Intermittent Fasting Diet Plan Example: Protein Diet Plan The best high protein diets

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Protein Diet Plan The best high protein diets

Everything you need to know about high-protein diets and how to choose the best one for you

Protein is incredible. It boosts immunity, repairs muscle, helps you recover from workouts and, because it’s mildly thermogenic, helps you stay lean. Unsurprisingly, there’s a wide and varied range of high-protein diets, all promising results - but finding one that suits your requirements is important to ensure it works for you. With that in mind, here’s ourtake on the three main candidates for your kitchen.

The Paleo Diet

The Theory By sticking to a diet that mimics our caveman ancestors by avoiding refined carbs, grains and other modern inventions, you’ll be eating the things that you’ve evolved to digest efficiently, steering clear of inflammatory problems and losing weight in the process.

The rules Eat lots of animal protein including red meat, poultry, eggs, pork, wild caught fish and shellfish. Fatty cuts are fine, as is saturated fat from sources such as coconut oil. But be sure to cut out all vegetable and partially hydrogenated oils (olive oil is fine).

Eat lots of vegetables – fresh or frozen – in a variety of colours. Eat a moderate amount of fruit, aiming for the kind that’s high in antioxidants and low in sugar; think apricots or berries.

Cut out cereal grains including wheat, barley, oats, corn and rice. And sugar. As a general rule, if it comes in a box, don’t eat it.

Also avoid legumes (lentils, black beans, pinto beans) and dairy. You can introduce these after 30 days, but Paleo advocates say they’re a source of gut inflammation similar to grains.

The verdict Paleo’s great because it really simplifies eating decisions – you don’t have to count or weigh anything, and there’s little room for argument over what ‘counts’ as Paleo. The downside, however, is that it’s restrictive – the lack of carbs in particular is likely to hurtperformance

in people who train very frequently. With that said, it’s well worth giving it a go.

The Zone

The theory Eating the right ratio of carbs, protein and fat keeps your insulin and glucagon levels balanced, leaving you in ‘the zone’ where your body

will burn fat for fuel. It’ll also allow you to eat whatever you like, as long as you stick to the right ratios.

The rules Meals for this diet are made up of ‘blocks’. A block of protein is 7g, a block of carbs is 9g and a block of fat is 1.5g. For each meal, you eat an equal number of ‘blocks’ of each nutrient – so you might have four blocks of each for breakfast, four for lunch and two for a snack.

Small, inactive people eat fewer blocks than their large, athletic counterparts, but the ratios stay the same – they can be tweaked if you’re low on energy or trying to bulk up.

You’re encouraged to weigh or alternatively measure food for a week to get a sense of how many grams are in common meals – after that, it’s OK to wing it.

The verdict Many CrossFit athletes swear by The Zone for performance, but it does require more organisation than other diets – at times the arduous process of weighing and measuring all your food can be difficult to sustain. The emphasis on protein and ‘good’ fats is great, though.

The Slow-Carb Diet

The theory This diet was invented by Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Body, who claims that you can lose up to 10kg in 30 days including weekly ‘cheat’ days on which you spike your food intake to make sure your metabolism doesn’t slow down.

The rules In general, avoid bread, rice, potatoes and pasta – both the white and brown versions – except within 30 minutes of an intense resistance-training workout.

Eat protein (eggs, chicken, grass-fed beef, pork), legumes and vegetables during every meal. Eat as much as you like at every meal – four meals a day are recommended.

High-calorie drinks are off limits; black coffee, black tea, diet drinks and water are fine, but milk, fizzy drinks and fruit juice are banned. Wine is OK in moderate quantities.

You have one ‘cheat day’ a week. On this day, you are free to eat whatever you like.

The verdict This is basically a slightly less restrictive version of Paleo. However, despite its psychological benefits there have been concerns over whether cheat days can really help fat loss by upregulating metabolism, as Ferriss claims.

If you can stick to these two diets, both of which will require you to eat more protein than you probably are now, you can expect to pack on lots of muscle and burn blubber.

Primal

As the name suggests, the Primal movement takes its culinary cues from the diet enjoyed by our caveman ancestors, focusing on meat and vegetables and omitting grains, legumes and processed foods. But unlike strict Paleo-style eaters, Primal dieters are encouraged to consume small quantities of dairy – provided it’s high-fat, organic and preferably from grass-fed animals. This makes the diet more flexible and practical and allows a greater variety of meal and snack choices, which makes it inherently easier to stick to. By removing processed foods, it also dramatically reduces your intake of sugar, and completely cuts out man-made trans fats, which are the two things most likely to spike your blood sugar levels and cause the body to store fat.

Another key aspect of Primal is its stance on carbohydrates. Unlike Paleo – which doesn’t provide any guidelines for macronutrient intake – Primal strictly rations carbs, ensuring you consume just enough to train and recover properly, which helps to maintain steady blood sugar levels and prevent any increases in body fat. Your food intake comes mostly from protein sources such as meat, fish and eggs – which preserves muscle mass while you’re losing weight – served with low-starch green veg such as broccoli and kale.

Primal also attempts to address lifestyle issues that can lead to unwanted weight gain, including lack of sleep and raised stress, which increases fat storage by raising levels of the hormone cortisol. This has a psychological effect too, because you’re far less likely to make poor food choices if you’re feeling energised and happy.

Like all diets Primal requires a fair amount of discipline, even with the dairy allowance. But if you’re confident in your ability to avoid temptation, embracing your inner caveman can produce serious muscle-building and fat-loss results.

If It Fits Your Macros

The attraction of IIFYM is that provided you hit daily targets for macronutrient intake – covering protein, carbs and fat – you can literally eat whatever you want. Keeping track of numbers can be laborious and boring, and it can be all too tempting to binge on junk food, but IIFYM does provide an excellent framework for bulking up and torching fat.

By Ben Ince

Source: http://www.mensfitness.co.uk/nutrition/diet-plans/3276/high-protein-diets-which-best-you/page/0/1

for details click below

Intermittent Fasting Diet Plan Example

Pages