The word diet? If we were to play a game of word association what kind of words would you think of? Restriction, denial, hardship, misery, torture, pain, penance, starvation, unsustainable, rebound etc. Many diets aren’t fun at all and many involve calorie deficits, meal replacements, utilising a calorie counting or equivalent scheme, food exclusions, specific foods and so on. Some involve paying to get weighed in every week too, which is a good motivation to lose it.
Then there’s bad diets, which include those containing a lot of fast food and junk foods etc. I heard it said many times, “you can’t out train a bad diet,” but if you don’t know what a bad diet is, then how can you ever out-train it? You can’t out train ignorance and believe me, I tried. I thought I could out-train my diet but I was kidding myself and murdered myself trying. It was only when I became conscious of diet did my full transformation occur. I see others in this situation and I would like to see them get maximum results from their training too.
I couldn’t even out-train what I thought was a good diet, because I didn’t understand how fast some natural carbs affect blood sugar levels, and when combined with fats are lethal for clinging on to body fat. You have to remember, storage of fat is a survival trait, and the body is designed to hold onto fat under the right circumstances. My belief is that nature creates those circumstances naturally in Autumn with carbs as the trigger food. It works for squirrels and other animals, why not us too…
Then there are diets like keto, low-carb, fat-adaption, high protein etc. and it can all get very confusing. Which one is right, maybe they all have merits, maybe they suit some people better than others. I tried many of them and had some good success with them. The thing I noticed about diets is that the lower carb diets seemed to work wonders with me. This sent my mind racing, and chasing the why of it all, which is when I discovered the Don’t Eat for Winter premise, giving a fundamental reason why carbs trigger fat storage and as a result why lower-carb diets are so effective i.e.
- Autumn carbs fattened up stone-age people up for winter
- Through modern society, we’ve created an infinite autumn on steroids as autumn foods are now refined
- This prepares humans indefinitely for a winter that never comes
- Piling on pounds over years and years is the net result (chronic obesity in severe cases).
My take on it is this, always look to nature, nature always has the answer and if you mess with nature, problems occur. Nature wants us to be the perfect version of ourselves at any given moment because her own survival is dependent on her creatures adapting and evolving to work by her side. It might sound a bit cliche, but it’s true. We evolved with nature, and nature created us to survive and thrive, but today our food environment is totally artificial and this is causing us all sorts of problems. I find it ironic that our ability to store and preserve food for our survival has cursed us with a different set of health issues detrimental to it. We’ve essentially solved world hunger, but in the process we’ve created the obesity crisis and the resulting health issues have overtaken the mortality rates caused by malnutrition. It doesn’t help that there have been deceptions and so much confusion, commercial entities interested in exploiting our primal gorge instincts, and poor education and legislation, which is why it is so difficult to lose weight in modern society.
Don’t Eat for Winter or The DEFoW Diet is about remedying this situation. It allows us to become fully aware of what is going on, and through understanding the problem, we can then create a solution for ourselves. It’s a bit like Morpheus waking up Neo from the Matrix, only the world you wake up to is far better than the one left behind.
I personally don’t like restricting any type of food or food group from a diet, if you like it, and it doesn’t disagree with you then don’t exclude it. I think moderation is key and common sense especially when it comes to junk food, and to eat natural foods where possible. Of course this works best along with getting in some regular exercise. ‘Cut down on the junk and move’ is probably the best advice anyone can give but it’s a bit too blunt and it’s not as simple as that as some natural foods have a bizarre ability to sky-rocket blood sugar levels and combining with natural fats, can be just as fattening as something artificial.
Autumnal carbs are the big problem today (and refined versions such as fluffy white starchy foods and refined sugars). In nature, they spiked our blood for 3 months of the year, which means the pancreas was not under much pressure to produce insulin for most of the year, nowadays the pancreas is under attack and being put under pressure 4+ times a day, all year around, by the glucose flowing through our blood so it is no wonder so many people have issues with that particular organ and also no wonder that it can problems can be managed and even reversed in many cases through diet and exercise. Again, it just isn’t natural to be eating autumnal carbs all day every day 365 days a year, so, through the DEFoW diet, I propose eating seasonally on a daily basis, which results in just one or two less-pronounced insulin spikes a day (the protein in a diet will cause a milder insulin response too and invoke muscle protein synthesis).
The DEFoW Diet is therefore, essentially, a sort of stone-age simulation i.e. a more natural, healthy way of eating combined with exercise. It’s easy to maintain in the long-term too because you are not restricting or conscious of the amount of food you eat, you are just mindful in particular of the carb aspect of the diet and not to exceed your sugar energy requirements, especially in conjunction with fats. Over and above that, it describes combinations of foods to eat, when and why to eat them and suggested exercise plan for men and women too, but not only that, it explains the energy sources required for particular types of exercise, nutrients the body requires to recover and be healthy, and other lifestyle suggestions too so that you can construct the best version of you over the next phase of your life. In 2 years all your cells will have been replaced, you will be totally new, so why not begin constructing the best you 2.0 starting today and galvanise the only asset you have of real worth, your FAB Machine (flesh and bone machine), your body.
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