The former Blockbuster Video space along Clark and Wrightwood wasn’t made to house two 100-foot Lang barbecue smokers. Brandon and Katherine Rushing had to significantly alter the ventilation to accommodate their new restaurant, Briny Swine Smokehouse and Oyster Bar.
The same space was home to HopCat, the Michigan beer bar. During the fall, it was also a frequent popup space for Spirit Halloween. Briny Swine’s crews kept the bar in the same space, and the Rushings hope their South Carolina barbecue and find a Chicago niche with folks who like bourbon, beer, and barbecue. They’ll even stay open until 2 a.m. giving the stretch of Clark Street, which has recently seen the closures of Frank’s and Field House, a charge. Even as the Wiener Circle taunts the new restaurant from across the street.
This was a former Blockbuster.
South Carolina barbecue specializes in pork, but Briny Swine also serves seafood, chicken, and turkey.
This is the Rushings’ third restaurant. They run a Briny Swine in Edisto Beach, South Carolina; and Ella & Ollies, which opened in 2016. Those restaurants will continue as the Rushings move to Chicago with their daughter. Barbecue joints have a certain aesthetic with metal trays and red and white checkered tablecloths. Brandon Rushing says they’ve incorporated some of those standards, but tailored them to Chicago’s big-city tendencies. Rushing also says to look for live music on most nights.
“It’s not your trays and your plastic ramekins kind of thing,” he says. “You know, it’s a little bit more elevated than that — I think that kind of brings out more of the seafood side and the oyster side of things as well.”
Briny Swine features South Carolina-style barbecue, which focuses on pork, or whole hog cooking. Brandon Rushing smokes his meat with oak and they’ll have mustard and vinegar sauces on hand. Look for pulled pork and St. Louis spare ribs. Rushing is also proud of his brisket, so beef fans are in luck.
The St. Louis ribs are smoked over oak.
Chicago borrows much from Memphis’ barbecue traditions with its sweet and smoky barbecue sauce. South Carolina focuses on dry rub, but Swiny Brine will offer five sauces: Alabama White (mayo, vinegar, water, mustard, horseradish, black pepper), Carolina Gold (mustard-based, vinegar, sugar, ketchup), pepper vinegar (pepper, vinegar, pepper flakes, sugar), red (ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar), and a spicy red variant with chipotle.
Being part of Lowcountry cuisine, there’s also a variety of seafood options including blackened grouper sandwiches and shrimp rolls. Rushing says it was a task to properly source oysters. The oysters (from Chesapeake, Virginia are salty. He serves them with jalapeño and country ham and fried. For the colder months, he wants to bring a southern tradition to Chicago, the oyster roast.
Chicago may be a sausage town, just ask it, but Briny Swine is offering it something unique: onion sausage. The late Phil Bardin, a prominent Lowcountry chef, is one of Rushing’s mentors. And he inspired the sausage which is made with pork (instead of the traditional venison) and tons of onions.
Live music is a daily feature.
The boiled peanut martini is salty.
There’s a special food menu at the bar, including a pulled pork sandwich and blue crab hush puppies, that will be available until 2 a.m. Brown liquor fans will have plenty of whisky flights (and some Scotch) to swig. The drink menu also features a boiled peanut martini made with Wheatley Craft Kentucky Vodka and peanut brine. Rushing says the drink was his wife’s idea: “It’s kind of like, a salty briny martini — it actually turned out really fantastic.”
Walk through the space below as the restaurant officially opens on Saturday, June 1. Walk through the space below.
So you wanna learn about the Paleo Diet, aka “the Caveman Diet,” eh?
Paleo is one of the most popular diets on the planet (up there with the Keto Diet), and I bet you have questions.
Welp, I got answers, my friend!
In addition to helping people “go paleo correctly” with our Online Coaching Program, we also create epic guides like this one that cover all the basics.
Below in this guide, I’m going to give you the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to the Paleolithic Diet (click to go right to that section):
INTRODUCTION TO PALEO:
WHAT CAN I EAT ON THE PALEO DIET?
SHOPPING LIST AND EATING PLAN
IS PALEO DANGEROUS?
Now, this guide is SUPER long, so we took the liberty of converting it into a nicely designed guide for easy consumption (not literal consumption, unless you print it on bacon).
Grab your Beginner’s Guide to the Paleo Diet free when you sign up in the box below:
Get the FREE eBook! The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Paleo!
Discover if Paleo is for you
The one simple trick to know if your food is Paleo-friendly
Easy Paleo recipes for beginners to get you started
If you can actually apply the rules of the Paleo lifestyle, you can get some pretty solid results.
As the great Mr. Flintstone once said, “Yabadabadooooo!”
I know, it sounds like a fad/marketing ploy, but The Paleo Diet isn’t really a “diet,” and it’s actually quite logical when you think about it.
Here’s the ENTIRE diet in a nutshell:
“If a cave person didn’t eat it, neither should you.”
As the theory goes, tens of thousands of years ago, before Nike, Cap’n Crunch, and Healthy Choice meals, our ancient ancestors thrived as hunter-gatherers.
Although it’s been a really long time, our genetics haven’t changed that much since then.
And yet…these days we’re overweight, out of shape, stressed out, unhappy, sleep-deprived, and dying from far too many preventable diseases due to lifestyle choices.
So what the hell happened?
Agriculture!
And then delivery and Netflix.
A few thousand years ago, humans discovered farming, the agricultural revolution took off, and we advanced from hunter-gatherers to farmers.
We settled down, formed societies, and the human race progressed to what we are today. Which is obviously great for a number of reasons:
Not getting eaten by wild animals
Electricity
Automobiles
Nintendo
The problem is that our bodies never adjusted properly to eating all the grains and sugar that we’re now consuming.
As paleo guru Robb Wolf puts it, think of a 100-yard football field:
The first 99.5 yards are how long Homo-Sapiens spent as hunter-gatherers. As they became REALLY good at hunting and gathering our bodies adapted to that lifestyle over thousands of years.
That last half-yard represents our species after the agricultural revolution, where our diet has shifted (but our genetics haven’t).
So, instead of loading up on meat, vegetables, and seasonal fruits, we’ve become a species “dependent” upon grains – bread, pasta, rice, corn, and so on.
66% of us are overweight, 33% are considered obese, and those numbers are only getting worse.[1]
Clearly, something’s not right, and we need to fix it.
The Paleo Diet is an effort to go back to our ancestral roots.
To start eating how we’re biologically designed to eat, allowing us to tap into our genetic potential and start living healthier immediately.
While this video is pretty hyperbolic, it does a pretty good job of explaining the Paleo Diet in a few minutes:
To recap the rules of the Paleo Diet:
Only eat foods a caveman would eat
See Rule #1
Note that it doesn’t mention calorie counting or meal timing or macro tracking.
That’s part of the popularity of this diet: eat paleo-approved foods when you’re hungry, and that’s it.
The Paleo Diet will work for weight loss…provided you actually get into a caloric deficit.
You need to have the right mindset, you need to focus on the right foods, and you need to structure your environment so that you’re not tempted to backslide and abandon the Paleo Diet after a few days.
However, it has nothing to do with what Fred Flintstone ate or didn’t eat.
Add #3: Do those two things consistently for a decade.
Here’s WHY you’ll lose weight on the Paleo Diet:
You’re only eating meat, fish, veggies, fruits, and nuts. These are foods that are full of nutrients, will make you feel full, but don’t have nearly as many calories as junk food.
You are completely eliminating calorie-dense, often nutritionally deficient, unhealthy foods. This means no grains (pasta, bread, rice), no dairy, no beans. It also means no soda, no candy, no sugar.
And yup. When you only eat real food and avoid all unhealthy food, you’re more likely than not going to run a caloric deficit – and thus lose weight.
Or… 200 calories will get you exactly 1/2 a Snickers bar:
Look at that: nobody can eat that much broccoli, and nobody only eats half a candy bar!
My point is this: by eating Paleo-approved foods, you’re more likely than not to eat fewer calories than you did in the past automatically, which can lead to weight loss.
So YES, the Paleo Diet MIGHT help you lose weight.
You just need to eat fewer calories than you burn every day (Here’s how to calculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure). And that is easier when you are eliminating foods that people tend to overeat:
Candy
Soda
Pasta
Bread
Dairy
But that’s all about what we’re eliminating. What are we keeping!?
Nuts – almonds, walnuts, cashews, and their respective butters (almond butter is so good!)
Tubers – Sweet potatoes and yams.
*If you can, aim for grass-fed beef and organic fruits and vegetables. But don’t go break the bank with your food purchases. Just do the best you can.
As the Paleo Diet explains: Pick any of the foods from that list and eat as much as you want of them.
You might have noticed that a lot of the foods above are loaded with fat. And depending on what your mom told you growing up, you might think fat is the devil.
So let me address that right away…
Does Eating Fat Make You Fat?
If you’re cutting back on carbs, that means you’ll need to fill the void in your diet with the most controversial macronutrient:
Fat!
It’s gotten a bad rap over the past number of decades, so companies have been doing everything possible to make everything low fat and “healthy!” (while adding all sorts of preservatives, chemicals, and sugar).
Yup…cut out the fat, increase the carbs….and look where THAT has gotten us.
Why has fat been vilified? Rather than get into the politics of it myself, I’ll let Gary Taubes, author of the incredibly thorough and well-researched Good Calories, Bad Calories take over.
As he discusses in an article he wrote for the New York Times a decade ago:[2]
These researchers point out that there are plenty of reasons to suggest that the low-fat-is-good-health hypothesis has now effectively failed the test of time.
In particular, that we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic that started around the early 1980’s, and that this was coincident with the rise of the low-fat dogma. (Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, also rose significantly through this period.)
They say that low-fat weight-loss diets have proved in clinical trials and real life to be dismal failures, and that on top of it all, the percentage of fat in the American diet has been decreasing for two decades.
Our cholesterol levels have been declining, and we have been smoking less, and yet the incidence of heart disease has not declined as would be expected. ”That is very disconcerting,” Willett says. ”It suggests that something else bad is happening.”
“Low fat” foods were created to follow conventional wisdom that fat made you fat (which as stated in the above article doesn’t stand up to scrutiny).
When a company makes a low-fat food, they remove the fat and have to replace the flavor with something.
That “something” is usually sugar (and often more calories).
Crap.
So, according to Taubes and Paleo folks, fat has been vilified and the real focus should have been on sugar and carbs all along.
Because healthy fats are valuable additions to our diet.
Here are some examples of Paleo-Approved Healthy Fats:
Avocados
Almond (and almond butter)
Fatty cuts of meat
Walnuts
Coconut oil
Olive oil
In the Paleo Diet, fat makes up a large portion of one’s diet.
If you’re worried about consuming fat and how it will affect your cholesterol, read our Full Guide to Cholesterol.
If you are looking to strictly follow the Paleo Diet, then you can’t eat foods that did not exist back in “Caveman times.”
Why?
Because – as advocates of the diet point out – cavemen couldn’t eat those foods because they didn’t exist. There was no way to create cereal and candy – you could only eat what you found or hunted.
So, that’s what the Paleo Diet advocates as the reason for avoiding these foods. And it serves as a good mental model to check with yourself: “Could a caveman have eaten this meal?”
And when you start to answer this question, you identify the foods that you’re not allowed to eat on the Paleo Diet:
Grains like pasta, cereal bread, and rice
Dairy like milk and cheese
Candy, cookies, ice cream, and other processed foods
The Paleo Diet also almost completely eliminates sugar outside of fruit. No candy. No soda. No powdered donuts. Yup, even the mini white ones from the grocery store where you can eat like 100 of them (accidentally, of course).
Many studies have shown that an incredible number of diseases and lifestyle issues can be reversed by cutting out sugar and processed foods.[3]
But I understand grains and dairy are a bit more complex.
The Caveman reason why: Grains require some amount of processing, and thus Cavemen would not have eaten them.
The science and psychological reason why: we have a tendency to overeat grains and the other “no-no” foods on the Paleo Diet. They are calorically dense, nutrient deficient, and they can wreak havoc on some people’s blood sugar levels.
This leads to a sugar rush followed by a crash, which can lead to more emotional or hungry overeating…and the process starts again.
Rather than me explain that part with thousands of words, just watch this three-minute video – “Why You Got Fat:”
Let’s get into some more reasons Paleo advocates suggest avoiding grains: most contain gluten and lectins.
What are they and what’s wrong with them? I’m so glad you asked:
Gluten is a protein found in things like rye, wheat, and barley. It’s now being said that much of our population may be gluten-intolerant (hence all the new “gluten-free!” items popping up everywhere). Over time, those who are gluten intolerant can develop a dismal array of medical conditions from consuming gluten: dermatitis, joint pain, reproductive problems, acid reflux, and more.[4]
Lectins are natural toxins that exist in grains to defend against consumption! Yup. Grains have evolved to keep themselves from being eaten by us. These lectins are not a fan of our gastrointestinal tract, and they prevent the tract from repairing itself from normal wear and tear. This can cause all kinds of damage.
Long story short: many people cannot process grains properly, and they are usually the food that causes people to eat too many calories. So by eliminating grains from your diet, you’re more likely than not going to eat fewer calories without counting calories.
That’s a Paleo win!
Do I Need to Avoid Carbs on the Paleo Diet?
Not necessarily.
That depends on your goals and your body – you are a special snowflake!
Some people function well on a high fat, low carb diet.
Others function better on a high-carb, low-fat diet.
I will say the Paleo Diet is USUALLY a Low Carb diet, and large quantities of carbs are not required for somebody to be healthy on a regular diet.[5]
After all, carbs aren’t evil – they’re just…carbs.
Here is the logic and psychology behind why the Paleo Diet is low carb:
On a typical Western diet, we consume plenty o’ carbs, and our bodies convert those carbs to a sugar called “glucose.” This is our body’s preferred method of fueling itself.
In the absence of carbs to create glucose to fuel our bodies, we have to do a few other things instead:
Transform stored fat into glycerol and fatty acids (this process is called lipolysis).
Burn fatty acids for energy or transform the fatty acids into glucose for energy (this is called gluconeogenesis)
In the absence of glucose (through fasting or following a Keto Diet), your body can create ketones for fuel (called “ketogenesis”).
We’re going to focus on the forms of weight loss NOT related to “ketogenesis.” Unless you are avoiding all carbohydrates while going Paleo, or you are doing long fasts, you most likely won’t be in ketosis while going Paleo.
Back to weight loss and Paleo: when you cut back on carbs, and thus most likely ALSO cut back on total calories consumed, you are creating a caloric deficit in your body.
And eat a consistent deficit over a long enough time period, BOOM caveman weight loss.
So, fewer carbs = less glucose in your system, less sugar crashes, less “hangry” moments, and smaller chance of overeating = fewer calories consumed on average.
If you’re worried about adherence to the diet, I understand – it’s the toughest part of Paleo – sticking with it!
Knowing what to eat is part of it, but following this fairly restrictive lifestyle in a modern environment surrounded by cookies and candy and bagels and pasta is really difficult!
If this whole “Paleo, Carbs, and Weight Loss” thing is stressing you out, you’re not alone!
We work with busy people like you to structure a complete life overhaul: handcrafted workout routines, accountability, mindset changes, and nutritional strategies.
This also depends. Strict Paleo folks tend to stay away from it – a portion of the world is lactose intolerant, and those that aren’t usually have at least some type of an aversion to it.
Why? Because hunter-gatherers didn’t lug cows around with them while traveling – milk was consumed as a baby through breast milk from their mother, and that was it.
So as Paleo-stans will tell ya, our bodies weren’t designed for massive dairy consumption.
There is evidence that some adaptation to dairy has taken place throughout the years, specifically with people with ancestry in herding cultures, but this is not the majority of the population.[6]
Paleo purists will avoid dairy like the plague, while other paleo-ish people have found that consuming dairy in its various forms work for their genetics, goals, and lifestyle.
You do you, boo. But if you’re going Strict Paleo, then unfortunately cheese is OUT too.
If you’re just looking to lose some weight while following a “mostly Paleo” lifestyle, then adding some high-quality cheese into some of your meals can be okay.
Some cheeses will tend to have lower amounts of lactose or casein – the parts of dairy that can cause digestion challenges.
So, if you’re not sure your body is processing dairy properly, remove dairy from your diet and only introduce it back in when you’re ready to see how your body responds.
If you’re not losing weight while eating a “Paleo + Dairy” Diet, you’re still eating too many calories.
Consider cutting out dairy and see how your body responds.
For reference, this is a portion of cheddar cheese (116 calories):
Because I like you as a person, I’ve created a printable Paleo Diet Shopping List PDF you can bring with you to the grocery store to help you decide what to buy and what to avoid.
Simply right-click on the image below and save as:
Feel free to print this out and bring it with you to the grocery store. If you happen to run into somebody else who has ALSO printed out this sheet, feel free to high-five each other while singing Baltimora!
Start with a good protein source with each meal (eggs, steak, chicken, fish, pork), and then add a vegetable or fruit.
That’s it.
If you feel hungry constantly, understand that changing up a diet can cause a body a few weeks of adjustment.
Remember, your body is learning to operate on both fewer calories AND fewer carbs – depending on how low carb you go this could be a DRAMATIC change.
And this is often referred to as “carb flu,” and it can be miserable! Your body might take multiple weeks to adjust to these new habits.
Going from a processed, high sodium diet to a paleo diet you will very often end up eating too little sodium, which is an essential nutrient.
So if you’re feeling tired all the time, try adding some salt to your food or consider an electrolyte supplement – this is what we recommend with our Keto readers too.
The dismissive criticisms of the Paleo Diet generally fall into one of three categories:
Cavemen had short lifespans. So there.
A recent article said that cavemen ate grains. So there.
Eating that much meat is unhealthy. So there.
As I said at the beginning of this article, it doesn’t matter what cavemen or cavewomen ACTUALLY ate.
The reason this diet works has nothing to do with what our bodies are designed to eat or what cavemen ate 1,000s of years ago.
The Paleo Diet CAN help you lose weight because it gets you to cut out junk food, focus on eating real food, and gives you a framework to evaluate quickly every food choice:
“Did a caveman eat this? Yes or no.”
That’s it!
By following this ONE rule, you’re likely to eat fewer calories than you used to, and thus you’re likely to end up healthier than before.
I personally don’t follow a Paleo Diet, but I do appreciate the fact that it’s easy to comprehend and gets people to take a more active approach in their food!
So, disregarding the fear-mongering, dogma, and anthropological criticisms of what cavemen actually ate, what are the ACTUAL critiques of the Paleo Diet?
#1) “Why is the Paleo Diet expensive?”
Admittedly, while I recommend eating organic fruits and veggies, free-range chicken, and grass-fed beef whenever possible, these products can be more expensive in conventional stores due to the processes needed to get them there.
However, farmers’ markets often have well-priced meats, eggs, fruits, and vegetables that are locally grown and incredibly healthy.
Even if you’re spending a little more money than before, when you factor in your overall health, spending a few extra bucks on healthier food now is a wiser investment than thousands later on costly medical expenses.
Also, if you’re really short on cash, eating the non-organic or grain-fed version of meat, vegetable, or eggs is still better than eating breads, pasta, fast food, and the like.
Most people simply compare the cost of a paleo meal with ramen noodles or pasta and bread and determine Paleo is prohibitively expensive.
Sure, it’s more expensive than those foods, but if you are smart with your money you can eat a much healthier meal and do so pretty inexpensively. Check out this guide on “How to Eat Healthy Without Breaking the Bank” for some tips and tricks.
(This doesn’t even factor in the whole “if you eat cheap unhealthy food now, you’ll pay thousands in medical bills and hospital visits and medications later” argument, which is valid too).
#2) “But cavemen had short lifespans! Of course they don’t have the diseases we do. We live way longer now.”
I agree with you here, but only because you don’t have to deal with the dangers of living back then.
Again we don’t really care to live like cave people!
This is SIMPLY a construct that can help many make more informed food choices.
#3) “Plenty of societies around the world consume grains and aren’t fat and unhealthy like us.”
Awesome – it seems like those people have found a solution that works for them. Have you read our big ass guide to eating a Plant-Based Diet?
The China Study is frequently cited when criticizing the Paleo Diet – focusing on a vegetarian diet and consuming rice is healthier than the Paleo Diet. I respectfully disagree with the conclusions drawn from that book but that’s awesome if you want to go plant-based! [7] I’ll leave you to make your own conclusions based on your own self-experimentation.
You’re here to learn about the Paleo Diet though, so let’s keep the focus there.
#4) “But this is just a meat diet, and eating all meat is bad!”
First of all, consider your sources and do your research before jumping to the conclusions.
Every meal in a true Paleo diet has a moderate amount of healthy (properly raised chicken, grass-fed beef, hormone free, etc.) meat combined with nutritious veggies or a moderate amount of fruit.
#5) “The Paleo Diet is too restrictive and I can’t live like this.”
This is the most valid criticism I personally have of the diet, as the best diet plan is the one you actually stick with and follow through on! The goal shouldn’t be to go “full paleo” for a few weeks only to go back to how you were eating before.
Instead, the goal here should be to rethink your relationship with food and develop a strategy that you can live with permanently.
There’s nothing worse than going on diets and gaining and losing the same 20 pounds over and over. The Paleo Diet, like other diets, WORKS ONLY IF YOU STICK WITH IT PERMANENTLY!
This makes sense after all: make temporary changes, get temporary results, right?
#6) “Steve, I hate vegetables. How do you make vegetables taste better? HALP.”
We know this all too well, and we have helped thousands of people slowwwwly transition their diet over a long period of time to make change less scary, more permanent, and thus make the weight loss permanent too!
If you’re overwhelmed or scared of changing too much, or maybe you’re just sick of dieting and want to find a solution that works for your busy lifestyle and situation, schedule a call with us to learn more about our 1-on-1 coaching program:
I’ve also compiled a list of my favorite sites and recipe books around the internet that can help you get started:
#1) Nom Nom Paleo – Michelle Tam and her husband Henry are amazing people, and their Paleo Blog is absolutely phenomenal. Great photos. Well written. Organized intelligently.
Their “Nom Nom Paleo” cookbook is a fun resource too, and a great place to get started with cooking for your Paleo lifestyle. Oh, what’s that? You have kids and a spouse and you’re all trying to eat healthier too? This book is perfect for that as well!
#2) Mark’s Daily Apple – Easily the most comprehensive resource on the internet for the Paleo Diet – Mark writes an article every weekday about everything Paleo, and it usually blows me away. Some of the posts can get overwhelming, so I suggest starting with his Primal Blueprint 101.
The Primal Blueprint – If you want to read about this stuff in a book rather than on a computer screen, Mark’s book The Primal Blueprint is a great place to get started on not only what to eat, but why you should be eating it.
It’s educational, funny, real-world applicable, and teaches you how to primalize (just made that up) the rest of your life too.
#3) Robb Wolf– Another great resource, and a guy I’ve already referenced in this article multiple times. Check out his site for a comprehensive FAQ on all things Paleo, a shopping list pdf (right-click and save), and plenty of humor.
The Paleo Solution – This article would have been finished 3 hours earlier, but before I wrote it, I read ALL of Robb’s new book. It seriously had me laughing out loud at certain points – not bad for a book on diet!
This book is a little less forgiving than Mark’s book above, but it’s still a great read.
#4) Loren Cordain – Loren is considered the leading expert on the Paleo Diet – Robb is actually one of his students/disciples/Padawans.
Dr. Cordain is probably the foremost authority on this type of eating, which is why I really enjoyed reading both of his books.
MORE RECIPE RESOURCES:
Ready or Not! 150 Make Now Recipes – The newer book from Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo. It’s super fun. Plus she’s wearing a Nerd FItness t-shirt in some of her photos in the book, so I might be sliiiightly biased 🙂
Mark’s Daily Apple – Although he sells the cookbook on Amazon, Mark also lists over 100 free primal recipes on his site. Pick something on the list, go buy the ingredients, and follow the instructions! So easy even a caveman can do it.
Everyday Paleo – Great pictures, easy to follow recipes, and pretty interesting combinations. Click on FOOD in the Nav bar, and the meals are broken down into breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
If you’re curious about The Paleo Diet’s recent popularity and thus it’s criticisms, we’ve written two other pieces on Nerd Fitness that might be of interest:
“The Paleo Diet Debunked??” where I address a few of the more recent criticisms that have popped up.
“In Defense of a Paleo-Ish Diet” where I cover how to live a mostly Paleo lifestyle but still enjoy the modern benefits of society.
Do whatever makes you happy and fits in your schedule. I like this kind of stress-free eating.
Regardless of whether or not grains should be vilified, I love this diet because I know it WORKS. I know people that have lost incredible amounts of weight and changed their lives within a matter of months.
Regardless of how you feel about grains, we can all agree that eating more natural foods and less processed foods is better for you.
YOU SHOULD DO THE PALEO DIET IF:
You struggle with portion control (meaning you can’t eat just one cookie, or you tend to keep eating even when you’re full).
You can stick with the changes you’re making permanently! Remember, temporary changes create temporary results.
You don’t mind eliminating some of your favorite foods completely.
YOU SHOULD NOT DO THE PALEO DIET IF:
The idea of giving up non-paleo foods makes you want to cry.
You don’t mind learning about calories and want to track your food.
Another diet sounds like a better fit for you!
Consider some of these other options instead:
If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you need to make permanent adjustments to your nutrition.
If you don’t see yourself being able to permanently follow a Paleo Diet, I would advise a more ‘wade in from the shallow end‘ approach to dietary change!
Maybe you’re ready to try out this Paleo lifestyle, but you can’t commit fully. There are certain foods you refuse to give up, or you can’t afford to buy grass-fed beef at the moment.
That’s okay!
If you can even make a few small changes here and there (cut out liquid calories, switch out your rice for steamed vegetables, cut back on bread, etc.) you’ll start to see some changes.
Remember, 20% healthier is better than 0% healthier – as you get more comfortable with the changes you can increase that percentage.
After all, I know how tough it is to stay loyal to a strict diet, especially without a plan to follow. It’s why we created free resources that can help you reach your goals faster without you also going crazy.
Get rid of the temptation: if you’re gonna go at this thing with a full head of steam, remove all the junk food from your house.
It’s going to take a few weeks for your body to adjust to burning fat instead of glucose, and you might want to eat poorly here and there. If there’s no food in your house to tempt you, it will be much easier to stay on target.
Now, it’s your turn.
Have you tried the Paleo Diet yet?
What was your experience like?
Have a criticism of the diet that I didn’t cover before?
I hope this article gives you some food for thought (terrible pun, I know), and gives you permission to question conventional wisdom and start addressing the issues in your diet!
In addition to this Beginner Paleo Guide, I hope you consider checking our 1-on-1 Coaching Program as well.
We have designed this program from the ground up to help people like you change their lives and fix their nutrition in a way that doesn’t suck.
Now, go forth. And eat like a caveman.
-Steve
PS: If you want to continue your adventures with us, check out NF Journey, our fun habit-building app that helps you exercise more frequently, eat healthier, and level up your life (literally).
We’re going to take two widely accepted healthy eating “rules” and turn them on their head:
RULE #1: You HAVE to eat first thing in the morning: Make sure you start off with a healthy breakfast, so you can get that metabolism firing first thing in the morning!
“Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”
There are even studies that show those that eat earlier in the day lose more weight than those who ate later in the day or skipped a meal.[1]
RULE #2: Eat lots of small meals for weight loss. Make sure you eat six small meals throughout the day so your metabolism stays operating at maximum capacity all day long.”
In other words, “eat breakfast and lots of small meals to lose weight and obtain optimal health.”
But what if there’s science and research that shows SKIPPING BREAKFAST (the horror! blasphemy!) can help with optimum human performance, mental and physical health improvement, maximum muscle retention, and body fat loss?
That’s where an Intermittent Fasting Plan comes in.
Intermittent fasting is not a diet, but rather a dieting pattern.
In simpler terms: it’s making a conscious decision to skip certain meals on purpose.
By fasting and then feasting deliberately, intermittent fasting generally means that you consume your calories during a specific window of the day, and choose not to eat food for a larger window of time.
There are a few different ways to take advantage of intermittent fasting, which I learned about from Martin over at LeanGains, a resource specifically built around fasted strength training:
#1) INTERMITTENT FASTING 16/8 PLAN
What it is: Fasting for 16 hours and then only eating within a specific 8-hour window. For example, only eating from noon-8 PM, essentially skipping breakfast.
Some people only eat in a 6-hour window, or even a 4-hour window. This is the “feasting” and “fasting” parts of your days and the most common form of Intermittent Fasting. It’s also my preferred method (5 years running).
Two examples: The top means you are skipping breakfast, the bottom means you are skipping dinner each day:
You can adjust this window to make it work for your life:
If you start eating at: 7AM, stop eating and start fasting at 3pm.
If you start eating at: 11AM, stop eating and start fasting at 7pm.
If you start eating at: 2PM, stop eating and start fasting at 10pm.
If you start eating at: 6PM, stop eating and start fasting at 2AM.
#2) INTERMITTENT FASTING 24-HOUR PLAN
Skip two meals one day, where you take 24 hours off from eating. For example, eat on a normal schedule (finishing dinner at 8PM) and then you don’t eat again until 8PM the following day.
With this plan, you eat your normal 3 meals per day, and then occasionally pick a day to skip breakfast and lunch the next day.
If you can only do an 18 hour fast, or a 20 hour fast, or a 22 hour fast – that’s okay! Adjust with different time frames and see how your body responds.
Two examples: skipping breakfast and lunch one day of the week, and then another where you skip lunch and dinner one day, two days in a week.
Note: You can do this once a week, twice a week, or whatever works best for your life and situation.
Those are the two most popular intermittent fasting plans, and the two we’ll be focusing on, though there are many variations of both that you can modify for yourself:
Some people eat in a 4-hour window, others do 6 or 8.
Now, you might be thinking: “okay, so by skipping a meal, I will eat less than I normally eat on average (2 meals instead of 3), and thus I will lose weight, right?”
Yes.
By cutting out an entire meal each day, you are consuming fewer calories per week – even if your two meals per day are slightly bigger than before. Overall, you’re still consuming fewer calories per day.
In this example, you’re eating LARGER lunches and dinners than you normally do, but by skipping breakfast you’ll consume 500 less calories per day.
And thus, weight loss!
This is highlighted in a recent JAMA study[2] in which both calorie restricted dieters and intermittent fasters lost similar amounts of weight over a year period.
That doesn’t tell the FULL story, as the timing of meals can also influence how your body reacts.
Intermittent Fasting can help because your body operates differently when “feasting” compared to when “fasting”:
When you eat a meal, your body spends a few hours processing that food, burning what it can from what you just consumed.
Because it has all of this readily available, easy-to-burn energy (thanks to the food you ate), your body will choose to use that as energy rather than the fat you have stored.
During the “fasted state” (the hours in which your body is not consuming or digesting any food) your body doesn’t have a recently consumed meal to use as energy.
Thus, it is more likely to pull from the fat stored in your body as it’s the only energy source readily available.
Burning fat = win.
The same goes for working out in a “fasted” state.
Without a ready supply of glucose and glycogen to pull from (which has been depleted over the course of your fasted state, and hasn’t yet been replenished with a pre-workout meal), your body is forced to adapt and pull from a source of energy that it does have available: the fat stored in your cells.
Why does this work? Our bodies react to energy consumption (eating food) with insulin production.
The more sensitive your body is to insulin, the more likely you’ll be to use the food you consume efficiently, and your body is most sensitive to insulin following a period of fasting[3].
These changes to insulin production and sensitivity can help lead to weight loss [4] and muscle creation [5].
Next: Your glycogen (a starch stored in your muscles and liver that your body can burn as fuel when necessary) is depleted during sleep (aka during fasting), and will be depleted even further during training, which can lead to increased insulin sensitivity.
This means that a meal following your workout will be used more efficiently: converted to glycogen and stored up in your muscles or burned as energy immediately to help with the recovery process, with minimal amounts stored as fat.
Compare this to a regular day (no intermittent fasting): With insulin sensitivity at normal levels, the carbs and foods consumed will see full glycogen stores and enough glucose in the bloodstream, and thus be more likely to get stored as fat.
Back to fasting: growth hormone is increased during fasted states (both during sleep[6]and after a period of fasting). Combine this increased growth hormone secretion:[7], the decrease in insulin production (and thus increase in insulin sensitivity [8]), and you’re essentially priming your body for muscle growth and fat loss with intermittent fasting.
The less science-y version: Intermittent fasting can help teach your body to use the food it consumes more efficiently, and your body can learn to burn fat as fuel when you deprive it of new calories to constantly pull from (if you eat all day long).
TL/DR: For many different physiological reasons, fasting can help promote weight loss and muscle building when done properly.
I know Intermittent Fasting can be overwhelming for many, which is why we sought to simplify the practice for our new app: Nerd Fitness Journey.
When you get started, we won’t have you jumping into the deep end. Instead, we’ll provide small missions so you can gradually grow accustomed to skipping meals.
If you want, you can sign-up for a free trial right here:
There are a few main reasons why diet books recommend six small meals:
1) When you eat a meal, your body does have to burn extra calories [9] just to process that meal. So, the theory is that if you eat all day long with small meals, your body is constantly burning extra calories and your metabolism is firing at optimal capacity, right? Well, that’s not true.
Whether you eat 2000 calories spread out throughout the day, or 2000 calories in a small window, your body will burn the same number of calories processing the food [10].
So, the whole “keep your metabolism firing at optimum capacity by always eating” sounds good in principle, but reality tells a different story.
2) When you eat smaller meals, you might be less likely to overeat during your regular meals. I can definitely see some truth here, especially for people who struggle with portion control or don’t know how much food they should be eating.
However, once you educate yourself and take control of your eating, some might find that eating six times a day is very prohibitive and requires a lot of effort. I know I do.
Also, because you’re eating six small meals, I’d argue that you probably never feel “full,” and you might be MORE likely to eat extra calories during each snack.
Although grounded in seemingly logical principles, the “six meals a day” doesn’t work for the reason you think it would (#1), and generally only works for people who struggle with portion control (#2).
If we think back to caveman days, we’d have been in serious trouble as a species if we had to eat every three hours. Do you think Joe Caveman pulled out his pocket sundial six times a day to consume his equally portioned meals?
Hell no! He ate when he could, endured and dealt with long periods of NOT eating (no refrigeration or food storage) and his body adapted to still function optimally enough to still go out and catch new food.
A recent study (written about in the NYT, highlighted by LeanGains) has done a great job of challenging the “six-meals-a-day” technique for weight loss [11]:
There were [no statistical] differences between the low- and high- [meal frequency] groups for adiposity indices, appetite measurements or gut peptides (peptide YY and ghrelin) either before or after the intervention. We conclude that increasing meal frequency does not promote greater body weight loss under the conditions described in the present study.
When you fast, you are also making it easier to restrict your total caloric intake over the course of the week, which can lead to consistent weight loss and maintenance.
#2) Because it simplifies your day. Rather than having to prepare, pack, eat, and time your meals every 2-3 hours, you simply skip a meal or two and only worry about eating food in your eating window.
It’s one less decision you have to make every day.
It could allow you to enjoy bigger portioned meals (thus making your tastebuds and stomach satiated) and STILL eat fewer calories on average.
It’s a point that Coach Matt makes in this video on intermittent fasting:
#3) It requires less time (and potentially less money). Rather than having to prepare or purchase three to six meals a day, you only need to prepare two meals.
Instead of stopping what you’re doing six times a day to eat, you simply only have to stop to eat twice. Rather than having to do the dishes six times, you only have to do them twice.
Rather than having to purchase six meals a day, you only need to purchase two.
#4) It promotes stronger insulin sensitivity and increased growth hormone secretion, two keys for weight loss and muscle gain. Intermittent fasting helps you create a double whammy for weight loss and building a solid physique.
#5) It can level up your brain, including positively counteracting conditions like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and dementia.
As explained here in this TEDx talk by Mark Mattson, Professor at Johns Hopkins University and Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, fasting is grounded in serious research and more studies are coming out showing the benefits:
#6) Plus, Wolverine does it:
If adamantium-clawed superheroes do Intermittent Fasting, it can probably work for you too, if you can make it work for your particular lifestyle and situation!
If you’ve tried implementing something like this in the past and not had success, I hear ya!
That was the specific problem we set out to solve when we created Nerd Fitness Journey, our fun habit-building app. The tasks and missions we assign are small – like drinking a glass of water or taking a 5-minute walk – so the steps you take won’t be too scary.
You can try out the app (including our Intermittent Fasting missions) for free right here:
In my own experimentation with Intermittent Fasting since 2014, I have found very few negative side effects with Intermittent Fasting.
The biggest concern most people have is that Intermittent Fasting will lead to lower energy, focus, and the “holy crap I am hungry” feeling during the fasting period and ruin them.
People are concerned that they will spend all morning being miserable because they haven’t consumed any food, and thus will be miserable at work and ineffective at whatever task it is they are working on.
The following are my thoughts and experiences, and your results may vary:
Yes, the initial transition from EATING ALL THE TIME, to intermittent fasting MIGHT be a bit of a jolt to your system; it was for me.
However, once I got through the transition after a few days, my body quickly adapted and learned to function just as well only eating a few times a day.
Although I fast for 16 hours per day with no issues, the following might help assuage your fears that skipping breakfast will cause your body to eat itself and your brain to implode:
After 48 hours of fasting in a recent study[12], “cognitive performance, activity, sleep, and mood are not adversely affected in healthy humans by two days of calorie-deprivation.” You’ll be fasting for far less time than that.
“So why do I feel grouchy and lethargic when I skip breakfast?”
In this nerd’s humble opinion, a good portion of the grumpiness is a result of past eating habits. If you eat every three hours normally, and normally eat as soon as you wake up, your body will start to get hungry every three hours as it is now used to consuming food every three hours.
If you eat breakfast every morning, your body expects to wake up and eat food.
Once you retrain your body to NOT expect food all day every day (or first thing in the morning), these side-effects become less of an issue. In addition, ghrelin (a hormone that makes you hungry [13]), is actually lowest in the mornings and decreases after a few hours of not eating too. The hunger pains will naturally pass!
Personally, I found this grumpiness subsided after a few days and now my mornings actually energize me.
It’s important to understand that Intermittent Fasting is NOT a cure-all panacea. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that if you skip breakfast and then eat 4,000 calories of candy bars for lunch and dinner that you will lose weight.
If you have an addictive relationship with food and you struggle with portion control, figure out your calorie goals and track your calorie intake in your meals to make sure you’re not overeating.
If you skip breakfast, you might be so hungry from this that you OVEREAT for lunch and this can lead to weight gain. Again, the important thing here is that with an intermittent fasting plan, you’re eating fewer calories than normal because you’re skipping a meal every day.
Think about it in caveman terms again. We certainly found ways to survive during periods of feast and famine, and that remains true today. Imagine if you needed to eat in order to be active and alert: what would hungry cavemen do?
They would go find food, and that probably required a ton of effort. It actually takes our bodies about 84 hours of fasting [14] before our glucose levels are adversely affected. As we’re talking about small fasts (16-24 hour periods), this doesn’t concern us.
AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT:Intermittent Fasting can be more complex for people who have issues with blood sugar regulation, suffer from hypoglycemia, have diabetes, etc. If you fit into this category, check with your doctor or dietitian before adjusting your eating schedule. It also affects women differently (there’s a whole section dedicated to that here).
I still eat roughly the same number of calories I was consuming before, but instead of eating all damn day long, I condense all of my calorie consumption into an eight-hour window.
11 AM Work out with heavy strength training in a fasted state.
7 PM Consume the second portion of my calories for the day in a big dinner.
8 PM – 12 PM the next day: Fast for 16 hours.
In a different method, my friend Nate Green packed on a crazy amount of muscle while fasting for a full 24 hours on Sundays – so it is possible. [15]
I’m not kidding when I say this has revolutionized how I look at muscle building and fat loss.
Ultimately, this method flies in the face of the typical “bulk and cut” techniques of overeating to build muscle (along with adding a lot of fat) before cutting calories to lose fat (along with some muscle) and settling down at a higher weight.
I prefer this method to the bulk-and-cut technique for a few reasons:
There’s far less of a crazy swing to your weight. If you are putting on 30 pounds and then cutting 25 to gain 5 lbs of muscle, your body is going through drastic swings of body mass. Your clothes will fit differently, you’ll have different levels of definition, and your body will wonder what the hell is going on.
You’re consuming less food and thus spending less money. Rather than overeating to put on 1 pound of muscle and 4 pounds of fat in a week or two, you’re aiming to eat exactly enough to put on 1 pound of muscle without adding much fat on top of it. Yeah, it’s a delicate balance, but there’s far less swing involved. You are just slowly, steadily, and consistently building muscle and strength over many months.
There’s never a need to get “vacation-ready”: we all want to look good naked, right? When you are just adding muscle, you don’t need to worry about getting your body ready before by drastically altering your diet (avoiding a miserable crash diet like the Military Diet). [16]
You can make small adjustments and stay on target. Keep your body fat percentage low, build strength and muscle, and if you happen to notice your body fat creeping up, cut back on the carbs. Within two weeks you should be back at your preferred body fat percentage and can continue the muscle-building process.
A note on BCAA consumption. Martin from LeanGains [17] recommends consuming Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAA’s) as a supplement with regards to fasted training to aid your muscles through your workout.
Personally, I used BCAAs for about 6-8 months during my initial start with fasted training (consuming them before training), though haven’t used them in the past 2+ years. I didn’t notice any adverse effects to not taking them with regard to my performance. Your value may vary!
Now, it should go without saying that if you want to build muscle while fasting, you need to work out. Specifically, by lifting heavy.
If you want help building a workout routine designed to create muscle, I have 3 options:
#1) “Build Your Own Workout Routine” and get your hands dirty. Our guide will walk you through building a full-body exercise program in 10 simple steps.
#3) Try the workouts in our fun habit-building app, Nerd Fitness Journey!
NF Journey will guide you through a workout routine that can be done anywhere, all while creating your very own superhero! No guesswork needed, just follow the progression plan laid out in the app and grow strong!
By only eating fat and protein, your body must adapt to run on fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates. In the absence of carbs/glucose, your body converts fats to ketones and uses them for fuel.
This process is called “ketosis,” and there are two ways for a body to enter ketosis:
Eating in a way that induces ketosis (very low carb, high fat).
Fasting…Hey, that’s what you’re reading about right now!
We actually have an amazing success story here on Nerd Fitness, Larry, who followed our strategies, went Keto and start intermittent fasting. He ended up losing weight, getting stronger, AND overcame the challenges of rheumatoid arthritis (click on the image for his story)!
Here’s how the fasting portion of it works:
As your body enters a fast period when there are no sources of glucose energy readily available, the liver begins the process of breaking down fat into ketones.
Fasting itself can trigger ketosis.
Fasting for a period of time before kicking off a Keto-friendly eating plan COULD speed your transition into the metabolic state of ketosis, and fasting intermittently while in ketosis could help you maintain that state.
I personally love fasting for the simplicity: I skip breakfast every day and train in a fasted state. It’s one less decision I have to make, it’s one less opportunity to make a bad food choice, and it helps me reach my goals.
WHY KETO + IF WORKS = eating Keto can be really challenging. And every time you eat, it’s an opportunity to do it wrong and accidentally eat foods that knock you out of ketosis.
You’re also tempted to overeat.
So, by skipping a meal, you’re eliminating one meal, one decision, one chance to screw up.
Note: if you’re thinking “Steve, am I losing weight because I’m skipping 1/3rd of my meals for the day, AND eliminating an entire macronutrient?”, then you’d be right.
Both Keto and IF have secondary effects that could also be factoring in – physiological benefits which I explain in both articles.
Your value may vary!
You need to decide what works for you.
You probably won’t become “keto-adapted” (your body running on ketones) just skipping breakfast every day – your body will still have enough glucose stored from your carb-focused meals for lunch and dinner the day before.
In order to use fasting to enter ketosis, the fast needs to be long enough to deplete your carb/glucose stores, or you need to severely restrict carbohydrates from your meals in addition to IF in order to enter ketosis.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Experiment and try different strategies that will work for you.
By skipping a meal or minimizing carbohydrate intake, you’re more likely than not to lose weight:
You can do intermittent fasting without eating a Keto Diet and lose weight.
You can do a Keto Diet without intermittent Fasting and lose weight.
That’s actually why we designed Nerd Fitness Journey to be a step-by-step progression plan. Our nutrition adventure won’t have you abandoning all carbs on Day 1 (which probably won’t work), but instead will have you create small habits that you can follow permanently.
If this sounds like a winning strategy for you, check out our free trial of the app right here:
The quick answer is: “yes, Intermittent Fasting can affect men and women differently.”
Anecdotally, we have many women in our online coaching program that swear by Intermittent Fasting, while others have had adverse effects.
Let’s dig into the science and studies.
A recent PubMed summary concluded that “fasting can be prescribed as a safe medical intervention as well as a lifestyle regimen which can improve women’s health in many folds [18].
Now, in that extract, many of the studies cited are focused on specifically calorie restriction (and not just fasting), and they also say that “future studies should address this gap by designing medically supervised fasting techniques to extract better evidence.”
Digging into the PubMed Archives brought me to the following conclusions [19]:
One small study (with 8 men and 8 women, all non-obese) resulted in the following: “Glucose response to a meal was slightly impaired in women after 3 weeks of treatment, but insulin response was unchanged. Men had no change in glucose response and a significant reduction in insulin response.”[20]
Another small study (8 women) studied the effects on their menstrual cycles after a 72 hour fast – which is significantly longer than any fast recommended in this article: “in spite of profound metabolic changes, a 72-hour fast during the follicular phase does not affect the menstrual cycle of normal cycling women.” [21].
Yet another study tracked 11 women with 72 hour fasts (again, longer than we’d recommend) and it found that “Fasting in women elicited expected metabolic responses – included increased cortisol (a stress hormone) – and apparently advanced the central circadian clock (which can throw off sleeping patterns). [22]
Those studies above, in working with small sample sizes, and different types of fasting than recommended here, would lead me to believe that fasting affects men and women differently, and that many of the weight loss benefits associated with intermittent fasting (that affect insulin and glucose responses) work positively for men and negatively for women.
There are also a series of articles[23] out there that dig into the potential reproductive health issues, stress challenges, induction of early-menopause [24] associated with fasting (and calorie restriction) for women.
Precision Nutrition – a great resource – recommends not attempting Intermittent Fasting as a woman if:
The challenge associated with all of this is that there aren’t enough long-term studies, with large enough sample sizes, specifically targeting female humans, with relation to the different types of Intermittent Fasting.
ALL OF THIS TO SAY: It does appear that men and women will have different experiences with intermittent fasting; we’re all unique snowflakes (yep, especially you), and your body will be affected by intermittent fasting differently than the person next to you.
There is enough evidence as cited in the articles and studies above that would give me pause to recommend Intermittent Fasting for women, especially if you are considering getting pregnant in the near term.
If you are looking to attempt fasting for weight loss reasons, my research has shown me that Intermittent Fasting could be less effective for women than men with regards to weight loss, and thus you would be wise to keep your efforts elsewhere:
Now, if you’ve read the above warnings, you are still curious about Intermittent Fasting, and you want to give it a try as a female, that is your choice!
You know your body best.
So, get blood work done, speak with your doctor and get a check-up.
Give intermittent fasting a shot, track your results, and see how your body/blood work changes as a result of Intermittent Fasting and decide if it’s right for you.
Your mileage may vary, so speak with a doctor or find a doctor versed in intermittent fasting plans and treat it like an experiment on yourself!
1) “Won’t I get really hungry if I start skipping meals?”
As explained above, this can be a result of the habits you have built for your body. If you are constantly eating or always eat the same time of day, your body can actually learn to prepare itself for food by beginning the process of insulin production and preparation for food.
After a brief adjustment period, your body can adapt to the fact that it’s only eating a few times a day. The more overweight you are, and the more often you eat, the more of an initial struggle this might be.
Remember, your body’s physical and cognitive abilities most likely won’t be diminished as a result of short-term fasting.[25]
2) “Where will I get my energy for my workouts? Won’t I be exhausted and not be able to complete my workouts if fasting?”
This was a major concern of mine as well, but the research shows this might not be the case: “Training with limited carbohydrate availability can stimulate adaptations in muscle cells to facilitate energy production via fat oxidation.”[26]
In other words, when you train in a fasted state, your body can get better at burning fat for energy when there are no carbs to pull from!
3) “I like the idea of fasted training, but I work a regular 9-5 or a night shift and can’t train at 11AM as you do. What am I supposed to do?”
Depending on your training schedule, lifestyle, and goals, go back to the portion above where I talk about the 16/8 protocol and simply adjust your hours of fasting and feasting.
Don’t overthink this. If you can’t train until 5pm, that’s okay. Consume a small meal for lunch, or shift your Intermittent Fasting window to eat all of your meals in the 8 hours post-workout. Better to do that than abandon it as a lost cause and have 0% compliance.
If you are an elite athlete, speak with a coach or nutritionist about your specific concerns and expectations. Otherwise, make intermittent fasting work for you Consider trying the 24-hour protocol below instead of the 16/8 protocol.
If you train later in the day (say, 7pm) but break your fast before training (aka Lunch), make it a smaller meal focused around fats and protein – which should be a solid goal even if you aren’t Intermittent Fasting! Try to time your carb and big meal consumption to happen AFTER your workout.
If you exercise BEFORE work, but then don’t eat until lunchtime: consider a protein supplement immediately after your workout, or simply wait until lunch to start eating. See how your body responds and adjust accordingly.
Do what you can, and don’t psyche yourself out! Get started and adjust along the way.
4) “Won’t fasting cause muscle loss?”
We’ve been told by the supplement industry that we need to consume 30 g of protein every few hours, as that’s the most amount of protein our body can process at a time.
Along with that, we’ve been told that if we don’t eat protein every few hours, our body’s muscle will start to break down to be burned as energy.
Again, NOT TRUE! Our bodies are quite adept at preserving muscle even when fasting [27], and it turns out that protein absorption by our body can take place over many many many hours.
Protein consumed in a shorter period of time has no difference on the body compared to protein spread throughout the day.
5) “What about my body going into starvation mode from not eating?”
Now, the thought process here is that when we don’t feed ourselves, our bodies assume calories aren’t available and thus choose to store more calories as opposed to burning them, therefore eliminating the benefits of weight loss with fasting.
Fortunately, this is NOT true.
Starvation mode is significantly overblown and sensationalized these days. It takes a dramatic amount of starvation, for a long, long, long time, before your body kicks into “starvation mode”. We’re talking about 24-hour or 16-hour fasts here, and starvation mode takes significantly longer than that.[28]
In other words: starvation mode should not be factoring into your decision here.
5) How much should I eat while intermittent fasting?
If your goal is weight loss, you still need to consume fewer calories than you burn every day to lose weight. If your goal is bulking up, you’ll need to consume more calories than you burn every day. Intermittent Fasting isn’t a cure-all, it’s a PART of the puzzle.
To start, begin intermittent fasting and eat your normal sized meals and track your weight and performance. If you are losing weight and happy with the progress, keep doing what you’re doing! If you are NOT losing weight, you could be eating too much. It’s a message I really strike home in our guide “Why Can’t I Lose Weight?”
Lastly, if you want a plan for slowly “wading into the water” calorie restriction, check out our new app!
Nerd Fitness Journey has missions where you tally the calories you normally eat, keep a food journal, and plan your next meal. We do all of this BEFORE we recommend even taking any food off your plate.
To learn more on why, start your free trial right here:
#1) Don’t freak out! Stop wondering: “can I fast 15 hours instead of 16?” or “what if I eat an apple during my fasted period, will that ruin everything?” Relax. Your body is a complex piece of machinery and learns to adapt. Everything is not as cut and dry as you think.
If you want to eat breakfast one day but not another, that’s okay. If you are going for optimal aesthetic or athletic performance, I can see the need to be more rigid in your discipline, but otherwise…freaking chill out and don’t stress over minutiae!
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good when it comes to your intermittent fasting plan.
#2) Consider fasted walks in the morning. I found these to be very helpful in reducing body fat, and also gave my day a great start to clear my mind and prepare for the day.
Simply wake up and go for a mile walk. Maybe you could even start walking to Mordor?
#3) Listen to your body during your strength training workouts. If you get lightheaded, make sure you are consuming enough water.
If you notice a significant drop in performance, make sure you are eating enough calories (especially fats and protein) during your feasting window.
And if you feel severely “off,” pause your workout. Give yourself permission to EASE into intermittent fasting and fasted workouts. This is especially true if you are an endurance athlete.
#4) Expect funny looks if you spend a lot of mornings with breakfast eaters.
A few weeks back I had a number of friends staying with me, and they were all completely dumbfounded when I told them I didn’t eat breakfast anymore.
I tried to explain it to them but received a bunch of blank stares. Breakfast has become so enGRAINed (zing!) in our culture that NOT eating it sounds crazy.
You will get weird looks from those around you…embrace it. I still go to brunch or sit with friends, I just drink black coffee and enjoy a conversation.
#5) Stay busy. If you are just sitting around thinking about how hungry you are, you’ll be more likely to struggle with this. For that reason, I time my fasting periods for maximum efficiency and minimal discomfort:
My first few hours of fasting come after consuming a MONSTER dinner, where the last thing I want to think about is eating.
When I’m sleeping: 8 of my 16 hours are occupied by sleeping. Tough to feel hungry when I’m dreaming about becoming a Jedi.
When I’m busy: After waking up, 12 hours of my fasting is already done. I spend three hours doing my best work (while drinking a cup of black coffee), and then comes my final hour of fasting: training.
#6) Zero-calorie beverages are okay. I drink green tea in the morning for my caffeine kick while writing. If you want to drink water, black coffee, or tea during your fasted period, that’s okay. Remember, don’t overthink it – keep things simple! Although be aware that Dr. Rhonda Patrick over at FoundMyFitness believes that a fast should stop at the first consumption of anything other than water, so experiment yourself and see how your body responds.
If you want to put milk in your coffee, or drink diet soda occasionally while fasting, I’m not going to stop you. Remember, we’re going for consistency and habit-building here – if milk or cream in your coffee makes life worth living, don’t deprive yourself.
There are MUCH bigger fish to fry with regards to getting healthy than a few calories here and there during a fast.
80% adherence that you stick with for a year is better than 100% adherence that you abandon after a month because it was too restrictive.
If you’re trying to get to a minimum bodyfat percentage, you’ll need to be more strict – until then, however, do what allows you to stay compliant!
Track your calories, and see how your body changes when eating the same amount of food, but condensed into a certain window.
Sign up for Nerd Fitness Journey, where the Intermittent Fasting Adventure will help you track your compliance with skipping meals:
#8) Don’t expect miracles. Yes, Intermittent Fasting can potentially help you lose weight, increase insulin sensitivity and growth hormone secretion (all good things), but it is only ONE factor in hundreds that will determine your body composition and overall health. Don’t expect to drop to 8% body fat and get ripped just by skipping breakfast.
Intermittent fasting can potentially have some very positive benefits for somebody trying to lose weight or gain lean body mass.
Men and women will tend to have different results, just like each individual person will have different results. The ONLY way to find out is through a conversation with your doctor and self-experimentation.
There are multiple ways to “do” an Intermittent Fasting Plan:
Fast and feast regularly: Fast for a certain number of hours, then consume all calories within a certain number of hours.
Eat normally, then fast 1-2x a week: Consume your normal meals every day, then pick one or two days a week where you fast for 24 hours. Eat your last meal Sunday night, and then don’t eat again until dinner the following day.
Fast occasionally: probably the easiest method for the person who wants to do the least amount of work. Simply skip a meal whenever it’s convenient. On the road? Skip breakfast. Busy day at work? Skip lunch. Eat poorly all day Saturday? Make your first meal of the day dinner on Sunday.
After that, get started! Take photos, step on the scale, and track your progress for the next month.
See how your body responds.
See how your physique changes. See how your workouts change.
And then decide if it’s something you want to keep doing!
4 years later, I have no plans on going back to eating breakfast. Sorry General Mills and Dr. Kellogg!
If you’re worried about all of this stuff, or aren’t sure when to eat and stop eating, try out our new app!
The Intermittent Fasting Adventure within Nerd Fitness Journey was specifically designed for a beginner who is interested in experimenting with fasting.
Plus, if you learn fasting isn’t for you, you can follow along with other nutrition adventures for sustainable paths for weight loss.
You can try it for free right here:
But enough about me, let’s talk about you!
I’d love to hear what questions you have!
What are your questions about intermittent fasting?
What are your concerns?
Have you tried intermittent fasting?
Have you had success with it, either with muscle gain or weight loss?
Thanks for leaving your comment, I’m excited to get the conversation started.
-Steve
PS: Before you take off, grab our Intermittent Fasting Worksheet to help you start your fasting practice:
Download a free intermittent fasting guide and worksheet!
Complete outline of the Intermittent Fasting Protocol
Worksheets for tracking when you eat and how long you fasted
PPS: Make sure you check out the rest of our guides on losing weight:
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