Grant Petersen - Eat Bacon, Dont Jog: Get Strong. Get Lean. No Bullshit.

GRANT PETERSEN

Illustrations by Amanda Sim

WORKMAN PUBLISHING

NEW YORK

Dedication

As always, to Mary, Kate, and Anna, and to my incredibly generous boss and coworkers at RBW, all of whom cut me slack in the writing of this book and guinea-pigged many of the recipes as a backup for my own too-tolerant palate.

Acknowledgments

All of the people Ive learned this stuff from, many of whom are named in the last chapter.

The people at Workman Publishing, in particular Suzie Bolotin, David Schiller, Beth Levy, Selina Meere, Jessica Wiener, and Jenny Mandel, with extra thanks to Mary Ellen ONeill, who saves me from myself and makes me sound better than I am.

Amanda Sim, for her patience and fine illustrations.

Vassily Filipov, the strongest person I know and the most knowledgeable about muscles and exercise.

Ken Ford, who navigated me through the sharky waters of the science entries. If I left out an enzyme or critical fluid along the way, its my fault.

John Gallagher, who rescued me from an ocean of authoritative yet conflicting information on the damnable Internet related to camel guts, horse guts, and rabbit guts. You can take what youre about to read to the bank.

Danielle Svetcov, for always coming through. Thanks, Svetcov!

INTRODUCTION

Eat Bacon, Dont Jog will derail your thinking on food and workouts. In it, Ill explain why your attempts to lose weight permanently have failed, and how eating nutritious fat and enduring short bursts of intense exercise will reverse that. Youll be able to make sense of past failures and will gain raging confidence that the program youre about to start will work.

In the mid- to late 1990s, when I was in my forties, I noticed that three decades of what seemed to be a perfect diet and exercise program wasnt working. For thirty years Id avoided junk food, eating mostly oat bran, whole grains, egg whites, lean meat, fresh fruit, nonfat dairy, salads with no dressing. For thirty years I beat myself up and got all sweaty for one to three hours a day. I rode my bike hard every day, wore out a NordicTrack, and got frustrated on a rowing machine because I couldnt get my heart rate high enough. And I was still gaining weight. I wasnt fat by American standards, but I wasnt as lean as I should have been with all that ideal food and obsessive cardio. It got to the point that I was exercising just to avoid gaining weight faster, and no matter what, I was always the hungriest person within a hundred yards.

I was obsessed with being healthy because both my great-grandfather and grandfather died from heart attacks at age forty-seven. My dad made it to seventy-seven, but I figured genetics were against me. I was eating about 3,200 calories a day and burning up about half that in exercise. I knew a pound of fat has 3,500 calories and I understood the math of weight gain and loss, so I saw no way to get off the treadmill. Exercise that used to be play turned into work. I believed, as so many people do, that it is possible to exercise more and eat less and keep it up for a lifetime. Thats the conventional wisdom, and its the biggest lie in health.

As the disclaimer a few pages back highlights, I am not a doctor. But let me ask you this: How helpful has your doctor been? Not a lot, Im guessing, or you wouldnt be holding this book. In any case, in the section Outgrow This Book, I list more authoritative sources for much of the same information I cover in Eat Bacon, Dont Jog. Read them for more of the science behind it all, and then find a doctor who knows about this science and will discuss it with you. Until then, youre best off eating lots of fat, a little protein, and some dark green leaves.

GRANT PETERSEN

FOOD BASICS

When you fail to lose weight, blame the diet. Really. A weight loss program that requires restraint, small portions, reduced calories, and more exercise is doomed from the start. It can work for a few miserable weeks, but it isnt sustainable, and when you fail youll blame yourself. Then, after some time off from dieting and some weight gain, you try another diet with a different name that works in the same way and gives you the same results.

In the first two chapters, Food Basics and Food Particulars, I will explore three important points:

Lowering your insulin is your salvation.

Fat is your friend.

Your excess body fat is due to the high-carb food you eat, not the calories you eat or exercise you avoid.

It comes down to insulin, but it starts with carbohydrates

When you eat cotton candy, bread, fruit, soda, or pasta, your body converts the carbs in them to a kind of sugar called glucose, and the glucose goes into your blood. I use the terms sugar and glucose interchangeably throughout the book. When you eat carbs, your blood glucose rises. Your blood sugar rises. Its the same thing.

When you eat carbs, your blood sugar rises. Your body treats glucose in your blood as poison, and your pancreas leaps to the rescue by secreting insulin, a hormone that determines where you get your energy from; what you burn for calories. When you eat carbs and raise your sugar, then your insulin, you burn sugar, not fat. You can think of this as your bodys way of lowering the levels of poison glucoseburning it up.

So, yesthe insulin gets the glucose out of your bloodsaving your lifeand into your cells to be burned as energy so you can move, walk, run, ride a bike. And thats the last good thing insulin does.

The insulin hit list

Insulin converts calories to fat. Even the calories from fat-free food become body fat.

Insulin stores fat on your hips, belly, backwherever you tend to pack it on, insulin puts it there.

Insulin prevents you from using body fat as fuel. When you exercise hard and long, you think youre burning body fat, but youre not. Insulin wont let you burn off body fat.

Insulin keeps you hungry. It makes you want more of the same carbohydrates that started the cycle in the first place.

And it doesnt stop there. Insulin is also a force behind many of the diseases we either live with or fear. Reducing insulin levels is the key to losing fat and a key to getting healthier, and there is only one way to do it: Quit eating carbohydrates. Not fat. Not protein. Carbohydrates.

Insulin is the problem. Eating carbohydrates drives up insulin. Cutting way back on carbs lowers your insulin levels, and that is the solution.

Carbohydrate primer, and why its OK to eat less kale

Most carbohydrates are cheap and tasty, so we eat a lot of them. As munchies, as main meals, as quick pick-me-ups and energy boosts, as food mops for a sloppy plate, as holiday and special-occasion treats. We drink them as sodas, sports drinks, juice, and alcohol.

The worst carbohydrates are the pure sugars and syrups that come in candy and cookies and soda, and the refined carbohydrates (wheat without the bran or germ, for instance) used in white bread and fancy pastries. These simple carbs send your sugar and insulin levels skyrocketing, and they do it right after you have eaten them. If your body was burning fat before you ate them, eating them jacked up your insulin levels and put a halt to the fat burning.