Is the Warrior diet obsolete?

[gilestro]

I see that in the newer Tacfit programs there seems to a Primal/Paleo Diet plan included, I've also read that Scott Sonnon has been grain/ gluten free for several years.

I was wondering why the Diet Plan in Tacfit Warrior does recommend grains, flour and legumes (peanut butter)? Should this advice now be considered non optimal?

I didn't get the free Primal/Paleo Diet plan that I think was included with both Barbarian and Survival so I can't be sure of it's contents so any advice would be welcome.

[Ron Schaeffer Jr]

I have not seen the advice in the diet plan from TACFIT Warrior, but I can tell you that the Primal/Paleo Diet plan does stress the reduction (elimination, really) of grains, legumes, and sugar.

That being said, there are lots of ways to eat but (IMHO) eliminating the foods that have been processed is a big step toward anyone's health-improvement.

[Miro]

Great question. I was wondering the same thing. I only have Tacfit Warrior but would really like to know what the new programs say about diet.

[Fitz]

If you are looking for information related to the approach being packaged with current Tacfit modules Robb Wolf's work on the Paleo Diet is a good suppliment. He gives a good overview of the "why?" behind he recommendations and a means for on ramping to the approach if it is something of a major change in your eating.

Gemerally speaking the Warrior Diet material is still a good approach, especially if uou are someone who does not have gluten issues.

[gilestro]

I'm pretty happy with my diet in general- paleo/ primal for about a year. My question was more related to why a non paleo style diet was still being put forward, especially after reading that Scott Sonnon had been gluten free for several years, probably even back when Warrior was first released.

Almost all exercise will give you some kind of positive adaptation- warrior is a great exercise program and still will be in 100 years. Even if new approaches are discovered and it gets superceeded. But the same cannot be said about your diet- if you eat a packet of chocolate biscuits you cannot compensate for that by eating a salad right after.

If Rmax wants to package diet advice maybe it should do in a more open source way when new approaches can be updated. After all this would only enhance the results of their exercise programs.

[RonP]

It is never good to make too many changes too quickly. Tacfit's are a package. They provide all the answers to a training plan. Follow it and you do good. Tacfits I do not think were ever intended for the end all of your training. They are to teach you how to set up a training plan by example. RMAX knows that in martial arts, they always want you to make the knowledge your own. You are expected to use intuition. You are expected to learn. The same goes for diet.
With that in mind. I saw a youtube video of an expert talking about fructose. He said that the only food in the grocery store is in the meat and produce sections. The rest of it is: "Edible food like substances". Think about it.

[gracoman]

I’ve been mulling over whether or not I should post a response to this thread since reading it last month. Diet is such a personal matter any suggestion one may be eating incorrectly invokes passions as violent as any disagreement about religion or politics. I have no interest in changing anyone's diet but only desire to stimulate thought. Best tread lightly. I apologize for the long post in advance.

I will preface this post by telling you I am not a certified nutritionist but rather a student of nutrition in much the same way I am a student of fitness. Hobbies if you will. I have been at this for years and it shall continue. I have amassed a great deal of information in that time concerning both subjects.

I’ll be as brief as possible considering the enormity of the topic.

Is the Warrior Diet Obsolete?

I don’t believe diet plans can become obsolete any more than they can exist as cutting-edge. At least not with the current stage of nutritional research. They are either healthy or they are not by some measure of degree. Most are fads, falling in and out of favor as research qualifies or refutes them based on results of long term study and their objective analysis. That said, it is useful know just who funded whatever research we are looking at. This is an important point. Agendas my friends. Agendas.

There is a lot of money at stake here folks. Billions. Billions funneled into the sugar, dairy, meat, egg, conventional and GMO growers every year so they aren’t likely to give it up without a fight. These folks don’t care about you or your health nearly as much as they care about your wallet and your bank account. And their lobby is powerful.

CST is to be congratulated and applauded for it’s health first fitness hierarchy. It’s how I got here. What is healthy and what is not healthy for us to eat is up for debate between the producers and the consumers. Between proponents and laypeople. Because there are no be-all and end-all answers this question of diet can be likened to a Rorschach Test. We all see in it whatever we want to and all of it applies. For now we must be content with eternal vigilance and do the research ourselves.

Scott Sonnon, as well as many of you, have found the Warrior and/or Paleo diets a good match for your individual situations and requirements. This is good news. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I believe Scott would be the first to echo my sentiments on the individualized nature of diet.

Now I ask you to please take no offense at what follows as none is intended. My natural curiosity and question everything nature has gotten me in trouble more than once. My quest is health and health alone. You will find no agendas here. Only opinion.

As one who is concerned with long term mental and physical health and longevity with quality, I remain unconvinced of the value in following a Warrior or Paleo Diet Plan. Common sense, along with some nutritional background, dictates agreement with Paleo principals. Eat what your ancestors ate. Sounds good so far but who among us has even the remotest notion of what human beings subsisted on, day-to-day, year-in year-out some 10,000 plus years ago?

My personal ancient ancestors lived…where? I haven’t the foggiest. But if they lived on the section of Earth now called Norway I’d wager they had a diet vastly different from ancient humans living in what is now called Cape Town. Most of our not so ancient ancestors were a restless bunch and they traveled far and wide intermarrying with all sorts of different peoples. Who can know what our lineage from antiquity is? Incidentally, this silly little factoid may give the Metabolic Typing school of diet a great measure of validity. Certainly more validity than any one size fits all plan.

What kinds of “Paleo” medicinal herbs and spices were eaten, how often and in what quantities?

It’s a shame but “Paleo” quality meat, fish, eggs, vegetables and greens no longer exist. “Paleo” animals were wild and lean from activity and subsisted on foods and drank water from an unpolluted, unmanaged world. They were not the unnaturally fed, heavily marbleized, injected, traumatized animals of today. (Agribusiness is a wonderful thing.) Grass fed, free range etc., meat may be better but only by degrees. Modern animals have been bred to produce the most meat with the lowest capital investment to maximize profit. They bear little resemblance to Paleo animals. Heck, even the grasses modern domesticated animals feed on have lost nutrient value. Is it even possible to eat as our ancient ancestry did in today's environment?

“Paleo” people were wild and lean from activity having to expend a fair amount of energy simply to procure this meat. How often were the hunts successful? Always? Sometimes? Rarely? How seasonal were hunts? How much meat did Cronk, my Paleo ancestor, actually eat when hunts were successful? In fact, how much meat was eaten at all? The structure of our teeth, grinding jaws and lengthy intestinal tract suggest possibly not as much as one might believe.

Fasting? What about Paleo fasting? Forced or with purpose? Fasting at all?

What effect did the additional ingestion of blood, marrow, glands and internal organs have?

What about ingestion of insects? What kinds were eaten, how often and in what amounts, if eaten at all?

Fungi?

What about the fish? The latest evidence points to an ocean so polluted it is possible that right now, today, literally no amount of fish is safe to eat of any kind.

What are the long term effects on today’s human body of taking in such high quantities of animal protein as proposed by Paleo diet proponents? Does intense, regular, short bouts of interval training and/or regular, sustained, traditional weight and/or cardio training followed by "chillin" for the remainder of the day make us bulletproof?

What effect does vastly differing Paleo-Modern lifestyles have on the mind-body-diet connection? If any. Cronk didn't work out. Cronk didn't go to work in a cube or live in a socially alienated environment (unless, of course, he did).

So many variables.

So many questions.

We simply don’t know. There is not a huge body of research out there focused on differing levels and types of exercise and each one’s effect on differing dietary intakes. Much of this information is anecdotal and may or may not be of value.

The potential trade of short term body fat loss and hulking muscle for potential disease down the road is real and ever present. Health first remember.

I have been playing Devil’s Advocate here, to get you thinking. But to be fair I must acknowledge it may be the Paleo or Warrior Diets that wind up proven correct. The research is simply not there for us to make an educated decision.

I tend to go along with the best available scientific evidence I can dig up. This is in a constant state of flux and historically transitory. Tomorrow’s discoveries may well change everything we know, or think we know about nutrition today. It is worthy of note that there are trends and this is where the real gold can be found. When different areas of nutritional research produce results that reinforce these trends and the funding of this research seems to come from an entity with no dog in the fight, I pay attention.

For the latest and greatest most up to date world wide scientific nutritional study results all distilled into short easily digestible segments. Go Here. It’s a good place to start making up your own mind.

[gilestro]

Thanks Gracoman for the reply,

I can see you thought about that for a while. I totally appreciate what you say about diet being a personal choice and certainly not a one size fits all issue. I am pretty much Paleo but that is something I gravitated to by choice without realising it, then one day someone said to me "so you're Paleo" I had to Google it to see what it was.

I think my question was more about why Scott was promoting a plan in the Warrior diet which included gluten (I think at that time he was gluten free) and other non-paleo items then within a year was advocating a Paleo style plan. Did he have some Eureka moment in there. Personally I think there is better advice about diet on websites like Primal Blueprint which are updated daily and cover a much wider range of info than that found in the Rmax diets.

May be a better idea would be to make the Rmax preferred diet available to everyone (or at least those that have purchased previous products) so that when it is updated you can stay up with it. After all there does not seem to be anything too revolutionary in their diet approach and it is not affecting their core business which is exercise.

Certainly a lot of people who take their health seriously are moving in a Paleo direction and to get the healthy whole grain business again does not seem to keep up with the latest ideas. If I bought Warrior today and saw that diet plan I would be a bit disappointed especially when other products advocate a Paleo one. In fact it would almost certainly put me off buying Warrior despite hoe effective the exercise program is.

[gilestro]

Thanks Gracoman for the reply,

I can see you thought about that for a while. I totally appreciate what you say about diet being a personal choice and certainly not a one size fits all issue. I am pretty much Paleo but that is something I gravitated to by choice without realising it, then one day someone said to me "so you're Paleo" I had to Google it to see what it was.

I think my question was more about why Scott was promoting a plan in the Warrior diet which included gluten (I think at that time he was gluten free) and other non-paleo items then within a year was advocating a Paleo style plan. Did he have some Eureka moment in there. Personally I think there is better advice about diet on websites like Primal Blueprint which are updated daily and cover a much wider range of info than that found in the Rmax diets.

May be a better idea would be to make the Rmax preferred diet available to everyone (or at least those that have purchased previous products) so that when it is updated you can stay up with it. After all there does not seem to be anything too revolutionary in their diet approach and it is not affecting their core business which is exercise.

Certainly a lot of people who take their health seriously are moving in a Paleo direction and to get the healthy whole grain business again does seem to keep up with the latest ideas. If I bought Warrior today and saw that diet plan I would be a bit disappointed especially when other products advocate a Paleo one. In fact it would almost certainly put me off buying Warrior despite hoe effective the exercise program is.

[gracoman]

Certainly a lot of people who take their health seriously are moving in a Paleo direction and to get the healthy whole grain business again does seem to keep up with the latest ideas.

I personally believe the "Paleo Diet" to be nothing more than latest flavor of the month. It is simply a high protein, low carb diet throwing the body into a state of ketosis causing it to burn fat. Healthy? Latest ideas? You be the Judge