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If you are like everyone
else there’s a good chance you start the new year with some kind of
self-improvement resolution and there’s a good chance one of them is losing
weight or simply eating healthier.
The link below is a PDF guide
on nutrition for SEAL and other special forces operators. Its free, 225 pages
long and what’s even more important, its pretty good! Unlike a lot of the junk
on nutrition floating around, this is outstanding information put together by
pros in the field.
Check it out to see how to
improve your own diet. There’s several good tips. Not only is it good so as to
have a better idea of what to eat, but also what you want to store so as to
have complete balanced meals.
Hope you all had a great New
Year!
FerFAL
9 comments:
Great resource. Thanks Fer.
I enjoy things like this but it is important to glean what makes sense and be aware of what doesn't make sense. If you read the manual it reads like a diet recomendation to lose weight. The state of PC today is such that all advice on diet seems to be aimed at someone who is 100 lbs or more overweight. Believe it or not most of us are not overweight and aren't afraid of eating cheese or sour cream. I thought the advice was especially inappropriate for SOF people who because of their everyday lifestyle need to consume a lot of calories. Believe it or not fast food and sugar won't kill you.
It looks pretty good to me.It mentions carbs as a source of energy, which is also common for pro athlete diets and most glam diets would argue against. I doubt anyone was trying to be PC when putting together a nutritional guide for spec ops. Oh, and fast food will kill you, little by little but it will. The more you eat of it, the faster you'll ruin your body. We try to avoid fast food junk as much as we can, and none of us feels that well after eating it. Guess we eat pretty healthy in comparison.
The decision to eat fast food is based purely on a belief system as illustrated in your statement that fast food will kill you. You need protein, carbs and fat; vitamins minerals and nutrients. After you get your MDR of these things your body turns the rest of your food into glycogen which powers your muscles, yur brain and keeps yur body temperature normal. Glycogen in excess of needs is stored as fat. t doesn't matter if the glycogen came from a vegan diet or McDonalds. It is all just food. It passes through the walls of the small intestine in the smallest molecule it cab be brokend down to by yur digestive system. At this point yur body doesn't know and doesn't care if your carbs, protein or fats came from fast food or organic vegetables. It is simply molecules of nutrients. The problem I found in the manual is illustrated by this advice: "when the recipe calls for white rice try Brown rice, bulgur, kasha, quinoa, or
whole wheat couscous". Or another example: "instead of pasta use wqhole wheat pasta." This is so typical of the food nannies. They read somewhere that product "A" is 1% richer in some vitamin or mineral then product "B" so they want to outlaw product "B". Why??? If you eat normal you are getting all your MDR's and choosing to eat something that is marginally higher in a vitamin or bran etc. makes zero difference to your body. This bears repeating: If you are getting your MDR in essential nutrients from your diet then hyperventilating over every food item you eat is worse then useless it is a sign of mental illness.
Eating well is NOT "only" eating whole grain or organic vegetables. This is a pure myth and is more like a religion then anything even close to a science. I couldn't make this any simpler: You need to eat your MDR and after that everything you eat is converted to glycogen, i.e. fuel for your body. Eating quadruple your MDR in something does NOT make you four times healthier. Conversely eliminating essential nutrients from your diet such as fats and oils doesn't make you thin or healthy it may well make you sick.
This "food nanny" political correctness has taken over the health profession and dieticians are taught this crap in college. Almoat all of the advice they give is designed for people who are obese, are diabetic or have some other diet related illness. None of their advice is intended for "normal" people.
I'm not a food nazi but its hard to make a case for some of the worst food out there. KFC for example, I just cant eat it at all, it just makes me sick. McDonalds type burgers and fries I'll eat every once in a while, but come on, you cant think that stuff is healthy when you know its full of junk, made of the cheapest pink paste meat. I agree its about eating reasonable quantities too, but what you feed your body with matters IMO.
I am quite familiar with KFC food and I am stumped as to what is wrong with it. Do you eat chicken? Perhaps it's because it is fried that concerns you. I don't happen to be one of those who is afraid of fried food. As for McDonalds, again I am stumped. What is it that worries you? Hamburger? the bread bun? the cheese? The ketchup? It's just food. I am also well aware of what is in "pink slime" a name that was picked to create fear uncertainty and doubt. What is it??? Beef. Nothing more, nothing less. The beef that doesn't get cut off the bone when the larger cuts are removed. Throw a nice 7 bone chuck in the crockpot (which is delicious I might add) and some of that will be "pink slime". Food is my hobby so I don't have a degree and I'm not a scientist but this isn't rocket science. You will admit that there are many radical agenda's in the food discussion and many, many misconceptions. I try to weed through to the truth, not always easy. The bottom line is there are no "bad" foods. But what muddy's the water is there are many human conditions that require a careful diet and it is an easy thing to kump to the conclusion that if a certain food is bad for someone with a genetic propensity to diabetes or heart disease then that food should be avoided and thus you will avoid diabetes or heart disease. But just as eating peanut butter won't give you a peanut allergy eating regular foods (or fast foods or prepared foods) won't give you diabetes or heart disease. The only common "food" component I avoid and that worries me is artificial sweeteners.
I agree that as in everythign else there is an agenda, but I also believe that some food is clearly better than other. An actual roasted chicken will always be better than an God knows what ckiken nugget paste that had to be blached with chemicals becuase if you saw its actual color you would throw up.
I avoid artificial sweetener as well but I like the guideline of "if you cant spell it, dont eat it". Even if you know what it is, sometimes you dont want to eat it either, like ammonium-hydroxide-treated meat. Again, I'm no food nazi but I try to eat healthy and know food quality is not all the same.
Fair enough. Thanks for letting me make my points. I enjoy your blog and over the years you have given out great advice and ideas. Thanks and keep up the good work.
You're Welcome! Of course the point of the comments is respectfully sharing ideas and such ;-)
Glad you enjoy the blog and thanks for sharing your opinion.
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