Nutrition

12. Eat Whole Fresh Food from a Sustainable Organic Source

Healthy soil makes healthy plants, healthy plants make healthy animals & healthy animals & plants make healthy human beings. Making sure you know the source of your food is an important step towards health. Seek out small local farmers for your food & if you cant get local make sure it’s fresh.

The term organic has been bought and paid for and no longer guarantees a pure and healthy food- large scale agriculture can now produce food to be sold as “organic”. Just because they are using organic pesticides & fertilizer does not mean the food is healthier or sustainable. Nature loves diversity so farming 100’s of acres of 1 crop is not creating a healthy ecosystem that supports healthy life. Seek out produce grown using polyculture systems meaning more than 1 crop. Even Pasture raised beef, lamb, pork, eggs needs diversity within the pasture.

Farmers that rotate crops, compost and rotational graze for meat production are looking after the soil by allowing it to rest & produce. Forcing the soil to produce more with chemicals only depletes it further & when farmers have to use biocides to control unwanted weeds & pests it’s a sign that something is out of balance.

The vitamin, mineral and enzyme content is high in truly organic food and these are extremely important for creating a healthy body. Remember fats, proteins, carbs & calories alone are not a measure of nutrition so go out of your way to get high quality produce.

 

13. Prepare food for increased or maintained nutrition

When consuming calories it’s best to maximize the nutritional content of the food. Overcooking all foods will denature the nutrition. Some foods consumed raw will block the absorption of nutrients.

Beef, Lamb, Seafood & Fish

Slow cooked less than 100 degrees C

Raw cured in lemon only when freshly minced or cut (beef tastes best E.g steak tar tar or Carpaccio)

Seared with a white hot pan left raw on the inside

Dried/ Cured E.g Biltong .etc you will need to check what has been used to cure if its a number its not food to be sure google it.

 

Poultry Flesh & Pork

Slow Cooked between 90-110 Degrees you need to be careful with pork and chicken as it is much more susceptible to spoilage because of the processing method. When slow cooking at these temperatures insure that it is cooked through.

Seared & Cooked through. Best technique i have found is to sear the outside in a white hot pan then turn the temperature right down then pop the lid on until it is cooked through. I do this for pork chops yum.

 

14. Carbs within 1g per kg of desired body weight 6/7 days

Keeping the carbs to a level of 1g per kg of desired body weight per day & consuming animal foods e.g eggs, dairy, beef in their full fatty form is the best way to control insulin responses and learn how to use fat as fuel. When your body knows how to use the beta oxidation pathway for fat metabolism you can start to use your own unwanted body fat. When ever carbohydrate consumption is elevated insulin goes up shuttling carbohydrates into the fat cells + your body will learn to use glycolysis (carbohydrate metabolism) as it’s primary pathway for energy. Insulin also stimulates the appetite, when it is present in the blood you can not use body fat for fuel. This is why you can have a full belly of rice and still be hungry. Eating high amounts of carbs will give you an initial rush of energy then your body will convert and store the excess carbohydrate as body fat leaving you fat, hungry & tied. Cut the carbs, they’re not serving you.

 

15. Eat Needed Calories for your goals

Each of us have varying goals when it comes to performance & body composition. Most of us want to have consistent stable energy with the ability to concentrate throughout the whole day. The healthy variances in physical out put would be between high level of physical output to the minimum needed to stay or get healthy.

Most men want more muscle, some women want more or less. Most men would like to be ~9-12% body fat & most women around ~16-22% when either sex goes much lower in body fat% health can be compromised.

 

The approximate amount of calories needed each day is 30 Calories per KG of your healthy bodyweight with between 10-20% body fat. At OE we use 30 Cal x desired bodyweight then minus what you would like to loose per week which a healthy range would be between 250-500g of fat.

 

E.g if you we a 60kg female looking to get to a weight of 55kg then you would have 5kg or 5000g of fat to burn.

so you would have a need of 55kg x 30 Cal= 1650 Cal

Then to loose the 5000g 45000 cal at a rate of 250g – 500g per week you would need to burn

 

250g of fat= 2250 calories per week = 321 less calories per day

500g of fat= 4500 calories per week = 642 less calories per day

which would mean realistically it would take 10-20 weeks to loose 5kg of fat.

 

The OE workouts range between 400-600 calories. On average we recommend people do 2-6 workouts per week and on rest days to do a light walk in nature, go for a swim in the ocean or do your own stretching program.

 

Accumulated body fat is hardwired into our survival system. Loosing too much too quickly causes the body to want to put it back on just as fast. We recommend 250-500g of body fat loss per week. Most people will lose a bit of fluid & muscle with this (especially with the switch to fat as fuel) which may appear on the scales as 1-2kg per week. Usually this only lasts for the first 1-4 weeks after which slow consistent changes are best.

 

so this 55kg female with a needed 1650 Cal per day will need to reduce that to a range of:

1650 Cal minus 321 Cal to 1650 Cal minus 642 Cal. E.g 1329-1008 Cal

So far i have not seen a female client maintain less than 1100 Calories per day. Remember if you drop calories too low you will loose muscle not fat and make it even harder to loose body fat. Rushing will turn you into a fat storing machine as your genetic goal is to live longer not leaner. Remember the survivors are good fat storers don’t freak your body out , slow consistent change is best.

 

Mild hunger is a sign that you are creating an opportunity to use your own body fat as a snack but extended drowsiness during the day is a sign that you have gone into survival mode, in which case you may have consumed too few calories or not dispersed calories & carbs throughout the whole day effectively. If you are not feeling good energy it’s not working properly. The initial transition to using fat as fuel can leave you feeling a little flat at first. This is only temporary and usually takes only 2-3 weeks to transition.

 

16.Eat every 3-5 hrs

Eating every 3-5 hrs gives your digestive system a rest between meals. If you have too big a gap between meals you will turn into a fat storing machine & your body will bring blood sugar up by breaking down lean mass. This does not happen once your system has converted to using fat as its main source of fuel because your body dips into bodyfat as fuel more readily although too large a gap followed by increased carb consumption can revert the system. When glycolisis- carbohydrate metabolism is the most facilitated system you are dependant on blood sugar for fuel when it drops you just catabolise your own protein structures to convert to sugar gluconeogenis.

When first reducing meal sizes to suite the desired calorie intake it’s important to spread it fairly evenly with your main meals. The example above in point 15 it would be best to keep main meals ~ 400 calories with snacks at ~ 100 – 150 calories. For Example:

Breakfast: coconut cinnamon smoothie 2 eggs ~370 calories

Snack: 25g cheese 100 calories

Lunch: 150g Slow Roast beef with salad 350 calories

Snack: 20g soaked & dehydrated almonds 125 calories

Dinner: 150g Slow Roast beef with steamed vege 350 calories

Snack: 150ml Yogurt with cinnamon 120 calories

Total: ~1415 calories

 

Much of the nutritional work that is published & mainstream is based on much higher carbohydrate consumption than Origin Of Energy advocates. It’s also important to note that not all calories are created equal. Healthy Pastured fat from a healthy animal behaves very differently than the fat in a grain fed & finished animal. On top of that, fat is extremely different to carbohydrates in that it has so many more nutritional benefits & costs us so much less in enzymes, minerals & vitamins when metabolising. Every meal should consist of high quality fat of some sort for energy for this to work.

Low carb, Low Fat high protein diets will facilitate the conversion of protein to carbohydrate making it hard to use bodyfat for fuel. For protein we recommend ~ 2g per KG of desired bodyweight for those that are following the movement side of the OE program. Less active individuals could definitely stay around 1g protein per kg of desired bodyweight.

Movement

Rhythm