DEFoW makes Best Sellers List for Weight Loss Diet Books (Amazon US)

Don’t Eat for Winter was in the top 50 best sellers list on Amazon Kindle US List for Weight Loss Diets (position 49th at time of writing) 17th September 2019, 11am

Irish Author, Cian Foley, from Waterford City, works as a software developer for a successful high tech company, NearForm, based out of Tramore. At 35 years of age he was obese weighing 256lbs. 8 years later, at 43, he weighs 166lbs (90lb loss) and has been competing in bodybuilding competitions for the past 2 years.  Last year he won bronze in the Men’s Physique category of the NBFI national championships and this year was runner up in the masters bodybuilding category, which was held on 1st September at Firkin Crane theatre in Cork.

Cian published Don’t Eat for Winter in 2017 and has been tweeting about his concept regarding weight loss since then, but more than talking the talk he walks the walk.

“I’m a natural bodybuilder these days (never thought I’d say that). Being natural means I’m smaller than a lot of bodybuilders you’d see on Instagram, but this is the best I could achieve without taking any performance enhancing drugs or testosterone of any nature ever.  Every little bit of muscle I have is from modest weight training sessions after work, and applying my anti-autumnal nutrition concept. I’m happy with what I’ve achieved given I have struggled with weight my entire life.”

The Don’t Eat for Winter concept is simple.  The world today is an infinite autumn and so anyone that has the ability to gain weight piles on pounds and pounds over years and years preparing their bodies for a winter that never comes.  Through eating anti-autumnally, a person can reverse this and spring back into their summer body.

The concept sounds simple but Cian believes that it is combinations of carbs and fats together that are the crux of the problem for many reasons.

“We love this combination, think pizza, chocolate, donuts, pastries, crisps, ice-cream and various natural combinations, sweet and savoury, like buttery potatoes (sorry Ireland), apple tart and trail mix.  A recent study by Dana Small of Yale University showed we value this combination more than any other. I believe this is because it is an autumnal combination and it drives us hyperphagic the same as many other mammals that are seasonal.  Just look at where these foods are placed in garages, supermarkets, cafes etc., our impulses are driven nuts (pardon the autumnal pun)”

Cian believes this is a specific formula we’ve hit on through market feedback and what sells best, and suggests that junk foods match the signature of autumn in an uncanny way.

“Given my software background I’m pretty good with data etc.  I used the acorn, the signature of autumn, as a starting point: a food used to fatten bears, squirrels and iberian pigs. Celts and Native Americans used to store and eat them too.  I searched for other foods matching this combination closely in the USDA food composition database. It turns that it matches a list as long as your arm of junk foods in an absolutely uncanny way.”

 

Can you tell the above 3 charts apart? The 3 axis represent calorie % from protein at the top, fat on the right, and carbs on the left. It depicts the macros of acorns,  donuts and ice-cream respectively.

“If you think about it, we are designed to put on a little fat to survive the cold and as a back-up energy supply to survive food shortages of winter. It goes a lot deeper than that but this is the basics.  In autumn carbs harvest heavily in the form of fruit and grain and we also see nuts appear, it’s not difficult to combine these to achieve what I term ‘the squirrel formula’. It makes us hyperphagic (insatiable) and put on weight, but we no longer need the insulation or the back up energy insurance policy because we never experience winter nowadays, with modern heating and endless food supply, and so never lose weight, unless of course we simulate it, through diet”

The diet is about keeping these combinations to a minimum, but it allows for eating fat, protein, carbohydrates and fibre within mainstream nutritional guidelines.

“I’m not an extremist when it comes to diet, there are many beliefs out there about what’s best, including low carb, low fat, carnivore, keto, plant based and so on.  Diets that work best seem to weigh heavily towards one energy source, either carbs or fats e.g. the traditional recommendations were low fat, and atkins/keto/low carb is the opposite, the truth may be that both styles work because the lowest common denominator is that they implicitly avoid carb+fat together, that’s my observation.”

Cian suggests eating a healthy fat focussed breakfast which is low carb, and a carb focussed evening meal which is low fat, separated by a fibre focussed lunch is a good method.  He states that all meals should contain a suitable protein source, and low GI fibrous veg can be eaten with all meals.

“I vary my diet a lot but an example day for me might be something like scrambled eggs and rashers for breakfast (without the toast), fish, poultry, or meat with lots of salad for lunch, and then a lean protein and carb dinner in the evening e.g. potatoes/rice, vegetables and lean fish/meat/poultry.  It’s not difficult, it’s varied and I’m never hungry. Vegetarians and vegans can also apply it using suitable protein sources.”

Fat shaming has become a major topic recently with celebrities like James Corden hitting out recently at comments made by Bill Maher.

Cian has had experience of this during his life too.

“My nickname in school was Chubby, I’ve fought weight as long as I can remember, it’s not helpful to tell someone they are fat. That won’t make them thin, it will only make them sad and depressed. I know what it’s like and only escaped through knowledge. It was a long road back to for me but thankfully I did and have sustained the weight loss for many years.”

“All I can say to people suffering is that it’s not your fault, you’re not lazy. You are a victim of an obesogenic environment, that’s treacherous to navigate without knowledge.  You cannot out-run this environment with exercise, believe me I tried. It all centres around smart nutrition and I had discover my own approach because nothing every worked for me.”

Cian competing in the NBFI Championships in Cork City, 2019 where he was runner up in the Masters Category (over 40s). Photo Credit: Kest

“In terms of exercise I believe resistance training is a must if you want to effect change. Cardio is important too but you don’t need to punish yourself.  Getting out into nature is also very important. I train 5x a week weights for 1 hr sessions but that’s to compete, most people would get in really good shape with 3x resistance sessions and some cardio every other day like walking, jogging, cycling, hiking, spinning etc. To get results from it, the diet is the key to unlocking your ideal phenotype.”

Don’t Eat for Winter is available on Amazon Kindle and has made it to the top 100 in weight loss diet books on Amazon Us and has received some great reviews.

“I’m really chuffed to be honest, so many experts on Twitter and elsewhere have given me encouragement from my own doctor, Dr. Mark Rowe, who wrote the foreword in the book, to Dr. Ted Naiman, a US doctor with an incredible natural physique on Twitter,  who said it’s ‘Very Smart’ and that ‘The hyperphagia of carbs and fats together is brilliantly described in this book. Well worth a read. A fantastic approach.’ in his Amazon review”

“More than this though are the reviews and message I’ve received regularly from readers, one lady told me she has her husband and the father of her children back after losing 5 and a half stone. I was emotional reading the message, and it has made the effort of putting it out there worthwhile for me.”

You can follow Cian on twitter @wellboy or on facebook.com/donteatforwinter

The Anti-Autumnal Diet – Don’t Eat for Winter

Many diets out there are inadvertently anti-autumnal through the fact that they exclude the simultaneous combination of carbs+fat.  For example low carb diets are typically high fat, and low fat diets are typically high carb, both of which minimise the high carb+high fat combo.  One of the latest diets, ‘the carnivore diet’, is also anti-autumnal as it is basically just meat, which is high protein with low to high amounts of fat with zero carbohydrates, again no carbs+fat.

I believe these diets work because they avoid the food combinations available in autumn time and thus control satiety and fat storage.  Carbs and fats are our primary energy fuels, and so if you up both these levers our brains and bodies go crazy for it (for many scientific reasons, which boil down to instinct) resulting in energy balance in constant surplus.

Let me explain…

The signature of autumn is high carb and high fat simultaneously. Think fruits, grains and nuts and when they harvest (e.g. trail mix). These ingredients make up things like Granny’s apple tart or pecan pie, everything good from the harvest mixed together to create delectable meals and treats. Acorns themselves, the most iconic autumnal symbol (which is used in the DEFoW logo), is a tool used to fatten up iberian pork, and what squirrels, bears, and many other creatures in various eco-systems, use to fatten themselves up for Winter.

The signature of this food is approximately 50% fat, 40% carb and 10% protein (which I term ‘the squirrel formula in Don’t Eat for Winter) and I propose is precisely designed by nature to fatten up all sorts of creatures, including humans, for winter (humans in many cultures such as the celts and native americans, used to collect and eat them to aid winter survival also).

Interestingly, an acorn’s macro-nutrient signature also exactly matches human breast milk, another food designed by nature to fatten up humans to survive the most vulnerable stage of their lives (coincidence?).

I believe nature becomes akin to a nurturing mother in autumn to protect all through the provision of highly available carbs and fats.

It is no coincidence that most junk food (e.g. donuts, chocolates, syrup coffees, crisps, pastries) and even meals (e.g. mayo and cheese sandwiches, cheesy bolognese, fatty bacon and spuds) in thewestern diet approach this signature because it tastes so good, and overly processed foods send us into an autumnal frenzy, which I believe contributes significantly to the obesity crisis the world faces.

Here is a radar chart comparing some junk foods with acorns, note the similarity in terms of macronutrients in both the data and the visualisation.

Why?

Carbs+fats prime our ancient winter survival instincts, encouraging us to fatten us up a little, in order to protect us from the cold and famine of winter and so avoiding this formula simulates other seasons.

Marty Kendall of Optimising Nutrition wrote a fantastic article on DEFoW that interrogates the USDA food composition database for foods with the squirrel formula signature and the list of foods there shows just how powerful this formula is.  This came about after I contacted Marty with the chart above, after I read another article on his site, showing how carbs+fat provide the least amount of satiety using a half million days of myfitnesspal data.

Here is that startling excerpt from that table in his article expanding on my radar chart…

The modern diet has this combo available all day every day in meals too for example breakfast (buttery toast and sugary cereals with milk), lunches (meat and salad sandwiches with mayo and cheese, saucy wraps etc), dinners (cheesy pasta meals, fries, burgers, pizzas, even buttery potatoes and creamy sauces with rice) and snacks and desserts too (biscuits, donuts, chocolate, crisps, ice-cream, cake etc).  We don’t stand a chance living in an environment where it is autumn all of the time (even our coffees have become syrupy desserts).

Don’t Eat for Winter is the first diet to point out that this formula is autumnal, and so I am claiming this as the starting point of the anti-autumnal diet™, which is a game changer in understanding why there is a global obesity struggle and to a lesser extent a global battle with bodyfat.

DEFoW aims to arm people up with knowledge in order to escape the infinite autumn that is the Western diet (and other global diets).  There’s lots of articles on this site with the reasoning behind what’s been outlined. Every day, more and more science and data points to the fact that it is carbs+fats together that are the cause of out of control appetites, and resulting fat storage.

The plethora of chemicals and hormones released in our brains and bodies are astounding (dopamine from sugar, endocannibanoid activation from fat, ghrelin rebound from carbs, depressed leptin from fructose and frequent insulin production in response to glucose etc), which used to serve a seasonal survival function but today, they are abused by commercial entities who would rather make a profit than see us take on our healthiest form.  It gets even worse when you consider the fact that our food environment today is an ‘autumn on steroids’, where processed fats and sugars, with no nutritional value, are injected into Frankenstein foods to make them irresistible to our inner squirrels.

The theory goes even deeper when you consider the factors required to create insulation on the human body in the form of brown adipose tissue (or brown fat), a different type of fat that has incredible properties including heat generation and insulation.  It was only recently discovered that brown fat can be activated in adult humans and much research is ongoing to determine if it can be used to tackle obesity.  Three things activate brown fat including cold, high insulin and leptin levels, and compounds in foods such as ursolic acid in apple skin.  Three independent studies have outlined this and these conditions only occur in nature around autumn time too!  All the pieces fit!  (Check out the advanced DEFoW hypothesis regarding BAT fat here here)

All non-autumnal diets work especially well in the short-term because they are seasonal snapshots that avoid autumn, however, the long term effects of living in a single season other than autumn is unknown. Time will tell. We know the results of living in autumn, given the current state of affairs with 2/3 of adults either obese or overweight practically worldwide and related illnesses out of control, so it obvious that anything that helps this situation is good.

DEFoW, is different in that it encourages the consumption of both carbs and fats based on the standard dietary reference intake, but advises eating carbs and fats at the opposite ends of the day. This yields balance between our current environment and nature, balanced nutrition and avoids provoking our ancient autumnal instincts. It works within the current guidelines to encourage complete nutrition including healthy fats, protein, carbs, fibre and micronutrients.  The aim is balance working within the standard dietary guidelines.

On DEFoW everyone is encouraged to exercise, particularly around the time of eating carb meals and get in healthy fats at another time of the day.  Just like nature it encourages balance through a novel approach of eating seasonally on a daily basis e.g. a spring time macro breakfast (zero carb e.g. eggs), a fibre rich summer lunch which is lower in fat (lots of low gi veg and lower fat fish, poultry or meat), and a modified autumn low fat dinner with carbohydrates.  Of course it’s OK to have carbs+fats now and again and indulge, but the awareness of what happens when you do is key.  All of the reasoning behind this is explained in the pages of Don’t Eat for Winter and expanded upon in this website.

Become an infinite autumn escapee (like these heroes who lost 350lbs between them) and spring into your summer body with the first anti-autumnal diet – DEFoW

Don’t Eat for Winter!

Check out the 5 star amazon reviews here.

 

Infinite Autumn Escapee – Declan Gilmore

Meet another Infinite Autumn Escapee and champion of Don’t Eat for Winter Declan Gilmore.  I didn’t know Declan a few months ago, but I couldn’t believe it when out of the blue he asked me in to amazing SuperValue in Kilbarry (previously a flagship Superquinn store) to talk about my book and healthy food choices to customers of the store.  He was immediately excited about the concept because of the clear message presented.

My name is Declan I’m 48 years old I have recently completed a Nutrition and Health Coaching diploma with IINH ( it only took me 47 years to get to college!) I’ve been involved in the food business for over 30 years. I came across DEFoW on Facebook and was blown away by the simplicity of Cian’s philosophy. It just made sense and seemed very logical to me. I got the book read it in 3 days and put it into practice. I lost 12lbs in 4 weeks without depriving myself and I will be using the theory with school children who I hope to work with once I’m fully qualified this summer. I think DOFoW should be on the secondary school curriculum. I feel great and have lots more energy for my hobby long distance cycling.”

It is heartening to receive feedback from people in the food industry like Declan, and I really appreciate his enthusiasm and championing of my concept. His 12 pound loss is simply fantastic.

My goal is to see an avalanche of fat fall from the planet and see people get the most out of exercise.  The world has solved malnutrition for the most part but this in turn has caused chronic health issues related to excess weight. This is because we have created an infinite autumn on steroids where every autumnal food and refined versions are available all day every day resulting in us putting on weight year after year preparing for a winter that never comes.  The DEFoW Diet is a simple way of addressing this through clever food choices.  Eating right should be a delight, not torturous where your body ends up rebelling and gorging as soon as the diet is over.  This is about permanent change so you become the summer/hunter version of you.

If you like the sound of the concept and would like to start your own journey or get further along your own path you can find out more or get your own copy of my new book Don’t Eat for Winter click here.   Don’t forget to find the page on facebook for daily tips and motivation. We’re all in this together!

Best wishes with your goals,

Cian

Joey Ifft – US Soldier, lost 19lbs on The DEFoW Diet

The first DEFoW hero, and star of the show today is Joey Ifft.  I met Joey at the pan-American Kettlebell championships at the Arnold’s in Columbus Ohio a few years ago and we hit it off and have kept in touch over facebook ever since.

Joey was one of the first to buy a copy of Don’t Eat for Winter and applied the DEFoW principles to his diet. He has achieved some great results in a very short period of time.  The best feedback he’s given is that he feels so good.

Joey is one of our first Infinite Autumn Escapees!

Here’s what Joey had to say…

“As a Correctional Lieutenant, Operator with the Ohio Correctional Special Operations Group, and a U.S. Soldier maintaining my personal fitness is key to success. I found myself struggling to maintain my weight and at 32 began packing on the pounds. I went from 184lbs to 210lbs in just a few months.

My good friend Cian released his book Don’t Eat For Winter and I ordered one almost immediately. The amount of work and passion that I found in this book was insurmountable. Cian really poured his heart and soul into the book and I began to employ the concepts into my lifestyle change and the effects have been nothing short of miraculous.

I feel better at 32 than I have in my 20’s and it’s all about what you put into your body and the science behind fueling the body. I’m now back down to 191lbs from 210lbs, a loss of 19lbs!!!

I will continue to recommend this book to everyone I come across! “

You can get a copy of Don’t Eat for Winter here.