The Diet Hack by Tim Steele was released today.
He also wrote the definitive guide to potato dieting called The Potato Hack. The Diet Hack covers a lot more ground than just potatoes, but I wanted to let you know that I got a few pages of coverage in the book on the Peasant Diet! There is even a photo of me and one of my peasant dishes. 😎
The Diet Hack by Tim Steele
For the most part, I find Twitter to be a hostile place and I avoid the site as much as possible these days. However, the genesis of the idea of pursuing this Peasant Diet came from a Twitter battle in 2016 between two bloggers I followed.
Other important Peasant Diet post include:
- How I Used the Peasant Diet to Lean Out
- Using Price Knowledge to Lean Out on a Peasant Diet
- How I Beat Food Cravings on the Peasant Diet
Get lean while saving money. Got to love the Peasant Diet. And if you don’t love the Peasant Diet, The Diet Hack has several other ideas you can use.
Marc
Jul 10, 2019 — 9:30 pm
“The Diet Hack has several other ideas”
I read parts and pieces of this book. I was disappointed. There are too many other ideas presented. This is no longer a hack. Rusty Moore’s HCLF Diet is much more interesting and resembles the Potato Hack.
I am left with only the HCLF article.
https://visualimpactfitness.com/high-carb-fat-loss/
What could have been. Oh well!
Rachel
Jul 16, 2019 — 4:36 am
Can I just say that the positive comments made by Tim regarding the Atkins diet and low carb in general has left me totally confused. I was not expecting that and am now back to feeling confused as to what dietary protocol to follow
Tim Steele
Jul 16, 2019 — 10:17 am
Hi, MAS – Thanks for the mention!
As your readers Marc and Rachel have noted, this book casts a wide net in an attempt to capture why most diets fail, and how to make them work. As many, many researchers note, just about any diet will work for short-term weight loss if the diet can be adhered to, creates a calorie deficit, etc., etc..
Finding that perfect diet is extremely individualistic. Therefore, I believe it’s best to try many different diets until you find one that suits you. This is what I love about MAS and his Peasant Diet…it wasn’t something that happened overnight, but took years of tinkering and false starts. Same as Rusty Moore, who 2 years ago was promoting the keto diet.
For the greatly overweight, there needs to be a two-stage approach: Weight loss followed by weight maintenance. I think I laid out pretty well in the book that these two stages need to be very clearly delineated. A great weight loss diet is usually a very bad weight maintenance diet.
But each person in the world has different and unique circumstances as to the cause of and solution to their weight problems. No one diet will ever work for everyone that tries the diet, I hope my book lays out several courses of action for people who have struggled with weight and failed at dieting.
I give many links to different diets to try…Rusty Moore’s is one of my favorites and pretty much how I eat now. But I cannot totally discount the myriad of other eating styles that produce results.
I think people are not used to a diet book that gives equal attention to multiple plans, generally diet books will downplay every style other than the one in the book, even though the authors are greatly aware that there are many better plans than theirs.
I hope you guys can read the book in the light that it was intended…to describe the current state of dieting and how to use elements from all successful plans to create something that works for YOU.
And hopefully readers will avoid ultra-processed food as much as possible, especially the ones designed to make diets work better, ie. Atkins bars, paleo bars, meal replacement shakes.
Rachel
Jul 16, 2019 — 11:51 am
An excellent reply Tim and I have to admire your honesty about the merit in different ways of eating and that there is no one perfect diet for everyone. I am so used to hearing both the low carb and high carb camps swear that their way is the holy grail to health, I suppose deep down I just want someone to tell me what to do because it is just so conflicting and confusing. How has something as simple as eating food become so difficult. I think about it way too much
Tim Steele
Jul 16, 2019 — 12:01 pm
Rachel – Don’t give up! And in my book, I describe a diet I invented called the SOW diet where you pretty much just avoid foods with sugar, oil, and wheat to lose weight. https://potatohack.com/sow-diet/
I went through the whole “tell me exactly what to eat” phase as well…it never worked. Easier to know what NOT to eat, ie super-processed crap, and then eat in a way that helps you achieve your goals.
MAS
Jul 16, 2019 — 12:13 pm
@Rachel – After removing the SOW that Tim mentions, swap in better choices. I am reminded of a book I posted about back in 2008 that inspired me.
https://criticalmas.org/2008/03/150-superfoods-because-14-just-wasnt-enough/
Best of luck!
Rachel
Jul 16, 2019 — 12:47 pm
Yes I did like the idea of your SOW diet I am just so tired of deliberately keeping calories down because as a very short woman, I gain if I go over 1200 which is just miserable. Basically any woe keeps me at my perfect weight if I stay at 1200 calories, but I have a big appetite and I like feeling full. So, imagine for a moment you are a short, middle aged woman with a calorie goal of 1200 and an absolute love for whole natural foods but who also likes the feeling of being physically full – how would you eat?
MAS
Jul 16, 2019 — 1:04 pm
@Rachel – Feeling full is important. That is why I favor The Potato Hack, The Peasant Diet, and recently P&P (Potatoes and Protein). Adding in foods with fiber will also reduce appetite (legumes)
Tim Steele
Jul 16, 2019 — 1:17 pm
@Rachel – It really depends on your current weight and health. What is your BMI and waist measurement? What is your current weight and goal weight?
Rachel
Jul 16, 2019 — 1:39 pm
I am at my ideal weight of 47 kilos for 1m58. But it has required dedication and consistency with whole natural foods to get here. I have a very large appetite and motivation to eat for someone my size so I only eat 2 meals a day, but I still have to stop eating at about 80% satisfied. For example, on the potato hack I ate 3 kilos of potatoes daily with incredible ease and could have eaten more. I am a little labrador Is it possible that because I have always eaten low fat, I do not feel fully satisfied.
Tim
Jul 16, 2019 — 1:53 pm
@Rachel – A-ha! So, a much different approach for you is needed since you are maintaining a healthy weight.
Look at the SOW Diet chart, Month 5. https://potatohack.com/sow-diet/
Avoid super-nasty processed stuff, get lots of fiber, get a good amount of protein. Keep an eye on calories.
Make sure you have a good exercise program that includes walking, strength, and aerobic exercises. Sleep well and reduce stress in your life.
Some people, me included, just have to realize that our brain wants us to eat more than we should. It is definitely a lifelong struggle, if it were easy everyone would be skinny.
Rachel
Jul 16, 2019 — 1:56 pm
Great advice Tim, thanks. Maintenance certainly has its own challenges
Tim Steele
Jul 16, 2019 — 2:05 pm
And I think most people will find that if they have a really good exercise routine, get lots of fiber, and stay away from junk food that they can be more relaxed in what they eat.
Sedentary types who eat lots of junk food have the worst outcome.
Rachel
Jul 16, 2019 — 2:05 pm
@Mas yes fullness is crucial to me. I guess I need to keep experimenting to find what foods fill me up
Marc
Jul 17, 2019 — 9:17 pm
S – sugar is so bad that Walter Kempner used 100 to 400 grams a day to treat hypertension and kidney disease in the absence of modern pharmacological agents.
O – long been known to inflame endothelial linings. Oil combined with adequate calories takes an easy vacation on the belly, hips and things.
W – possibly the oldest food is bread. Only the celiac malady keeps one from eating this delight from the grasses.
De Novo Lipogenesis shows fats can indeed come from excessive carbs. The body does not do this readily however. Very high carb diets of appropriate caloric content minimize harm to the body and maximize performance, remember carb loading.
Tim Steele
Jul 17, 2019 — 10:37 pm
Marc – Fair enough. On a whole-food spectrum, SOW are fine. The SOW diet even allows sugar, oil, and wheat as long as they are eaten in whole form and not used as ingredients in processed food (donuts come quickly to mind as a food that contains all three, but most processed junk food contains SOW). That’s my only intention here, identifying and eliminating junk food.
I have absolutely no problem with natural sugar, whole wheat, and oils used sparingly for cooking or salad dressing. I have major problems with refined sugars, bleached/enriched wheat, and industrial seed oils used as ingredients in junk food.
What I like about the SOW diet is that it works well for people learning to transition away from the Western diet. It gets confusing looking at food labels and trying to determine if the food is “good.” The problem with food labels is that many, many chemicals and food additives are not listed due to FDA loopholes. But, when sugar, oil, and wheat are used in packaged food, they also contain a myriad of stabilizers, emulsifiers, flavors, etc… Sugar, oil, and wheat are traded as commodities on the world economy because they form the basis of ~90% of the calories of the Western diet. Eliminate SOW in processed forms and you are eating better than everyone eating Western diets.
Marc
Jul 18, 2019 — 8:19 pm
Man is an omnivore. Man can adapt to a wide variety of dietary circumstances. At the cellular level ATP is needed. This can come from fat, protein, and carbohydrates.
Thus, the war on processed food is fought on slippery ground.
Examples:
The Twinkie Diet shows the importance of the amount of calories.
https://www.diabetesdaily.com/blog/oh-dear-the-twinkie-diet-actually-works-268743/
Another example which shows the lack of importance of processing of food.
Dr. Harold Schendel , while in famine stricken Africa, discovered a diet of simple sugar, water, and butter helped malnourished children survive. Protein supplementation was not as successful as the above.
Please read Dr. Ellington Darden’s “Killing Fat” for a balanced understanding of processed food.
More needs to be said on De Novo Lipogenesis and the role carbohydrates play. More needs to be said about Ventilatory Threshold 1’s ability to increase fat burning. The Kreb cycle works with the inclusion of oxygen. The more aerobically fit the more oxygen that is available for the Kreb cycle to process fat. You want to stay away from burning the glycogen stores that are reserved for anaerobic tasks. Increasing VT 1 does this.
Global metabolic conditioning is just a sub-HIT fantasy.