calories (my body fat % was low enough by then) I still lost fat and felt great. My health could not have been better, and that was after months of eating bacon and cheese, only interrupted by carb-up-orgies.
Low-fat diets were hell compared to this, way more difficult to follow. AD is the way to go.
Thanks Mehdi, your site is great!
You know the longer I am on this diet (week 3) the more and more I dread the carb-up. I really feel good during the week. This is the only diet I have ever been on that I felt so “full” all the time on. I really start to get ravenous during the carb up; and I crave the cheese and meat. Funny I have also never had such a difficult time getting 2000 kcal a day either. This diet is brilliant. Seriously brilliant.