Strength & Conditioning >> An example of genetics regarding diet (mine)

big_slacker - I have a lot of slop in my diet too while still being lean too. But I did start having diet related health problems and have had to make some serious changes. Also late 30's.

When someone is lean and muscular generally they are fairly healthy regardless of what they eat. It's the skinny fat people that usually have poor health due to poor diet. How we look has more to do with how our bodies react(insulin wise) to the food we eat. 

Besides Leigh is active enough that I am sure he fairly healthy. 

Flying knee - 

big_slacker - I have a lot of slop in my diet too while still being lean too. But I did start having diet related health problems and have had to make some serious changes. Also late 30's.

What happened?

big_slacker -

Flying knee - 

big_slacker - I have a lot of slop in my diet too while still being lean too. But I did start having diet related health problems and have had to make some serious changes. Also late 30's.

What happened?

Low white blood cell count, rising cholesterol, all day fatigue that got really bad in the afternoon, decreased libido, joint pain, mucus/sinus drain and generally being a bastard (although the last may not be diet related).

big_slacker - I wasn't training excessively. The doc didn't give me diet advice, they actually said nothing was wrong with me despite the numbers (I had just moved, this was my first and last visit to them) and I should see a shrink, haha! I'm a pretty happy guy and they were all fat and pale so I declined their advice.

I basically just made a mental note of how I was feeling after each meal, fairly intuitive. Whey protein, red meat (lean ground beef) and junk food were the big culprits. Around the same time I read about a guy with a similar story who went from couch potato to ultra endurance athlete in a short period by going vegan. I didn't want to do that, but I did decide to cut way back on the red meat (kept it mostly to fish for dinner and occasional chicken) and switch from whey to hemp protein. I also started doing a greens shake in the morning.

It only took a couple of weeks of that for me to not need my 2-3 energy drinks a day, I dropped them almost completely. About a month later I was on a business trip and really didn't want to cook fish at the hotel so I decided to give the full on vegan thing a try. Haven't looked back since then. All day energy, lower food bill, blood work better than it was, etc... The only issue was vitamin D (vegan + seattle weather) which is easy enough to supplement.

I'm not saying everyone needs to go hippy but certainly more fruits/veggies and less junk food is gonna benefit everyone.

props on Rich Roll reference.

as bad monkey said lean does not equal healthy ALWAYS but it's still a good indication of one's health. Where I think this begins to dissipate is approaches like lean gains where MB doesn't stress eating clean as long as you fast (he talks about eating cheese cake etc). So whilst he may be lean as heck doesn't mean his blood work is all that. Supposedly, many people talk about poor blood work while implementing lean gains. Dr. Berardi speaks about this and the reasons for it in the IF e-book I had the link for but keep in mind he's also eating pretty clean/healthy while implementing it except for one day week where he just eats whatever.

As Leigh said don't ever copy and paste a diet. So even though it's working for him (to stay lean) it doesn't mean it will work for you. A lot of folks would see this and say "wow I can eat crap and be lean?" without taking into the account what he said about genetics. Which is where I think "cookie cutter diets" actually help people IF THERE'S AN EXPLANATION BEHIND IT.

I recently had my first noticable food hang over a couple of days ago. We had pizza for supper and I felt absolutely horrible all the next day.