Plague of Strength

Clearly, no one who’s familiar with this blog could possibly be unfamiliar with the ketogenic diet, about which I’ve written extensively.  Though I’ve detailed it in all of its myriad forms and outlined my personal methods for its use in the Apex Predator Diet series, I’ve neither tried nor considered doing a traditional ketogenic diet.  My reasons for this are mostly logical and partly just a concession to the fact that eating nothing but meat gets fucking boring after a while, but in the end I’d never found enough evidence compelling enough to get me to consider trying a TKD any moreso than I would start taking TKD lessons at the local karate dojo in an effort to learn “self-defense”.  That is, until now.  Meet Jamie Caporosso, a psychotic who gave up pizza for an entire year just because fuck pizza.  I’d been waiting for his follow up reply to post this badboy, but I’m awaiting input from a collaborator on another blog series and so I figured I’d just ppost this bitch so we can debate the shit amongst ourselves.

While I know a little about you from checking out your website, would you mind filling in my readers on who you are, critical stats, favorite porn star, and whatever else you think is pertinent?

My name is Jamie Caporosso, I have been a competitive Drug Free powerlifter for over 20 years. I have lifted both equipped and RAW. I have ranked pretty high equipped back in the day when Powerlifting USA used to post the top 100. I have also dabbled in some strongman competitions and recently started adding in CrossFit for conditioning. I have a BS in Clinical Laboratory Science, minor in biology from the University of Michigan. I run the blog Paleo for Power with my training partner Darilyn Doddy. Porn Star? I used to really like Chasey Lane back in the day. No real favorites now.

I had only heard of Chasey Lain from the Bloodhound Gang song “Ballad of Chasey Lain”, but I’ll go ahead and approve this message.  So, from what I gather from your site, you’re at least somewhat affiliated with Crossfit, and one would assume from the name of your site you at least started out as a paleo diet advocate.  Upon closer inspection, it looks like you’re a powerlifter who keto diets.  Did you start out going one way and switch midstream?

Yeah, As a matter of fact I am opening a Crossfit gym, PFPCrossfit, with my training partner Darilyn Doddy. I used to make fun of it. Then I tried it. I loved it. I found a bunch of new ways to push my self… not just get stronger. Now I had speed, flexibility, endurance, coordination, agility etc.

I started out with just standard paleo. Now I practice what I call keto-paleo, (book coming next year). I was actually very anti-paleo in the beginning as I was programmed by some very good marketing as well as being misinformed. I’ll try and Cliff’s Notes this for you as to how I got started with paleo. It was around the time my daughter was born (She’ll be 6 Oct 26th, 2013).  I was taking a long hard look at my mortality. I wanted to be strong and healthy. In a yearly physical with my doctor, he looked at me and said you know there is a direct correlation between belly fat and heart disease. I was like “what?” He knew I was a big strong powerlifter. Why would he say that? I was really close to 250 lbs at 5’11”.  Well, I made a decision to drop some weight. I started looking at bodybuilder diets. It made sense to me. That’s what they do. Lose fat. Why not utilize their knowledge?

In a conversation with a friend of mine he said that it sounded like my real goal was not only weight loss but more interested in optimal health. Yeah, OK, I am. If you want to perform at your best you should be as healthy as you can possibly be. Turned me on to a book called Neanderthin. As far as I know the first published book on the idea of a paleo diet or as I like to say now, “A Natural Human Diet” After that I read and read and read. Until one day I decided to lean into it. Weight continued to drop off but more importantly the healthy kicked in. My asthma went away, my arthritis went away, my blood work turned completely around and I got stronger.

Now for switching to keto was a byproduct of researching and realizing the biology these bodybuilders were doing to get lean. Didn’t make sense that they eat a huge ass sweet potato/or oats with a huge glycemic load (not glycemic index, they are different things) then spend two hours on a step mill to burn through the sugar to get to the fat burning. Then a post workout carb load??? With a slow digesting Carbohydrate? Why not a fasted one? So you can get your sugar and get your insulin back down instead of dragging it out for hours.

It just made more sense to go into nutritional ketosis, then use paleo criteria to avoid all the anti-nutrients, especially with the performance increase I read about in Phinney’s book. I have a few posts on this on my blog. I could type all damn day on the subject. One of our most popular posts is “Stop Carb Loading! There’s a better way!” I recommend that to everyone interested in nutritional ketosis.

You and I are pretty much the only two people on the planet who have actually read Neanderthin.  As I understand it, it’s been out of print forever, but I would contend that it is pretty much THE seminal paleo book.  If you combine that with Cordain’s academic work, every bit of information you need to know about why paleo dieting is the balls is right at your fingertips.  Unfortunately, most people (ATTENTION REDDITORS) either make up their own version of a paleo diet or read the watered down, for housewives only version.  It’s not the original paleo book, by the way- a much shittier book preceded it, though the name escapes me at the moment.   Back to paleo, what would you say are the two or three must have paleo books?  Down to the meat, sans potatoes- you’ve been in ketosis for half a year, correct?  Take us through why you decided to try this, and why you’re doing a traditional ketogenic diet in lieu of a cyclical ketogenic diet or a targeted ketogenic diet.  

I read a book by Dr. Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek called. The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance. The book made a lot of sense to me. He mostly worked with endurance athlete but the biology seemed to be very applicable for strength training. He research has shown that unless you get a full 4-6 weeks of nutritional ketosis you truly don’t get keto adapted. You won’t reach the full benefit. He says it’s like kinda going to Hawaii but stopping partway- you end up drowning in the Pacific.

Seems like a bit more of a ketogenic dieting book than a paleo diet book, but that works.  I’ve posted four or five useful paleo books in the past, so that’s just another to drop on top of the “to read” pile.  I didn’t realize Phinney had written a book- I think every decent keto study I’ve ever cited had him as an author though.  I’ll have to snag it when I grab this ridiculous Strength of Samson book I’ve been meaning to review.   Back to your comments, though, there are quite a few authors (all of them, I think) that contend that once one’s adapted to a ketogenic diet, they enter ketosis far more quickly than 4-6 weeks.  This is why they always recommend an initial two weeks to a month of keto dieting and then keto runs of about a week.  I’m assuming Phinney’s basing his recommendation on his work with testing cyclists on a ketogenic diet, but that seems to be too small a sample size to really base an entire dietary theory upon.  In any event, what does your typical macro breakdown look like?  I’ve seen the macros of your partner and they seem very low on protein and very high on fats.

Lots of fat, moderate protein, and low carbohydrates.  I’m usually around 165 grams of protein, 275g from fat, 20g from carbs.

Jesus fuck, your macros in no way resemble my own.  165 g of protein?  Why so little?  Expand on how you arrived at this nutrient profile, if you would.  If you’re curious about my horror at this, the basic way I structure my diet is double my bodyweight in grams of protein, then halve that for fat and keep my carbs under 30g a day.  That ends up not matching my total caloric intake exactly, but that’s how I do it as a general rule.  In practice, I generally am 220-300g fat, 374-434 protein, and 20g of carbs or less which puts me at around 55% fat, 40% protein, and 5% fat.  You’re rocking more like 20% protein, 75% fat, and 5% carbs with what appears to be tragically low levels of calories.  [Ed- he didn’t respond to this, so I’ll just fill you in on my thoughts here].  I’m not terribly clear on why this would be, because the highest fat diets in the paleo world are those of the Inuit, and even they eat at least 35% protein.  As such, that seems quizzically low.  

Nevertheless, I personally have not experimented with a traditional ketogenic diet much, save for a couple of months in college.  Instead, I’ve been following a cyclical ketogenic diet for the majority of the last 5 years, with brief breaks for sanity’s sake.  How in the hell are you managing the tedium of a traditional ketogenic diet?  Aren’t you bored fucking stiff with it? Additionally, I find that if I stay ketogenic too long that either my appetite disappears or it becomes unmanageable.  Have you encountered that at all?

 Eh, once you get over the fact that food is fuel and not entertainment it’s pretty easy. As soon as I hit that 6 week mark I feel like Superman. Energy high, recovery is fast, and I lean out quickly. Basically, I look and feel like an action figure.  When I hit that 6 month mark, all of my enzymes are supposed to be in full force and that’s when I noticed a big difference. I do plan on going off it in October as it’s my birthday and we are taking a family trip to Disney. From now on though, I really think I’ll stay in ketosis from Jan 1st-Oct 31st just for the health and performance reasons. Halloween is my birthday and I’ll probably just stay standard paleo until the holidays are over for convenience’s sake.

So, there you have it- it is possible to keto diet for insanely long stretches without dying or losing all of your gainz.  In July, Jamie hit a PR bench at age forty, 25 weeks into his ketogenic experiment, and seemed to thrive off the diet.  I have my issues with the structure of his diet, but if nothing else this shows that there is more than one way to skin every cat.  If you want to get into contact with Jamie Caporosso, grab some keto/paleo recipes, or get step by step instructions on how to build shit like plyoboxes, check out his site Paleo for Power.