How to follow the warrior diet? (I'll read the book eventually)

[TopHatFox]

I read the wiki on The Warrior diet. If I understood it more or less correctly, all I have to do is ~fast until dinner, then eat an unprocessed food diet until I'm not hungry anymore, then brush & floss ( ), and go to sleep. Repeat.

Is that about right? I'd like to start this diet today and see where it takes me. Some obstacles include trying to fit the Warrior Diet eating pattern with the US social norm of three-meals a day, and the adjusting period between "eating ~whenever" to once a day.

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Have any of your tried the warrior diet; what's your experience been like?

I wonder if I'm only eating once a day (no snacks in undereating phase), if I only have to brush/flush once a day?

[bradley]

For the Warrior Diet it doesn't matter if the food is unprocessed or not for the most part. The only two things that are "banned" are refined sugar and refined, processed pastries. Cooked food, processed food like pasta, etc. are fine but only during the overeating phase.

Anyway, you are fasting (undereating) during the day, and overeating until full for dinner. While underrating, you're drinking lots of water and eating raw fruits/vegetables/nuts with low glycemic indices if hunger pangs are basically attacking you. The key in the underrating phase Feeling hungry isn't bad, but you shouldn't be debilitated. When you first start you'll probably feel the effects most. This goes away after 1-2 weeks.

The overreating phase is a free-for-all of sorts, but Hofmekler recommends starting with raw gentle foods like a salad or vegetables, and working your way up to proteins, then carbs, etc. You'll know to stop eating instinctively, especially when you start to feel thirsty. So don't drink until the end of your meal or you'll throw this off.

I recommend reading the book because it goes over the finer details and explains it better.

I've been doing it since December, and it's been great. I don't get energy crashes during the day like I used to and went from eating a huge breakfast and still feeling hungry, to eating an apple in the morning and having that hold me over till the afternoon. Your body does adapt. It's also made dinners so much more enjoyable (I usually have salad, miso soup, then a main dish). I wasn't overweight so I can't comment on that, but I definitely have more active energy.

And, no, you still have to brush 2x a day and floss at least 1x day Especially if you eat fruits or other acidic foods in the undereating phase.

[steveo73]

I read the book and I don't mind the idea but I prefer to eat more often. I don't think timing your food helps you at all. Its more about what and how much you eat.

[DSKla]

I've been trying it as a way to cut my meat costs, because I was previously eating an ungodly amount of meat every day to support my lifting (avg of 3 lbs flesh, bone weight excluded). I find it successful from a budget standpoint, and it feels good, but I am not lifting due to an injury so I can't say how it affects recovery from high intensity strength and conditioning.

I eat paleo style, and do the warrior diet 4-5 days a week. I have also been randomly varying my eating every now and then as an experiment in dietary adaptability, which has also felt pretty successful. For example, every now and then I have a no-meat day, which for me would have previously sounded about as fun as a no oxygen day, but after a few times, I'm handling it with no adverse effects. Other variables I randomize are carbohydrates (from no carb to high carb) and eating foods that are normally off the reservation for me, such as grain products.

If you've never done any kind of ketogenic diet before, you may find it initially rough to a) be able to even get into ketosis, and b) be efficient enough to have energy in a ketogenic state. Once your body adjusts, you'll probably find that you have more energy and feel better when you DO dip into ketosis in the morning/early afternoon, as opposed to when you have breakfast or snacks. Nothing kills my energy level like early carbohydrates.

[KMS]

I haven't followed the Warrior diet, but I have tried intermittent fasting, which is somewhat along the same lines (eating for a shorter period of time & fasting for the rest). After the initial couple days, it was actually quite easy to follow & I found the greatest lesson I learned was how we train ourselves to eat at certain times during the day, without necessarily being hungry. It helped me recognize hunger pangs as opposed to boredom, schedule, or even thirst. Maybe you should try that first & ease into just dinner. Plus, I was cutting out a meal, which saved $ right off the bat.

Good luck!

[jacob]

Experiences:

I don't try to perturb/push my energy-systems by doing high-carb vs high-protein days, etc. Too much management. I think this is definitely worth pursuing though. I only adopted the timing aspect.

It took me two weeks to transition. It was easy for me but perhaps that was because I was already in a state where it didn't affect me much if I skipped breakfast. I haven't eaten lunch in decades. Those I know who never skip a meal have mostly failed transitioning.

I don't snack at all. It's all (black) coffee and water until about 1730. I rarely feel hungry. Coffee stabilizes blood sugar levels but even in periods without coffee, it's not a problem.

It's impossible for me to reach a BMI much higher than 22-23 --- which apparently is the ideal height-weight proportion for a human. I simply can't eat that much food in one meal. It's a very natural limit on calorie intake. If you worry about being heavy, this will fix it. If you exercise, your BF% will go down but your weight will stay about the same.

You can't do high-level training either. However, unless, you're burning 500-1000kcal/hour for more than 10+ hours per week, it's doable. Otherwise, you'll have to add in carbs in a second meal lest you wither away.

You will have access to 18 hours of 300-400kcal/hour activities w/o needing any food whatsoever though. This is about as fast as your body can re/generate glycogen.

You will get better at fat burning during exercise than regular eaters. You're already doing it as your dominant source of energy when you start the workout. They'd have to "get into the mode".

Not thinking about food the whole time ... where to get it ... how to prepare it ... saves a ton of time. Just try using a stop watch to see how much time is actually spent preparing food, shopping for breakfast specific items, eating it, cleaning up, ... you'll cut all of that down to one meal. If you enjoy eating, obviously this is a loss. If you think eating is a waste of time, it's a big gain.

I can plan an entire day's activities without any concern for "how/where I'm gonna eat".

Conversely, it'll become annoyingly obvious how much of other people's schedules are limited by the need to eat all the time. "What, we gotta go eat again?! Didn't you eat like 4 hours ago already?!" In the beginning I found it hard to break the fast when "forced" to eat for social purposes. Now I'm better at it.

[henrik]

You can't do high-level training either. However, unless, you're burning 500-1000kcal/hour for more than 10+ hours per week, it's doable. Otherwise, you'll have to add in carbs in a second meal lest you wither away.

How would you do that? Simply have an extra carb rich meal 2 hours before the training, whenever that happens?

[jacob]

@henrik - Whenever it's convenient. The primary purpose is to increase the total calorie intake. 10000kcal = 3 pounds of bodyweight/catabolism if the fuel is not there.

For 2+ hour training at 750kcal/hour, I just eat about 150kcal/hour while doing it to avoid hitting the wall. This is unrelated to the warrior diet.

[JohnnyH]

I think there is a thread somewhere with tips on converting...

I've found homeostasis like Jacob describes. However, if I start over-indulging (say 3 bowls) on simple carbs (of white flour spaghetti) I can still gain weight.

Paleo warrior diet gets me through 10 miles biking, 5 miles walking, happily... If you're doing a day (>6hrs) of hard manual labor, I would stick to the 3 squares a day for best results. 3 meals a day evolved to keep people working in the fields all day, so it does make sense. For sedentary lifestyles, even eating healthy food 3 x daily will likely end in obesity.

[theanimal]

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I thought the warrior diet accounted for extended periods of effort? Since it was based on the Roman warriors who were on the move or in battle all day? Nonetheless, I think it's possible.

Killian Jornet (ultra-runner setting speed records up 7 summits) seems to practice some sort of IF. On his record setting speed ascent/descent of Denali (aka Mt. McKinley), which he completed in 11 hrs (!!), he only consumed 1 liter of water and 300 cl of gel. http://adventureblog.nationalgeographic ... on-denali/

[DSKla]

I think warrior diet very well could support high intensity activities on one big meal, because the premise of it is that ancient armies did very physically demanding tasks--whether marching 30 miles a day with a very heavy kit, or fighting a battle--without receiving food until they made camp at the end of the day. These guys were not skin and bones. Their strength and physiques were probably similar to modern special forces, which tend to be very lean and muscular, within the 150-180 lb range with a few outliers.

The thing we often forget when talking about energy expenditures and intakes is that the human body is not at all 100% efficient in using every calorie it consumes, and our calculations of expenditure are always estimates, and can differ a lot depending on the individual's efficiency. Gut flora plays a major role in how much we can use of what we eat, and it's pretty well documented that modern Americans have poor gut flora, lacking in diversity, compared to hunter gatherers and likely most ancient people.

" The stomach and proximal small intestine are responsible for most nutrient digestion and absorption in humans. In an otherwise healthy individual without prior surgical resection of the small bowel, about 85% of carbohydrates, 66%–95% of proteins, and all fats are absorbed before entering the large intestine.24,25 The indigestible carbohydrates and proteins that the colon receives represent from 10%–30% of the total ingested energy26,27 and, without the activity of the colonic microbiota, would generally be eliminated via the stool without further absorption because the human large intestine has limited digestive capability."

So two people eating the same type and amount of food could receive very different amounts of energy from it depending on large intestinal flora, and eating certain resistant starches and indigestible fibers could improve energy intake compared to a standard American diet. This is without even taking into account how efficient you are at a task (energy expenditure).

It's reasonable to think that the warriors this diet is modeled after took in more soil-based probiotics and ate more fermentable fiber than most of us do. In addition, there a number of studies that show a big difference in gut flora between obese and healthy people. I even recently read an article where a thin woman who received a stool transplant from an obese woman suddenly gained a lot of weight without a dietary change.

My point is that while the warrior diet may support high intensity activities on a single meal for some meal, that may not be the case for others, and the reasons are more complicated than calories in versus calories out.

If you want to maximize your energy on the warrior diet, it might help to do two things: 1) look into supplementing with a good soil-based probiotic and resistant starch/fermentable fiber (be careful to ensure you don't have SIBO before taking resistant starch) and 2) design your strength and conditioning program intelligently to increase your efficiency (to reduce energy expenditure) at the tasks you will be performing.

I do think the WD could help an obese person with poor gut bacteria to "starve out" some of the proliferation of non-beneficial small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, though. It'll just be a lot more effective early on for skinny folks with good eating habits.

[JohnnyH]

Excellent points guys. I must admit I never a) tried to eat much more the night before to account for next day's activities and b) usually when I was doing this manual labor meals were provided (not especially healthy) and the dinners wouldn't be enough to support warrior diet. I suppose, like anything, you could likely train for it and make it work... Now my whole days of manual labor are infrequent enough I usually just eat a meal after I notice myself really slowing down.

This is probably covered in the other threads but has anyone successfully put on 20 lbs or 9 kgs muscle following warrior diet? Seems like it would be a really uncomfortable amount to eat... OTOH, I really despise spending the time and effort on planning and preparing the 10 daily meals some trainers recommend.

[jacob]

Work and peak capacity doesn't require a complicated explanation.

The human body can support about 300-400 kcal/hour indefinitely (without crashing) as long as you can stay awake and uninjured. This is akin to walking, hiking, or marching. So humans can walk great distances without the need to eat as long as they don't jog or run or go faster than this.

On top of that, the body has about 2000 kcal in glycogen reserves that sit in the muscles and the liver. This regenerates slowly (hours). This is why runners (not joggers) or cyclists (who each spend about 750kcal/hour) will hit the wall and bonk after about 2.5 hours of exercise. People who run slower will hit it later, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitting_the_wall

So yeah, walking 20 miles and then fighting for two hours is no problem. Alternatively, a 100M bike ride (at 70%) followed by 2 hours of hockey. It is all within the human set of abilities.

I'm 6'2", 172-178 lbs, 9% BF, and work out regularly (about 6+ hours/week + 8+ hours/week of walking), so I meet the expectation value of this diet/activity regime. However, once upon a time, I attempted to add another 25lbs of muscle to that frame and found it impossible. I simply couldn't eat enough to do so.

I know that the body has several energy systems that all run in concert, so the above is a simplification.

The problem with the WD is if I, say, walk at high speed for 60 minutes (400kcal/hour, so I probably cut slightly into the glycogen) and follow this with a 2 hour run (that uses all my glycogen) ... then if I decide to go on fast 90 minute bike ride two hours later, I will bonk after an hour, because my glycogen reserve hasn't recovered.

Such a level of work out activity is better fed directly by eating carby stuff and taking the energy from the small intestine. I believe this is the source of the 6 small meals a day philosophy. It was developed by athletes because for them it's the most effective diet. It solves the problem of eating and burning 5000+kcal/day. Of course unless it's practised diligently by portion control, it is prone to making sedentary people fat.

The WD needs no portion control at all

FWIV, I eat and burn about 3200kcal/day on average. This is about the limit of what I can eat in one meal. If I were to add another 1-2 hour/day of exercise, I would need an extra 1500kcal/day. I wouldn't necessarily have to feed this activity via "intenstinal carbs" but without doing it like that, I'd have to put 4-6 hours between the workouts.

[JamesR]

Jacob,

What's this wall you speak of. There's no wall when you're in a ketogenic state with no glycogen reserves, which is probably the state the hunters and gatherers often were in. So they could run indefinitely as well, and which is good since we're evolved for long distance running and it's a helluva lot more efficient than hiking

[BeyondtheWrap]

If I understood it more or less correctly, all I have to do is ~fast until dinner, then eat an unprocessed food diet until I'm not hungry anymore, then brush & floss ( ), and go to sleep.

I wonder if I'm only eating once a day (no snacks in undereating phase), if I only have to brush/flush once a day?

You still have to brush twice a day. You're not gonna get out of that.

[vexed87]

@JamesR, if you have never experienced a 'bonk' you are a lucky man. The first time I rode 60+ miles at an intense pace (14 mph average with 6,000ft climbing) I bonked on the return leg, 20 minutes from home, it wasn't pleasant, thankfully I had some energy gels in my pockets and it was mostly downhill stretch on the way home. Now I always stop for coffee and cake at the halfway point!

I have never heard of the warrior diet before, I would be interested in giving it a go as I am sick of force feeding myself in the morning before my bike ride and am tired of having to worry about whats for lunch when there are no left overs from the previous night's meal. I'm perfectly happy grazing on fruit and nuts so sounds like I am part way there!

When eating out with friends and family, how do you broach the topic about your diet, as I imagine it would begin to look rude if I was eating 2.5x what everyone else is? Also, eating out at restaurants could get significantly more expensive on this diet! While cutting down on eating out, I cant eliminate it entirely without totally alienating my SO and her own eating habits.

Also, I'll struggle to give up the Saturday morning pastry habit, but my SO was beginning to get bored of them anyway, so should be doable!

[stand@desk]

@jacob Can one substitute black tea or green tea for black coffee and still receive the blood sugar optimizing benefits?

Also, as an alternative to "bulletproof coffee," how about substituting an Avocado with the morning coffee instead of butter. I wonder if that would have a reasonable positive effect for vitality or would it still be considered superfluous.

[JohnnyH]

@Jacob: When you attempted to put on the 25 pounds were you sticking to the WD?... I have found weight gain nearly impossible when active on the WD, eating non-processed foods.
I tried eating all the time in attempt to put on 20 pounds muscle, but it quickly grew very tiresome and even more expensive ($150 a month to almost $500).

@vexed87: Eating out was never a huge issue. If it was a breakfast, I'd have a coffee. If it was afternoon, I'd have a beer. Evenings I'd have a drink, maybe an appetizer, salad or even meal but I usually eat again when I get home... Haha, I suppose I did develop a preference for 'all you can eat' style restaurants so I could actually eat my daily fill.

[DSKla]

Jacob,

What's this wall you speak of. There's no wall when you're in a ketogenic state with no glycogen reserves, which is probably the state the hunters and gatherers often were in. So they could run indefinitely as well, and which is good since we're evolved for long distance running and it's a helluva lot more efficient than hiking

As long as your output is low, within the aerobic threshold, you can benefit from ketosis, but I believe the wall he is referring to is when you start to tap heavily into the glycolitic energy system, which will absolutely result in hitting a wall. They key is staying under about 70% in terms of intensity. It's very possible to jog or "run" within that level for a while. Aerobic oxidation of fat will not replace glycogen fast enough if your efforts are strenuous and continuous.

I think when we refer to intense physical activity on the WD we should probably be specific. When I mentioned it, I had in mind the 20 mile march followed by battle that Jacob mentioned, not ultraendurance sports wher people run or cycle at a decent intensity for hours (at a level that is competitive). Some people may be thinking of that, though. You can lift weights and perform power movements in your workouts just fine on WD, and you can do low-intensity aerobic conditioning, such as walking a long distance, or even cycling/running at a lower percentage of maximum effort, but when your % of max effort AND time exceed a certain theshold, you will need to fuel up more often. Same goes if you're a bodybuilder or athlete set on gaining muscle mass.

[jacob]

@JamesR - Like vexed87 I wonder exactly how much power output a ketogenic diet can provide. I googled around and found someone who ran a marathon in 5 hours. However, that's not fast. I can speed-march 45 km in 6:30. That's a 13.8 minute mile or a slow jog. A 5hr marathon is an 11.2 minute mile so that's not much faster. It seems like the WD is already there but I don't know. I've never been in a ketogenic state. The power I'm looking for is sub 8 min miles.

@stand@desk - As far as I remember, caffeine is the killer-app here. So black tea will work but green tea won't. Ori Hofmekler suggests cream in the coffee as a source of energy. I've never needed that. The key point is that whatever you put in there can't have a high glycemic index. I don't know where avocado falls on that scale. Hofmekler has a more technical book out there...

Keep in mind that all my interest in all things fitness related peaked around 2005 (the very early days of kettlebells and crossfit---I remember a time when there was crossfit but no crossfit gyms!), so I'm quite rusty on the sciency stuff here.

@JohnnyH - Here are my autobiographical experiences, so unless you have the same body-type as me, it's probably worthless. I'm an ectomorph.---What people would call wiry or scrawny depending on their relative perspective. Most people who call me scrawny are surprised at how much I weigh, but then again, muscle is substantially denser than fat

I've tried hitting 200lbs/90kg twice and failed both times. The first time was back when I was 25 and still reading MuscleMag, etc. and other bodybuilding/fitness magazines doing 3x10 of pulling levers at a gym. I tried eating at 8a, 11a, 2p, 5p, 8p, and 11p. I was gaining weight, but yuck ... all that food. Just couldn't keep it up. Already full from then last meal and then having to eat again. Also, one of my friends back from the teenage days of competitive bodybuilding later became a semi-pro bodybuilder and I think she once told me that they get up at 4am for their first meal. Serious stuff! Clearly the capacity/stamina of your personal GI-system matters here and I don't have what it takes.

This was followed by a few years of being a couch potato. I was at the worst shape of my life. Resting pulse of 72. This was at the last couple of years of grad school. I'm not going to be sedentary ever again. It wasn't even that back. Comparably speaking though, that physiological state sucked.

Second time was on the WD coupled with HIIT. Mostly of the club bell variety with density training as described in the ERE book. In retrospect---for a possible second edition---I should emphasize the exploration of what works for "you" rather than just declare HIIT to be the final answer. It was, however, the final answer for me. It really worked. I went all the way up to 182. Pretty quickly too. And then it stalled. All that happened was the BF% slowly went down from (I'm guessing) around 15% to about 8-9%. This took two years.

Currently, I believe that it's possible to carry more muscle mass. However, I also realize that there's a caloric price to maintain this which has to be paid by substantially increasing the effort to eat and eat and eat. All the time. I think people who put on weight easily would have an easier time dealing with this.

For bodytypes like me, I've just resigned myself to being "light infantry" instead of "line infantry".