Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale’s first version of this diet was the “Anabolic Diet”. “The Metabolic Diet” as it is now called is a hight fat, high protein, low carb diet where there is a carb reload period, usually on weekends – similar to the “rebounding diet” of Zumpano in the late 1970s or so.
There has been traditionally an ideological split in terms of popular diets: one group of people who think that high fat diets are the cause of obesity and the other – the low carb camp who claim that not dietary fats but refined high gylcemic carbohydrates are the cause of rising obesity rates around the world. The problem with the former approach, the traditional high complex-carb, low-fat diet is that it lacks the proper amount of protein to build muscle. The issue with the latter, the low carb diet, is that prolonged periods of carbohydrate restriction cause one to get into a state of “ketosis” which occurs when glycogen stores are not available in the cells, so the body looks for other sources of energy and uses fatty acids as an alternative source of fuel. Ketones are molecules generated during fat metabolism and provide a backup fuel source for the brain.
The body experiences a new condition when a person goes on the low-carbohydrate diet. The more commonly used glucose fuel is no longer available. The body reacts by dropping the pancreas’ production of insulin and increasing the hormone glucagon. The glucagon draws stored fat reserves in the form of triglycerides for use by the cells as the new energy source. However, the cells are slow to react to this new fuel source, and the individual feels weak or lacking energy. Quoting Di Pasquale :
“Dietary ketosis, whether or not it can lead to the dangerous ketoacidosis, is not a desirable state to stay in. That’s because it has been shown to be a starvation state, and unless there is adequate protein intake it leads to excessive muscle breakdown (catabolism) if it’s allowed to continue unabated for any length of time. As such, at least in the case of continuous ketosis, the results on muscle mass and energy can be counter productive for anyone who exercises as the chronic ketosis is conducive to losses in muscle mass, strength and exercise performance.”
The big difference in the Metabolic Diet and something like the stock ketogenic diet, “The Atkins Diet” is that there is a scheduled reloading of the body’s glycogen stores by eating a high carb intake on the weekends for 24-36 hours, so the breakdown of muscle tissue that would have happened if one were to stay on a low or no carb diet for a prolonged period of time is avoided. The muscles get replenished with glycogen and come Monday morning, your muscles will look bigger and fuller than ever.
One similarity that the Metabolic Diet shares with the Atkin’s diet however is that there is an induction, or “Assessment Phase”. This Assessment Phase of the Metabolic Diet can be anywhere from two to six weeks. It all depends on your level of comfort or for that matter discomfort. The Metabolic Diet is designed to be a phase-shift diet. That is, the weekdays are lower-carb, while the weekend is higher-carb. The Assessment Phase of the Metabolic Diet is pretty easy to follow as it calls for a higher-fat/high-protein/low-carb diet from Monday all the way through to the following Friday (a total of 12 days) before carbing up. The Assessment Phase is basically 50-60% Fat, 30-40% Protein, 30 grams Carbohydrates. Since some people are more insulin resistant than others and gain fat easier, there is variability in the time span of the weekend reload.
| Carbohydrate Intake | Weekday Maximum | % Fat | % Protein | % Carbs |
| Weekday Maximum | 30 Grams | 40 – 60% | 40 – 50% | 4 – 10% |
| Weekend (12-48 Hour Carb Load) | No Real Limit | 20 – 40% | 15 – 30% | 35 – 60% |
After the assessment phase, comes the “Moderate-Carb” phase , your carb content is limited to about 15 to 25 percent of your diet. So, if you were on a 4,000-calorie diet you would take in roughly 150 to 300 grams of carbs per day. preferably using low glycemic carbs, like lentils, sweet potatoes, basmati rice, oatmeal, etc. The weekend carb reload is an “anything goes” consumption of carbs, according to Di Pasquale, you can have pancakes, beer and pizza! This works wonders for satisfying some mental deviation from the restriction and discipline through the week. (To calculate your daily caloric requirements, visit John Berardi’s site)
Example Of A Weekday Menu
- Breakfast: Eggs, bacon, ham, sausage, peameal bacon, tomatoes, cheese (or omlette containing some or all of these).
- Morning Snack: Cheese and cold cuts, pepperoni sticks.
- Lunch: Ground beef, scrambled eggs and walnuts with flaxseed oil.
- Afternoon Snack: Hardboiled eggs, tuna, sardines with olive oil.
- Pre Workout: Oatmeal.
- Post Workout: Whey protein shake, “just peanuts” peanut butter.
- Dinner: Ground beef, 4-6 egg fritatta with sauteed vegetables and cheese, mixed greens with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and shredded cheese, some berries.
- Bedtime Snack: Cheese, nuts, 1-3 grams Omega-3 capsules.
Example Of A Weekend Menu
- Breakfast: Buckwheat pancakes, grits, eggs and hash browns.
- Morning Snack: Fruit, honey, fresh whole grain bread with cream cheese.
- Lunch: Chicken alfredo with whole wheat pasta, ceasar salad.
- Afternoon Snack: Ice cream or pastry.
- Pre Workoutt: Oatmeal.
- Post Workout: Whey protein shake.
- Dinner: Chicken wings and pizza.
- Bedtime Snack: Samosas or Jamaican beef patty.
- Steak
- Hamburger
- Sausage
- Venison
- Salmon
- Lamb
- Shrimp
- Lobster
- Chicken
- Turkey
- Tuna
- Sardines
- Anchovies
- Cheese
- Eggs
- Butter
- Oils
- Walnuts
- Pot Roast
- Pastrami
- Bacon
- Mayonnaise
- Diet Soda
- Sugar free Jell-O
- “Just Peanuts” Peanut butter
Foods You Can Eat Unlimited Amounts Of On The Metabolic Diet
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For tens of thousands of years, humans and their ancestors ate a diet that consisted mainly of meat, fish, fowl and leaves and berries. The so-called “paleolithic diet” is such because it wasn’t until the advent of the plough in the neolithic period that we radically changed our eating habits. Worse yet, in the past few hundreds of years with refined sugar and other “new” foods introduced through the industrialization of the food supply have had an irreversible effect on human health. Our hunter gatherer ancestors did not suffer from heart disease, diabetes, obesity and other relatively new diseases and disorders. There are still aboriginal cultures in the world today to whom diseases like arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are relatively unknown. Take the Innu of northern Canada who primarily live on the high fat, high protein diet of caribou, whale and seal meat. Conversely, look at the devastating effect that sugar has had on the incidence of diabetes in native North American communities – this isn’t correlation we are talking about, but direct causation!
Advocates of the “Paleo Diet” (and all its derivatives like the Atkins Diet, Protein Power Plan etc..) maintain that research shows that the key to maintaining healthy bodyweight and preventing diseases like diabetes is in the stable, lower blood glucose levels that result from eating this diet. it is a fact that an average size potato will convert to as much blood glucose as an average Snickers candy bar.
Why is This Diet Important for Weight Training?
You need to eat relatively high amounts of protein to build muscle. Somewhere in the range of one gram per pound of bodyweight is a starting point. Protein is the “building block” of muscle and trying to go about building slabs of muscle without eating enough protein is like trying to build a house without enough bricks. Even more so, while on a low carb diet, like a Paleo diet, you will need even more carbs since carbohydrates have a “protein sparing effect”. Cut the carb intake, you have to increase the protein intake substantially. And eating a diet high in fat and protein is the way to do this.
You will look bigger with less stored bodyfat. You will not be able to see the outline and delineation of your muscles while on a high carb diet. Want to see those abs? Doing endless situps wont get you there. You need to restrict your carb intake.
Eating a diet like this will increase your metabolism. Try this diet for one month and your energy levels will soar! Gone are the crashes and highs and lows that you get from eating high carb meals. The intitial period or “induction phase” will take some getting used to and it will take about three weeks for your body to get rid of the sugars, starches and yeast levels that have built up in your body, but after this any sugar cravings will be history. Stay away from grains, legumes, tubers and for now, dairy too. (whey protein is an exception and the one rule of this diet that can be bent, as long as you use an “isolate” whey protein, which is lactose free)
Eat none of the following:
· Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles
· Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas
· Potatoes
· Dairy products
· Sugar
· Salt
. Don’t eat anything that was invented in the last 10,000 years.
Eat the following:
· Meat, chicken and fish
· Eggs
· Fruit
· Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)
· Nuts, eg. walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a legume) or cashews (a family of their own)
· Berries: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.
Try to increase your intake of:
· Root vegetables- carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas,
· Organ meats- liver and kidneys
For more insight and resources, visit the excellent site “PaleoDiet.com“
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Long before the diet and nutrition world ever heard of the late Dr. Robert Atkins’ “Atkins Diet”, Vince Gironda promoted a high fat, high protein diet consisting of animal proteins: meat, eggs, and heavy cream. Vince said that this type of diet is essential to getting a lean, muscular defined body replete with “6 pack” abs. Eating enough protein to maintain a ‘positive nitrogen balance’ is key on this diet and how much protein will depend on your height, weight and metabolism.
According to Gironda, eating 1/2-1 pound of steak and a half dozen eggs will supply over 100 grams of protein, and he ate this diet himself to get into the best shape of his life. The lean photos of him in the mid 1950s are a testament to this diet. Eating eggs in no way causes excess cholesterol – an absolute myth perpetrated by medical “experts”. In fact, cholesterol is the main building block for testosterone. Years later, medical research by Dr. Atkins proves this to be true: dietary cholesterol has no direct correlation with elevated blood cholesterol. As Gironda said over 50 years ago, real culprit is triglycerides mainly caused by the trans-fats found in the processed foods which make up the bulk of the western diet today.
As with the anabolic diet, it is important that every four or five days you have a ‘reload’ day of carbohydrates to replenish the body’s glycogen stores or else, as Vince put it, “you will smooth out and loose strength”. A diet without any carbohydrates will drain all the stored glycogen in the liver, and only dietary carbohydrate intake will replenish it. In short, eat 1/2-1 pound of steak and a half dozen eggs ever 3-4 hours and make every fourth day a carb reload day, and you will become progressively leaner, especially when combined with an intense but brief old school full body workout!
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Legendary trainer Vince “iron guru” Gironda was ahead of his time by decades with many of his ideas. Almost twenty years before Dr. Atkins was promoting the merits of a carbohydrate restricted diet, Gironda was writing about a diet of steak and eggs for “maximum definition”. While some of his ideas are outdated (ie., bench pressing to the neck), he was right about the role that a diet high in egg protein plays in maximizing natutral hormone levels – since cholesterol is an essential building block for testosterone. Unfortunately the medical establishment (drug companies) have waged an irrational war on the “high fat diet”.
Anecdotally, at one point I was eating 6-8 eggs daily already for a year at that time and told my doctor this on day. He was shocked and responded by waring me that I would have high cholesterol blood work for sure. My blood work came back: the LDL (”bad cholesterol”) was very low, the HDL (”good cholesterol”) was high normal and overall triglycerides were low. Years later I am still doing my part to keep chicken farmers in business, and my blood work is still optimal.
Gironda recommended the follwing “Hormone Precursor Diet” diet for four to six weeks, followed by a vegetarian diet to help restore the body’s acid/alkaline balance:
Breakfast
Vince’s special protein drink made of 12 oz half and half, 12 raw eggs, 1/3 cup milk-and-egg protein powder, 1 banana. (Make one to three mixtures of this formula and drink throughout the day, between meals, and before retiring)
Supplements
1 multi-vitamin tablet 3 vitamin A and D tablets or 3 halibut oil capsules 1 vitamin B complex
1 vitamin B-15 tablet 1 vitamin C comlex (300 mg) 2 vitamin E capsules (800 iu)
1 zinc tablet 1 chelated mineral tablets 5 alfalfa tablets
10 kelp tablets 3 tri-germ and wheat germ oil capsules 1 RNA/DNA tablet
3 Lysine tablets
(400 mg) 1 hydrochloric acid tablet
(before meal)
3 digestive enzyme tablets (after meal) 3 multi-glandular tablets
(nucleo glan male or female)
Lunch
1 pound hamburger or other meat
Mixed greeen salad or raw vegetables
Supplements
1 iron tablet
4 calcium tablets
Repeat of breakfast vitamins with omission of vitamin E, tri-germ, wheat germ, halibut oil
Dinner
1 to 2 pound steak or roast meat
Raw or steamed vegetables or salad and cottage cheese
Supplements
Same as lunch
Special Supplements
10 amino acids and desiccated liver tablets (every 3 hours) 5 yeast tablets with the protein drink
4 raw orchic tissue tablets (before and after workouts)
6 each of the following before retiring: arginine, ortithine, tryptophan, calcium tablets
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