General Nutrition Principles
1) Greatly reduce sugar and starch from the diet.
2) This will naturally mean gravitating to whole foods like fish, beef, pork, and vegetables, and avoiding processed foods.
3) Don't avoid the natural fat that comes with your proteins, including saturated fat.
4) Adding extra fats like oils, sour cream, heavy cream, and butter may be, or become problematic.
5) Eat more protein.
6) Avoid artificial sweeteners. Let your palette adjust.
Recommended media:
- Why we get fat, Gary Taubes
- Fat Fiction, directed by Jennifer Isenhart
- Protein — The most important nutrient for health - Diet Doctor Podcast
General Fitness Principles
1) Fatness isn't the only, or even the best measure of health. One can make great inroads towards health by embracing movement in whatever the current physical situation is.
2) There are mechanical challenges to movement at severe levels of obesity. Be mindful of joints, knees, ankles...etc. If necessary choose activities that work around this like swimming or cycling over load bearing activities.
3) The primary motivator of weight-loss is nutrition. It is possible, and maybe even easier to lose a bunch of weight without working out at all rather than trying to modify nutrition and increase movement simultaneously. Doing so might mean sacrificing the health (especially mental health) benefits of exercise however.
4) Cardiovascular fitness is the biggest predictor of health-span. Increasing your aerobic capacity equals health.
5) Long slow distance and MAF training, are the preferred tools for building aerobic fitness. Most people work out harder, and less frequently, over smaller distances than necessary. Most people work out at a level that eventually burns them out, compromises their health, or injures them.
6) Load-bearing aerobic training like walking/jogging, or rowing also represent a good, safe approach for maintaining muscle mass. It is easier to hurt yourself lifting weights than it is doing an activity like rowing, for the same potential gains in strength. That is not to say, especially if you have good, wise coaching, that weight lifting is to be avoided.
Recommended Media:
- Dr. Phil Maffetone, The MAF method for building aerobic capacity gently through long, slow, distance. (Applicable to walkers and rowers as well as runners.)
- Polar heart rate monitors. I have used the Verity Sense (very accurate and convenient, but you have to have it attached to a smartphone), and just ordered a GritX Pro (probably sacrifices some accuracy due to it relying on a wrist-sensor, but at improved convenience)
