If you run a diet based only on calorie balance, you might expect to get about 50% of the potential effect of the diet on body composition and performance. On the other hand, if you based your diet on both calorie balance and proper macronutrient intake, you could get about 80% of the diet’s potential results. If you took all the right supplements and ate only healthy food options, but did not worry about macronutrients, timing, or calories, you could not expect more than about 10% of the potential positive outcomes from the diet. We want to make it clear that this analysis is for body composition change and performance outcomes, not health. While paying attention to food composition (eating healthy foods most of the time) does not have a huge effect on appearance or performance, it does have a significant effect on health, as detailed in our book Understanding Healthy Eating.
AVOIDING PITFALLS AND USING THE DIET PRINCIPLES TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
The differential effects of diet principles provide useful guidelines for programming diets with specific outcomes in mind. Prioritizing the less powerful aspects (such as meal timing and supplements) and taking the powerful principles (such as calorie balance and macronutrient intake) for granted are common mistakes. Someone might eat with exact meal timing and take creatine and whey protein supplements, but if calories and macronutrients vary too much day to day, there simply will not be substantial results. Thousands of people start new fat loss or muscle gain diets every week, and many of them choose diets that are not based on the higher priority diet principles and thus experience minimal results.
Perhaps the most commonly neglected dieting principle is calorie balance. Thousands of people restrict various food types to consume only specific foods–unknowingly prioritizing one of the less important diet principles, food composition. Supplements are the most overemphasized principle. People buy countless bottles of pills and powders and take them religiously, expecting big results. While investing so much time and energy into the minor priorities, many of these well-intentioned dieters do not have the willpower leftover to invest in the big priorities that really matter. In a fat loss phase this can mean eating too much (very healthy) food to create a calorie deficit. In a muscle gain phase this can mean eating exclusively healthy food that is high in fiber and not as appetizing, resulting in a failure to create a calorie surplus for weight gain. Both these failures often occur despite a diet with appropriate food composition, well-planned meal timing, and supplements.
Unfortunately, these mistakes often involve every bit as much effort as a successful diet. Every year, people find their dieting efforts largely wasted on unimpressive results, leading many to assume they are “hard losers,” “hard gainers,” or otherwise personally flawed. The true underlying problem is simply a mismanagement of dieting principles.
By getting to know the diet principle hierarchy, we can ensure that our hard efforts are being spent where they are most effective. As you read about each of the individual diet principles, please keep their hierarchical organization in mind so that when it comes time to program your diet, you can effectively manage the distribution of these factors to meet your goals.
KEY DEFINITIONS AND CONCEPTS
Some key concepts and definitions that will come up throughout the book are listed below. We will revisit many of these multiple times throughout the coming chapters, so be prepared to return for a refresher as needed throughout your reading:
Set Points
An adult’s set point is the bodyweight that they are naturally inclined to maintain. Some people have a high set point and would become obese if they just ate and exercised as they pleased. Others have trouble maintaining sufficient bodyweight for best health when left to their own devices. Set points are genetic predispositions, but your body’s preferred weight can be changed.
Settling Points
A settling point is the weight your body is inclined to maintain, taking into account your current and historical dietary and activity practices. Your settling point can be very different from your genetic set point. Enough added fat or added muscle maintained for periods of months to years can permanently push your settling point above your genetic set point. In contrast, there is no convincing evidence as of this book that settling points fall permanently below genetic set points when weight is lost. The good news is that it is often the case that more overweight people have actually pushed their settling point far above their genetic set point as opposed to their having a very high genetic set point.
Muscle mass has its own independent set and settling points–some people are naturally more or less muscular regardless of diet and training, though these points are not affected as easily as those for general body\weight. Once more muscle has been gained and maintained for a year or longer, only a fraction of the original effort is needed to rebuild it if it is lost. Also, muscle takes much less effort to maintain than to build, a fact we can exploit in the construction of nutritional periodization.
Fat-Loss Phase
A period of dieting for the purpose of losing fat. A common secondary goal on such a phase is to minimize muscle loss to the greatest extent possible.
Muscle-Gain Phase
A period of dieting for the purpose of gaining muscle. A common secondary goal on such a phase is to minimize fat gain to the greatest extent possible.
Post-Diet Maintenance Phase
Also known as a “diet recovery phase,” this phase occurs after a fat loss or a muscle gain phase, and its purpose is to maintain the changes made to body composition during the preceding diet. This period involves easing back into normal eating, slowly moving out of the deficit or surplus created by the previous phase. The purpose of this phase is also to reset metabolic and psychological homeostasis at a new bodyweight and establish new settling points. Post-diet maintenance begins at the end of a fat loss or muscle gain diet, and its duration will depend on the degree to which bodyweight and metabolism were changed by the previous phase. At the conclusion of post-diet maintenance, you can begin another weight-changing phase or move into long-term maintenance of the current weight.
Long-Term Maintenance/Balance Phase
In this phase of dieting, the individual’s physiology and psychology have adapted to the current state of the body. This phase typically starts after the post-diet maintenance phase and can last as long as the individual would like to maintain their results and live a healthy, active, and balanced life.
High-Volume Hypertrophy Training
High-volume hypertrophy training is needed to maintain muscle mass on a fat-loss diet or increase muscle mass on a muscle-gain diet. It consists of resistance training composed of multiple sets of exercises (8-20+ sets per body part per week), mainly in the 6- to 30-repetition range. This resistance training is ideally mainly composed of compound basics like squats, bench presses, rows, and so on–lifts that engage multiple joints and whole muscle groups. For more information, visit renaissanceperiodization. com and check out the eBook, Scientific Principles of Strength Training.
Low-Volume Strength Training
Low-volume strength training increases strength and power without changing muscle size. It is composed of fewer sets (5-15 per body part per week), usually in the 1- to 8-repetition range. This type of training is conducive to maintaining muscle during isocaloric periods (post-diet or long-term maintenance phases). It also has the added benefit of making the muscles more sensitive to the muscle growth effects of high-volume hypertrophy training for another fat-loss or muscle-gain diet.