Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

Last Sun­day, I attended Chris Kresser’s “Grow a healthy baby” sem­i­nar. It was local, only 3 hours long, and a chance to inter­act with a really smart guy in the area of health, nutri­tion, and fit­ness. So, easy deci­sion. But for those who do not live here, or couldn’t make it to the sem­i­nar, don’t worry. Chris is going to make the sem­i­nar into an online resource soon — I highly rec­om­mend get­ting on top of that once it is out.

From Chris Kresser’s site — The Healthy Skeptic

Think you have it under con­trol? Think again. The arti­cle is about a vegan mother who breast­fed her child, but the 11-month old baby died due to a vit­a­min defi­ciency — because the mother is vegan. If you are vegetarian/vegan, sup­ple­men­ta­tion is absolutely nec­es­sary. And even if you are an omni­vore, it doesn’t auto­mat­i­cally mean you get all nutri­ents nec­es­sary. You need to know what to eat. Period.

Chris struc­tured the three-hour sem­i­nar well. He started with set­ting the base — intro­duc­ing basic nutri­tion con­cepts, and then div­ing into details about macro and micro-nutrients. He fin­ished by rec­om­mend­ing a diet for omni­vores, veg­e­tar­i­ans, and veg­ans — tak­ing care to point out why/where/how defi­cien­cies are caused.

Here are some cool things from the seminar.

• The com­mon fea­tures of var­i­ous (ancient) cul­tures’ diets — no refined flour, no trans fats, no seed oils, no chem­i­cal addi­tives. And they all eat a good amount of ani­mal products.
• Health begins in the womb. The 9 months are the most con­se­quen­tial period, and deter­mine the adult life of the baby — shapes intel­li­gence, tem­pera­ment, sus­cep­ti­bil­ity to dis­ease amongst other things.
• The first few days after birth is when the gut flora is estab­lished. So, very cru­cial period! Gut health is extremely impor­tant. To learn more, you can check this post out.
• Do not be scared of fat. If fat is bad, why is breast milk so rich in fat?
• Patients with PCOS, when sub­jected to a high-fat (and proper diet) have got­ten preg­nant. These results were supe­rior to using drugs. This is because a high-fat diet improves glu­cose tol­er­ance, among other things.
• The best form of fat are long-chain sat­u­rated fats, obtained from the milk and meat of rumi­nant animals.
• All other forms of fat, except arti­fi­cial trans­fats are good for you. Omega-3 and Omega-6 — you need in mod­er­a­tion, and a 1:1 ratio. If you stop using seed oils (omega-6), you will be bet­ter off.
• Carbs: 100-150g of carbs, pri­mar­ily from green leafy veg­eta­bles, and starchy veg­eta­bles. If you eat grains, legumes — prop­erly pre­pare them. IMO, you are much bet­ter off stay­ing away from these, at least for the 9 months of preg­nancy, and while breast­feed­ing. The rea­son is, even prop­erly pre­pared grains have some anti-nutrients. These anti-nutrients irri­tate your gut and get through and that’s bad. In babies, the gut lin­ing is more per­me­able which means these anti-nutrients can get by even more eas­ily. So, they have a lot lower thresh­old than you. So, dont eat it for a while.
• Pro­tein: 10–15% of total calo­ries should be ade­quate. Don’t force it, fol­low your cravings.
• Fats: Eat a lot of it. Food choices include coconut prod­ucts, macadamia/hazelnuts, full-fat dairy (prefer­ably raw), eggs. And fatty cuts of meats.

The most impor­tant rec­om­men­da­tions he gives are micro-nutrient related. A lot of defi­cien­cies occur here, espe­cially if you are not an omnivore

• Vit­a­min A: The RDA value is too low. About 10,000 IU pre­ced­ing con­cep­tion and first 8 weeks, then 20–25000 IU through preg­nancy is ideal. 3oz of beef liver is per­fect. Or you can eat 40lbs of raw car­rots. Or sup­ple­ment. But remem­ber, beta-caretone is not vit­a­min A. Only 3% of it gets con­verted to vit­a­min A. So, if that’s what you are think­ing, you are gonna be defi­cient. Egg yolks and but­ter are a good source. Vit­a­min A helps pre­vent deaf­ness, and improves com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the brain and sen­sory organs. Actu­ally, it doesn’t mat­ter what it does. You need it. Your baby needs it. So, get it.
• Vit­a­min D: Imper­a­tive to bone devel­op­ment, among other things. Due to the rapid skele­tal devel­op­ment of the baby in the third trimester, vit­a­min D deple­tion occurs in moth­ers. And 32% of new­born infants have ZERO vit­a­min D. Get your­self tested — you are look­ing for 35–50 ng/dl in your blood. Cod liver oil, but­ter oil, salmon, sun­light — awe­some sources.
• Vit­a­min K: 1g/day is the amount of sup­ple­men­ta­tion rec­om­mended. It helps with bone for­ma­tion, reduces den­tal issues. Also, vit­a­min D and K2 help pre­vent vit­a­min A toxicity!
• DHA: Eat marine algae if you are vegan/vegetarian. Else eat fatty fish. The ben­e­fits of eat­ing fish out­weigh what­ever bad you’ve heard about it. By a LOT (about 3500x)
• Folate: Folate is not folic acid. So, remem­ber that. 800‑1200 mcg is the ideal range, with veg peo­ple look­ing at 1200 rather than 800.
• Vit­a­min B12: Yeah — that’s what the baby in the arti­cle died of — vit­a­min B12 defi­ciency. 45% of veg­e­tar­i­ans, and 65–90% of veg­ans are defi­cient in this. Moth­ers suf­fer from anx­i­ety, depres­sion coz of this, while babies keep cry­ing. So, get your B12 yo! Look for methyl­cobal­amine, over cyanocobalamine.
• Choline: Eat egg yolks. Only 14% of women get ade­quate amounts of choline.
• Biotin: Eat egg yolks.

And to finish,

• The human body is remark­ably resilient. After learn­ing about all this, one would think the sky is falling. Obvi­ously, not the case. Look at me, or you. Our moth­ers were prob­a­bly defi­cient in a bunch of these things. But the issue today, one that our moth­ers did not face, is the amount of crap avail­able. Crap that kills you and your baby. So, avoid that crap. And do one bet­ter — eat right. And do two bet­ter — hit all the spots with the macros and micros.
• If you want it to be very sim­ple, here it is. Eat real foods. Eat meat and meat prod­ucts. Some nuts. Lots of veg­gies. Some fruit. Did I men­tion that you should eat real food?
• Avoid sugar, white flour, soy, indus­trial seed oil.
• Vegetarians/vegans — you def­i­nitely need to supplement.
• Update: NO to for­mula. For­mula is not a replace­ment for breast milk. Not once a day, or once a week, or once a month. Never. You can make your own ver­sion of for­mula though.
• Finally — once Chris releases his stuff — buy it. I’ve barely scratched the sur­face here. It is a no-brainer. This dude is SMART. He knows his stuff. He doesn’t buy into the sta­tus quo, into ‘what con­ven­tional wis­dom says/thinks’. His stuff is evidence-based, backed by tons of sci­ence. I will update with the link once it releases. He also has a link for baby related resources — book­mark it.