Individualized nutrition

These notes combine advice from 10 reviewed passages across 8 workouts.

Overview

Coach’s advice

Individualized nutrition means tailoring diet choices to the person. Diet planning is generally done per person, while some general principles can be used by anyone. Not everyone can follow every diet, and a diet that works for one person may not produce the same effect on you. The practical approach is to monitor how your own body responds and use that response to guide your choices.

Meal patterns

Coach’s advice

Meal frequency depends on the situation, and what works in one context can work worse in another. If you are in a calorie deficit, or if you are eating healthily and splitting the same amount, three meals can work better than two. Dividing the total amount across more meals is also more comfortable for the stomach than loading it all at once.

Coach’s advice

Breakfast is genuinely important for some people, but its importance varies from person to person.

Adjusting intake

Coach’s advice

When you adjust an intake, change it gradually and use symptom response to guide the increase. Start with the lower amount and observe. Only increase once the problem clearly lessens, and raise it slowly. Avoid a sudden jump to a much higher amount.

Regional and genetic differences

Coach’s advice

Food tolerance and dietary practices can vary with regional and genetic background. Food that is routine for children in one region can make someone from another region ill, so practices cannot always be transferred directly between regions.

Coach’s advice

Differences in milk tolerance between Americans and people in the Middle East may come from milk reaching those populations at different times in history.

Coach’s experience

In his own eating, the coach used to record detailed food information but stopped. He now eats what he wants in the amounts he wants, avoids only foods he considers foolish or forbidden, and does not calculate quantities, because his body can handle it.

Breakfast is personally important to the coach. Even if he does nothing else, he always drinks tea in the morning; otherwise his head feels strange. He may also eat oats with honey.

The coach still considers veganism unsuitable for himself and regards meat as the most fundamental food for him.

The coach never eats after training because eating afterward bothers his body. Sugar also affects him.

Some foods and diets backfire for the coach. Certain things simply do not work for him, so he concludes they are not for him.

The coach follows the warrior diet, and his body responds better to it. He remembers eating four times a day in the past and gaining good weight that way.