New diet that's low in GI, high in BS

If you've been thinking about starting a new diet, I'm going to save you some money today. I'll begin by saying that, in my opinion, "diets" are a bunch of BS.. The South Beach Diet, the Atkins Diet, there's a new fad diet that you can follow pretty much every other month.. The latest is the Low Glycemic Index Diet. I think this one was started by a Market America program called Transitions. Market America is the Bernie Madoff of internet marketing and they currently operate the largest pyramid scheme in the world. The first thing anybody has to remember about all of these "diets" is that they were developed to make somebody money.

In the case of the Low Glycemic Index diet, the idea is to keep your blood sugar relatively stable by eating foods that don't spike your blood sugar. The system ranks the quality of all carbs based on the effect on your blood sugar level. This diet could just as easily been named the "Hey Dummy, Stop Eating So Much Damn Sugar, Diet", but the marketing geniuses at Market America decided that wouldn't sell people on the idea. Scientific words that most people have never heard before, like glycemic, sound impressive and make you want to spend money to learn about it.

I'm just going to give you one example of why nobody needs to pay any attention to this diet. I was wondering what to have for breakfast yesterday morning and I decided I would refer to the Glycemic Index Table provided by any of these Low GI diet pushers on the web. I chose three different things I could have had for breakfast:

1. Whole grain oatmeal with 100% pure Vermont maple syrup, cinnamon, and freshly cut pineapples

2. Bowl of ice cream covered with peanut M&M's

3. Twinkie wrapped with bacon.

According to the table, the twinkie wrapped with bacon would have been my best choice, the bowl of ice cream with M&Ms second, and the bowl of oatmeal with fruit last.. No, I'm not kidding. 

If you want to be healthy and fit then you don't diet. You eat right and exercise. You use common sense about the choices you make. It's really incredibly simple. Here's what you need to do:

1. Eat real food, not processed junk

2. Eat when you're hungry. There's a difference between needing to eat, wanting to eat, and eating for the sake of eating. Know the difference. Only eat when you need to eat.

3. Stop eating when you're no longer hungry. That's before you're full. This is tricky because the mechanism in the body that tells you you're full is delayed by about 15 minutes from the time that you actually become full.. So this takes some knowledge about how much food it takes to become unhungry (when you have your own blog you can make up words). Luckily, you eat every day and practice enough so that it should be easy enough to figure out how much food you really need to kill the hunger and avoid eating to the point of being full. In most cases it only takes an apple or a banana. 

4. Get 25-30% of your daily calories within 2 hours of waking up. Eat less than 10% of your daily intake within 2 hours of going to bed.

5. Exercise daily and exercise hard. 

So, yesterday, after deciding on the oatmeal and fruit for breakfast (worst possible choice according to the Low GI diet people), I went off to the gym. I had some time between sessions to get my own workout in. For the record, high glycemic index foods put glucose into your system quickly which is required for intense physical activity. When mixed with the proper amount of fats and proteins you will provide your body with excellent energy for working out for extended periods of time. High GI foods are also good for after a workout when your body needs its glycogen stores replenished. This is all a scientific way of saying eat bananas before and after workouts. Whole grains and peanut butter are also good choices. I wanted a good strength building session yesterday and I wanted to put my forearm to another test. Yesterdays workout was 3 rounds of:

10 pullups on the rings

20 pistols on each leg

1 wall walk with 10-15 second holds and pushups

3 Turkish Getup on each side with 32kg

I haven't been able to do 10 pullups without pain in almost a year. But having been going to Dr Baroody in Manchester for Active Release Technique and ultrasound treatment and Bikram Yoga in Nashua (the locust pose is the healer for me) for the last 3 weeks I can finally say I'm making huge strides. I got 10 pullups in all three rounds with zero pain to the forearm. This was huge for me! With the pistols, I've done as many as 25 in a row on both legs but I have never done rounds of 20. I got all three rounds with 20 on each side for a total of 120 pistols. The wall walk is a great core exercise idea that I got from Johnny Grube. Followed this up with 3 Turkish Getups on each side with a 32kg. First round, 3rd rep, I thought I was going to pass out which would have been a bad idea with a 70# kettlebell floating over my head. 

After completing my 3 rounds, for the finisher I did a Power Wheel Kettlebell Bear Walk.. This is something that we call the Lavoie Crawl at the gym since I think it was Nicole that jokingly said one day after we were doing the Bear Walk that we should try it with the power wheel strapped to our feet. At the time it was said as a joke, but I took it as a challenge. It is as brutal as it looks.

Not a bad workout for somebody who failed the Low GI BS diet, eh? Imagine what I could have accomplished if I had the bacon wrapped twinkie...

Train hard, have fun,

kevin