Best Results On Warrior Diet

This post will be long enough so I won’t rehash in depth what I already covered in my last post where I go into detail about the main reasons that I ended up stopping the Warrior Diet. Here’s a quick summary though just to give some context to this post:

My sleep was affected because I was forced into eating too late for a variety of reasons.
My digestion suffered due to stress and other factors, and I wasn’t absorbing a lot of the food I was eating
My energy and testosterone levels, while initially great, steadily fell due to not absorbing as much food as I should be.

After really giving some thought to these considerations, and making significant changes to tailor my own eating, here’s the changes I would definitely make if I gave the Warrior Diet meal plan another run through.

1. Add Fermented Foods

During the undereating portion, I would add in some fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, or japanese natto. Two or three forkfuls would be enough (per day).

The reasoning behind this is the various compounds in these foods that heavily improve digestion and food absorption due to improving your gut flora/bacteria. This is incredibly important since you have only a small window of opportunity to make use of the foods that you’re ingesting at night, so you need to squeeze as much nutrition as possible out of these foods.

2. Time Fat Soluble Vitamins Properly

If you’re taking a multivitamin (which you should be!) don’t take it during the day. I was taking True Protein’s 3-a-day multivitamin and taking it with each of my three small undereating meal.

My issue was that I would really struggle to absorb the fat soluble nutrients in the multivitamin as the undereating meals didn’t have much fat (only a few grams from fish oil). Realistically, a lot of the multivitamin wasn’t being absorbed and I may have ended up with some micronutrient gaps in my diet. This could’ve easily been a contributing factor in the drop in energy and testosterone levels I saw. Not the whole story, but a contributor.

3. Focus On Food Quality, Not Quantity

Since stopping the warrior diet, I’ve switched all my meats to grass-fed, organic sourced meats from a farm about an hour away that I drive up to every month to get my order. I’ve noticed a huge positive change in my well-being, hormone levels, and energy.

Previously, anytime I had red meat I would feel well-fed, but fairly low energy and lethargic after. I was always buying my meat at a local chain grocery store, and because I was going for calories, would often opt for the fattier cuts.

This is a major issue because the fat is exactly where all of the shit generated from manufacturing like dioxins, antibiotics, and hormones hang out, and I was eating a LOT of fatty meat. Not only that, but grocery store meat has a much more skewed omega 6 to omega 3 ratio, whereas farm raised meat is much more balanced.

In plain english, this means that the grocery store meat causes more inflammation and damage to you than farm meat, especially in an overeating situation. After further research on environmental estrogens, xenoestrogens, and phytoestrogens, I made some massive changes to my food sources, with meat being my first major change.

4. Focus On Eliminating All Foods That Cause Systemic Inflammation

The paleolithic dieting philosophy is pretty big news lately, and for good reason – it’s helped a ton of people get leaner, stronger and healthier. Whether you subscribe to this philosophy or not, the biggest lesson to take from the plan is to eliminate causes of system inflammation in the body.

If you haven’t been exposed to this way of eating or recent research, I’ll sum it up for you in two sentences. Certain foods we eat are relatively “new” to the human body, and because we’re not adapated to eating them, they cause stress and damage to the digestive tract and lower digestive capacity, food absorption, and micronutrient absorption.

By clearing away some of these foods (common ones for bodybuilders or athletes would be oatmeal, pasta, breads and cereals) you’ll find you’re a lot less bloated, energy levels go up, and you’ll perform better in the long run. My top two paleo sites to check out if you need food recommendations or want to know more about this would be www.marksdailyapple.com and www.robbwolf.com

5. Pay Attention To Reactions To Certain Foods

A second angle on the issue of digestive stress is food sensitivities and food allergies. Eating too much of one food, especially if it’s always cooked the same way, can lead to your body developing a low level allergy and sensitivity to it.

As an example, month after month for several years, my breakfast was 4-6 sunny side up eggs with a big bowl of oatmeal to the side. After learning about food sensitivities and allergies, I began paying attention to the first 5-45 minutes after eating foods commonly in my diet.

Turned out that within a few minutes of consuming eggs, my nose started to run. Every time. Solution?

I took eggs out of my diet for a month. No eggs, nothing egg based, no egg white protein.

Then I added them back in, but alternated the cooking methods. Scrambled, fried, poached, hard boiled, and even raw in shakes. I can now eat them every day with no issues.

This is another benefit of getting your meat from the farm. No longer am I stuck with boring chicken and beef over and over again, but have access to lamb, elk, bison, turkey, pork, venison, ostrich, kangaroo, and whatever else is in stock.

Rotating my meats seems to give the body a better absorption percentage and prevents developing any food sensitivies or allergies that will inevitably cause systemic inflammation and lower digestive capacity (the LAST thing we want on a meal plan where we only have one shot a day to make the nutrients count!!!)

6. Assume Adrenal Fatigue and Support Accordingly

As you and I live in a chronically high stress society, we’re constantly pumping out hormones that put stress and strain on our organs. When it comes to optimal hormone function and muscle gaining capacity, you have to take care of these guys.

The hormone organ that I found to get most beaten down during the Warrior Diet is the adrenal glands, which are responsible for releasing adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol and aldosterone, all hormones relating to the fight or flight response.

If the adrenal glands are suppressed or have gotten beat down too much, a few things will happen. Sex drive suffers pretty quickly, energy levels drop, sleep quality can drop, your capacity to gain muscle will decrease (as optimal nervous system output in the gym will suffer), and your overall motivation and drive to succeed will probably be stifled. All things you probably want to avoid!

So agreeing that we have to take care of the adrenal glands and other organs, how do we go about it? Here’s some suggestions from my own recovery.

6.1. Don’t Go To Failure In The Gym Every Set

Even though it’s fun to grind out those last few reps with your favourite music blaring in your ears, it doesn’t do your nervous system or adrenal glands any favours. If you’re already stressed and underslept, this point is especially important for you. Leave a rep in the tank for most sets.

If you focus on making consistent strength gains, you should still be able to make some pretty significant progress even without going to failure, and the progress will be MUCH more consistent because your body won’t burn out.

6.2. Optimize Your Sleep Patterns

Here’s an article I wrote awhile back to help with perfecting sleep patterns. Certain hormone release and organ recovery is at its peak during deep sleep. By being chronically sleep deprived, you will really be limiting how much muscle you can put on or how much fat you can burn off, and you’ll wreak havoc with your recovery, energy levels, and hormone levels.

6.3. Keep Workouts Under 60 Minutes

After a workout there’s a nice increase in insulin sensitivity for the body, which means that even if you go heavy at night with the carbs, you’ll be a lot less prone to storing fat. There’s two ways you can use this fact to your advantage: either do more frequent but lower volume workouts, and/or have your higher carbohydrate days on days that you workout as a form of carb cycling.

The second benefit to shorter workouts is that cortisol, a stress hormone designed to break down tissue (including muscle) for use in a fight or flight response, starts to rise dramatically after roughly an hour in the gym. If you keep cortisol lower, you’ll find that you recover more quickly, put less stress on the adrenal glands, and ultimately get better results.

6.4. Get Stressful People Out Of Your Life

If you have stressful people out of your life, be 100% honest with yourself about what you want and what you expect out of others in your life. Set some standards. If they don’t meet them, have a talk with them.

Anybody who consistently spikes your stress hormones or doesn’t make you feel positive and pumped up is someone who you should NOT be spending hours and hours associating with.

6.5. Use Adaptogenic Herbs

There’s some pretty cool research on traditional Chinese medicine when it comes to supplements and adrenal support.

Two supplements that I’ve found to be quite effective in stimulating the adrenal glands and supporting their function is Licorice Root Tea and Ashwaghanda Root. Adaptogenic herbs are best rotated to achieve the best effect, and there’s many more than these two but they seemed to work best for me.

I ran them in 30-day rotations, starting with the Ashwaghanda Root at 500 mg dosing first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, and then after 30-days rotating to having the Licorice Root Tea as a pre-bed ritual that I would simmer with a cinnamon stick for some extra taste and health benefit. I actually got so used to this ritual that I had to switch out to another herbal tea because I found it was super relaxing before bed to have some.

7. Stick To The Plan (Especially The First 30 Days!)

I found if I got out of the groove (for example a few months after I started the plan, I went to Las Vegas for a 4 or 5 day trip and ate normally), it was a good amount of willpower needed to get back in the zone. When I got back from Vegas it just seemed to take a whole lot more mental energy to do the same amount of eating prep and avoiding certain foods that I was doing on autopilot before I left.

If you’re going to do it, do it. Don’t second guess, don’t try to tweak things when you’re not even a week in. In short, do your research, create the plan, then execute. Don’t screw around with it until you have some tangible feedback on how it’s working with your body AFTER the adaptation stage (which will take a week to two weeks for your body to get used to this style of eating), and then letting it do it’s work. Wait at least four weeks before making changes.

8. You Have A 4-Hour Window – Use It

When I look at eating logs or people trying the diet, often times as soon as their window opens, they stuff themselves in an hour or hour and a half. You do have four hours, so it’s okay to space things out.

A very cool effect on this diet is when you break the fast or undereating portion, you will literally feel your metabolism jacking up. Meat sweats have nothing on breaking a Warrior Diet fast! Use that blast furnace of a metabolism and stoke it continually over the 4 hour window rather than smothering all immediately.

9. What To Eat And When To Eat It

As far as nutrient importance, that’s going to ultimately come down to your personal goals, but I’ll assume it’s probably putting on some muscle while burning some fat in problem areas.

In that case, you’ll likely want to highlight most of your protein in the first chunk of the meal (I think 100-150g of protein is plenty at this meal. If you’re abiding by the above tips on absorption, food quality, and avoiding foods that trigger food allergies or systemic inflammation, you should be golden.) This protein should be WHOLE FOOD, with a good quality meat being ideal.

The first chunk of the window can be a more balanced meal with green veggies, healthy fats, and a good infusion of carbs. The only carbs that I would really suggest (and to really limit any digestion issues, or lots of fat gain) would be root vegetables like sweet potatoes or parsnips.

Sweet potatoes done up in the oven just wrapped in tinfoil are my favourite – delicious and no clean up! Note that you can get a ton of different varieties of sweet potatoes at Asian markets. Although I eat a lot of orange ones, there’s one’s that are beige, white, and even purple (another favourite)! All of these are a good carb source, but rotating them is also a great idea because they contain a bunch of different antioxidants and nutrients.

After this first portion is done, if you really want to optimize digestion and nutrient absorption, I would go for a 15 or 20 minute short walk to help stimulate proper glucose transportation. Prior to the walk I would also eat a selection of the foods listed in the next section that help stimulate digestion.

After an hour or hour and a half wait, I would repeat with some smaller slightly portions. Some healthy protein, healthy fats, more carbs if you want, and definitely add in some green veggies to aid digestion.

10. Use Digestive Enzymes or Whole Foods That Help Digestion

If you’ve ever gone to a Brazilian Steakhouse (my absolute favourite type of restaurant by the way, basically all you can eat meat), most of them serve grilled pineapple with the meat servings. There’s a reason for this – pineapple contains a digestive enzyme called bromelain which can dramatically help breakdown meat and increase nutrient absorption.

Turns out there are a few other foods like this. Papaya has a similar enzyme called papain that can stimulate this digestion. I hate the taste of papaya so would personally opt for papaya extract capsules if I was going this route, but some people like it.

Ginger is another potent digestive aid. You can use shredded ginger to intelligently spice up a salad, use pickled ginger like you find at most sushi restaurants (that’s the faded pink stuff they give out with the wasabi), or try some of the herbal ginger teas you can find at any health food stores.

If pressed for time, the easiest solution compared to dicing up some fresh pineapple is to just grab some digestive enzymes from a health food store or online. I opt for the whole food route myself (using pineapple and ginger), but have heard great things about the NOW brand of digestive enzymes.

Hammer it in your head that it’s not what you EAT but what you ABSORB that is going to lead to optimal results, so make sure your digestion is keyed in.

11. Don’t Eat Shit and Justify It By Saying “I Need the Calories”

Eating crappy quality foods, sugars or heavily processed shit is going to heavily impair your progress. This stuff slogs down your digestion, impairs your immune system, and is a quick way to stress out the digestive tract, dampening your nutrient absorption is quick fashion.

If you need calories, the easiest route is usually packing in quality foods – opt for fattier cuts of meat, whole eggs, use healthy oils on everything, coconut products, and nut butters. There’s no short cuts though – if you need the calories, it does take work!

Again, if you’re using all of the above tips, your absorption capacity should be pretty much maxed out, and you will end up actually needing to eat less calories to grow.

Even before the Warrior Diet, I always hated being in a weight gain phase because I would need to pack down well over 5,000 calories day after day to make the scale budge, and I really had no appetite.

After learning what I’m sharing in this article, it turns out that my digestive health was absolutely terrible. When I would go out of my way to eat some cookies or ice cream and then justify it as extra needed calories, it was just causing the problem to become worse. Clean it up!

12. Don’t Lose Sight of Why This Works

I see the Warrior Diet as more of a flexible framework of eating rather than a strict, set-in-stone protocol. There’s lots of ways to get results on this plan, so don’t get stuck in thinking that because I said something, or someone else said that there was a certain way to do it that it’s the best. Especially in the last few weeks as I’ve seen a certain website try to cash in on this intermittent fasting/Warrior Diet trend by pushing supplements and saying that without them, you would fail!

This way of eating works because of a few reasons.

12.1. Optimizes Anabolic/Catabolic Timing

It’s tapping into the natural rhythm of the anabolic and catabolic rhythms of the body. Unless you’re on a boatload of steroids, you’re never going to be building muscle on a 24/7 basis. There are certain times of the day, most strongly in the evening and first part of sleep, where you are most anabolic, and this diet helps make those environments of strong anabolism even stronger.

12.2. Rebound Effect

It utilizes the rebound effect of increased nutrient absorption and protein synthesis following a period of fasting or undereating. This helps add to those anabolic time periods by ensuring an awesome flood of nutrients.

12.3. Quality and Absorption

You’re getting enough high quality food and have optimized your digestion to the point of being able to absorb a high amount of it to be used.

In Closing…

If the previous 3,000+ words didn’t satisfy your taste for the Warrior Diet, you’re either dramatically overanalyzing things, or just a mere spectator to this way of eating and haven’t actually tried it yourself. Please don’t ask the ‘What if’ questions – what you’re really asking if you ask that is ‘Will it work for ME’ and the answer I would give you is – I have no idea, go try it!

Let’s get the dialogue rolling in the comments section. Have you tried the Warrior Diet yet? Struggles? Success stories?

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12 Ways To Optimize The Warrior Diet For The Best Results

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