EatQOD

This is a diet by a physician who comes primarily from a Sports medicine background, and his diet is woven around an exercise program.

Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1578262038

It is fairly complicated. The ideas are similar to those in Fred Hatfield's zig-zag diet. Basically, eat many small meals throughout the day, but on alternate days, or using one of a variety of schedules, limit carbs and calories.

The calorie restriction on the OFF days (to use QOD terminology) is designed no never go below 8 x the body weight, so 1600 calories for a 200 lb person.

Carbs are restricted to 3 levels, A (300 grams/day), B (200 g/day) and C (100 g/day). One should avoid "refined carbs" all of the time. Also avoid large meals, to keep from dumping excess calories to fat, and have some protein at each meal. Eat 5-6 x/day.

Then he has a number of 6-week regimens, where he varies both the proportion of low carb days/week and also the severity of the carb restriction on the low carb days.

For men he recommends 2 normal carb days and 5 low-carb days per week, (2-5 schedule) and then progressively lowering carbs from 300 (A,) to 200 (B), to 100 g/day (C). So you can really play around a lot with how much calories and carb restriction you need.

So according to his diet, QOD would be a 3.5-3.5 schedule, with level C carb restriction on the low calorie/carb days.

The thing I like about this diet is, QOD is pretty rigid - ON/OFF, etc. I've always wondered about playing around and doing more than 15 OFF days per month, for example.

One problem with the diet is, that there are so many options and choices, that unless you're very disciplined and organized, it can get to be a bit confusing. Plus, I think at his recommended calorie levels, it might be tough to keep the weight off, but he's apparently trained a number of athletes, and the concepts are sound, although he does get into a lot of areas such as hormones and testosterone, where to me, the evidence in established literature is not very clear.

I also like the fact that Dr. Malkov talks about the phasic nature of food intake, and the idea of glycogen stores, and the importance of not eating huge meals when glycogen stores are full up. The emphasis on exercise and weight training is also very salutary. In a way, this diet is similar to the "Eating Man's Diet" by Thomas Sharkey, but with more options, and with an emphasis on carbs.

I also agree with the emphasis on carbs. Even when eating every other day, I found that if I eat a lot of breads and carbs during the ON day, weight loss seems to stop.

Another point that influenced me is, diets like Malkov's (Carb Cycling) and Hatfields (Zig-Zag), that come out of a sports medicine paradigm, all emphasize the importance of taking in a fair amount of protein every day. A lot of the crowd at groups/yahoo.com/group/fasting apparently take in no protein on the OFF days, and in the One-Day-Diet, although they add some protein to their wafers, I'm not sure it's enough.

This is an interesting book - the ideas are a bit confusing as presented. The book needs some good editing, and maybe some simplification of the numerous options would also help. But it's clear that a number of people are looking at not only the amount of calories you take in and the type of calories as protein/fat/carbs, but also, how you time intake not only within the day, but from day to day.

WHAT TO LEARN FROM CARB-CYCLING DIET?
Maybe an ON-day/OFF-day approach is not necessarily best for everyone. We can shuffle ON and (sort of) OFF days in many different ways, and perhaps still have a benefit.


JT