Top 5 Nutrition Breakthroughs of the Last Decade

5th Place: Metabolic Damage / Adaptation
Many readers have probably heard of metabolic damage (better described as metabolic adaptation). This is the concept that prolonged excessive calorie restriction leads to a slowdown in metabolic rate and the establishment of very low caloric requirements, resulting in competitors hitting weight/fat-loss plateaus despite being on very low calorie intakes and doing large volumes of exercise.

It isn’t actually “damage” because this problem is a normal biological survival response to low energy availability, and it can be resolved over time and metabolic rate can be reestablished with intelligent dietary management. So “metabolic adaptation” is a better name. The primary cause of this phenomenon is that many physique athletes try to maintain low body fat for too long a duration and never reestablish a calorie intake that is consistent with their requirements. So if competitors are already quite lean and starting to diet for a contest at a calorie intake that is already low, they leave themselves little room to cut further energy from their intake, and this means that the only way they can successfully attain stage-ready conditioning is to consume almost a starvation-level calorie intake, take drugs, or continually increase their exercise activity.

4th Place: Meat and Health
Because bodybuilders and physique athletes love their meat (and quite rightly), I’ve been writing and speaking about the topic for years. In the last decade, the facts surrounding the association between eating meat and risk of disease and death have become much more clear. Much like the “evidence” that dietary fat intake caused obesity and disease, the old-school belief that eating red meat was practically as bad a smoking a pack a day has been debunked over the last 10 years by huge studies that reviewed and analyzed all of the best research on the topic.

A massive scientific review done in collaboration with Harvard University looked at the 20 best studies on red meat and heart disease and diabetes risk. This research included over one million people from 10 different countries. They found that red meat did not increase the risk of disease. However, there wasn’t such good news if you like processed meats such as bacon and sausages, though. These can dramatically increase heart disease (by 42 percent) and diabetes (by 19 percent). So it looks like the real risk factor isn’t the natural meats in our diet but the preservatives (especially nitrates) and salt added to processed meat. Regarding cancer (which is the next biggest killer after heart disease and diabetes), specifically the colorectal cancer that has been particularly associated with meat intake, a very recent review that looked at the data from 27 of the best studies found the association to be weak and inconsistent, and any association that did exist was likely to be caused, at least in part, by other factors than red meat intake.

So as things currently stand, the science indicates that there isn’t enough evidence to confidently believe that unprocessed red meat has negative effects on health.

I’ve never bought into the “drop 500 calories to lose one pound of fat per week” concept because first of all this almost never works—especially in those who are often manipulating their training and diet—and second, dropping 500 calories is way too much, especially for someone who may already be consuming too little. So unless a client is starting a diet from well over 5,000 calories, an initial reduction of more like 75 to 150 calories is more appropriate.

The other issue often associated with metabolic damage is excessive cardio. The body adapts to even very frequent and long-duration cardio over the course of a few months, and this is why some people who have metabolically adapted to a low calorie intake stop losing fat despite an hour or more of cardio per day. Fat-burning exercise must include HIIT (high-intensity interval training; see my MuscleDiet YouTube video on this) and a strategic use of cardio if it is to be most successful!

The obvious solution to avoiding metabolic adaptation is not only very gradually reducing calories when dieting down but also increasing calories progressively after dieting phases and competitions up to a level that is ideally even higher than typically recommended for the client’s body weight and activity level. If caloric intake is increased gradually and in small increments that take into account gains in fat mass, competitors can gain lean mass with much less of an increase in body fat in the off-season and between competitions.

3rd Place - Probiotics/Prebiotics/Gut Microflora
The bacteria in your gut and on your body (called “microflora” by the scientists who study them) measures into the trillions, and, as disgusting as it sounds to have all these little bugs living on us and in us, without them, we’d be dead. The number of different species and levels of each species of these bacteria in our guts has a very substantial effect on our health and our body composition. I don’t want to talk too much about health, but you should be aware that someday in the not too distant future, your doctor will measure your bacteria levels (probably on a few different occasions) and determine the levels of “good” and “bad” ones and then use interventions to alter those levels to improve all aspects of your health. The problem currently is that scientists haven’t fully established what the ideal levels and ratios are or how to effectively alter them … and the additional problem is that they can change fairly substantially in a fairly short time in response to a change in diet or other factors.

Fascinating studies have transferred bacteria between lab animals, and the introduction of bacteria from an obese or ill animal to a lean or health animal basically transforms the lean, healthy animal into an obese or ill one. And vice versa, transferring bacteria from lean, healthy animals to obese, sick ones improves these conditions. This is how incredibly powerful these different microflora can be! In fact, doctors have actually transferred bacteria from healthy people (yes, the bacteria from their poo) into people with infections that are resistant to antibiotics. The results demonstrated the bacteria were effective in fighting and destroying the infection. This therapy is currently the only proven option for patients with certain infections.

So believe it or not, one day, there will probably be a suppository (containing certain specific bacteria from a lean person or produced in a lab or a factory) that is effective (at least for some people) in reducing body fat in humans!

2nd Place: Eating for Your Gene Type
Okay, I’ve talked about this before, and as someone who is part owner of a fitness genetics company (MuscleGenes) I’m sure you’d expect me to. But, it’s hard to argue that eating the appropriate foods for your specific individual gene profile shouldn’t be in the top five. For details, see my article on page [?], “What Should You Eat? 3 Things Your Genes Can Tell You”, which explains how your genes help determine several traits that are influenced by diet and supplementation. For instance, the article covers (1) the amount and type of carbs you should eat because genes strongly affect how your insulin function declines over time, (2) certain foods and supplements that can influence your personal, genetically determined inflammatory responses, and (3) foods and supplements that are most appropriate for your genetically determined ability to burn calories (via thermogenesis).

1st Place: Carbs Are the New Fat
High-protein diets almost made it into this list, but that trend began earlier than 10 years ago in the fitness community; it’s just taking longer to fully catch on in the mainstream, so I didn’t include it in the top five. However, it’s just about a decade ago that serious questions began being asked about whether fat was really the evil macronutrient that it had been made out to be in the three preceding decades. This was around the same time that people were questioning whether carbs should really make up such a large proportion of our diets. First, Dr. Walter Willett (head of the Harvard School of Public Health) did a huge review study that showed no good evidence of a correlation between the percentage of fat in the diet and people’s levels of body fat. Then several studies showed that when fat in the diet was replaced by carbs (especially the types of carbs most people eat), measures of disease risk such as cholesterol and triglycerides don’t get any better. In fact, by some measures, they get slightly worse! Next, studies came out showing that even the much-maligned saturated fat seemed to be no more harmful than other fats, or the typical carbs people eat!

Of course, most good sports nutrition practitioners were already encouraging their clients to eat healthy fats, such as omega-3s, monounsaturated fats, and certain polyunsaturated fats. A few were suggesting that we shouldn’t be taking our saturated fats too low either. Long prior to a decade ago, most bodybuilders and fitness competitors were probably over-restricting their fat intake; this has changed substantially in the interim.

For more informaton about what YOU should be eating to keep your health (and gut!) in check, read this article!