‘Vertical diet’… sounds new? This diet is based on whole foods loaded with essential nutrients. This is also a gut health optimizer. This muscle building diet is specifically crafted for athletes who wish to get bigger and stronger muscle mass. This diet does not apply to people who wish to lose weight. Vertical diet aims to improve gut health so that the body can utilize the maximum nutrients from foods. Main focuses of this diet on quality and easy-to-digest foods.
Who Invented This Vertical Diet?
The answer is Stan Efferding. He is known as a WHITE RHINO. Bodybuilder Stan said, “The vertical diet is a performance-based nutritional framework that starts with a solid foundation of highly bioavailable micronutrients which supports a structure of easily digestible macronutrients that can be adjusted specifically to meet your body’s demand.”
Why is it Known as a Vertical Diet?
Imagine an upside down ‘T.’ The diet’s functionality follows the structure of upside down ‘T.’ The diet base consists of micronutrients like spinach, milk, potatoes, vegetables, and carrots. You need to have these foods in smaller quantities only to gain the nutrients, not calories.
The central part of the vertical diet’s nutrition comes from the vertical tail of ‘T.’ This part is essentially made of red meat and white/brown rice. Gradually the rice-quantity increases along with days with this diet.
Nutrition partition in Vertical Diet
Nutritional partition is the utilization of the maximum amount of nutrition from foods by the body. This diet focuses on the optimization of nutrition partitioning. This diet is mainly made of easily digestible and nutrient-dense foods.
How do you count the total calories?
This is calculating on the workload and BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). Vertical diet always focuses on low-fat and carb-enriched foodstuffs.
Fat: 0.3 grams/ pound (body weight)
Protein: 1 grams/ pound (body weight)
Carbohydrates: The amount of calorie you burnt – (Protein +Fat +Voila)
If your weight is 200lb and you burn daily 3000 calories, the expression of the vitals would be,
Protein: Two hundred grams per 800 calories
Fat: Sixty grams per 540 calories
Carbohydrates: Four hundred fifteen grams per 1660 calories
This low-fat diet is specifically for the athlete who wants to gain weight and increase activity level. This diet is not at all for weight loss purposes.
Is Vertical Diet Beneficial?
This diet includes almost all the major food groups. If you are vegetarian or vegan, you can’t have it as it includes non-vegetarian foodstuffs.
Foods to add List in Vertical diet
Vertical diet includes more rice and red meat rather than the FODMAP foodstuffs. Red meat is one of the most nutrient-dense foods. This is loaded with zinc, heme-iron, Vitamin D, creatine, healthy fats, and magnesium.
Legumes and leafy green veggies are also part of this diet plan as they are the best natural sources of magnesium. Besides these foodstuffs, animal products like fatty fish, butter, and broth and plant sources like carrot, fruits, bell pepper, and potatoes are also added to this diet plan for their nutritional value.
See: The Top 5 Scientifically Proven Vegan Diet Health Benefits
At a glance –
- Line-caught salmon
- Hormone-free chicken
- Full-fat dairy
- Red meat (grass-fed beef and bison)
- Unprocessed fat and beef tallow
- Fruits (Low FODMAP)
- Low-gas forming vegetables (cucumber, bell pepper, and spinach)
- Soaked oats or sprouted legumes (tiny quantities)
Foods toAvoid List in Vertical Diet
Oats: Unless fermented and soaked, that reduces anti-nutrients.
Grains: This diet excludes pasta, bread, and cereals as they are the authentic sources of gluten and phytic-acid.
Vegetable oils (Processed): As enriched with omega-6-fatty-acid, it increases the chances of heart problems, obesity, and inflammation.
See: 7 Days Cardiac Diet Meal Plan Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner Ideas
Legumes: Legumes resist digestion as they are the sources of lectins (Carbohydrate-binding-proteins).
Sugar alcohol: Diet-ice-creams and protein bars are often contain natural sweeteners like xylitol and erythritol. These cause indigestion.
Coffee: Coffee often causes dehydration. Thus it impairs the digestion process.
Onion and garlic: These are considered under FODMAP foodstuffs.
High-raffinose-vegetable: Asparagus, broccoli, and cauliflower are considered as high-raffinose-vegetable. These vegetables sometimes form a gas.
See: Advance Health for All ~ Top 10 Things to Consider
You find the term FODMAP diet or foods repeatedly in this article. You might be wondering what it is? These are the fermented-carbohydrates. This diet is not for the people suffering from digestive discomforts and disorders.
FODMAP stands for Fermentable Oligo-Di-Mono-saccharides and Polyols. These are the short-chained-carbohydrates. These are unfriendly for people with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome). These foods remain undigested during the digestion process, and the gut-bacteria forms gas using the FODMAP as the fuel. As they are difficult to digest, Stan eliminates these from the Vertical diet.
Pros of Vertical Diet
- Focuses on the low carb that helps to reduce unnecessary weight gain.
- Variety is monotonous and limited. That is also helpful to cut down the unnecessary weight gain.
- It contains low-FODMAP foodstuffs. That reduces the symptoms of various bowel discomforts and disorders such as IBS and improves gut functionalities.
- See 20 Home Remedies to Lose Weight Fast without Exercise
Cons of Vertical Diet
- As you select the premium quality proteins and other nutrients loaded foods, the foods become costly.
- This diet is scanty with less-fibrous foods.
- The limited and monotonous food variety might lead to a nutrition deficiency.
Ultimate Guideline about Vertical Diet
This is true that dietitians still hesitate to prescribe such a high portion of red meat, though this is essential to enhance the athletes’ strength. Though this is a low-fat diet, the amount of red meat is controversial. Many suggest that if you can digest the legumes, you should add legumes to the regular diet.
Also read : The Complete Nutritional Balanced Vegan Diet and Meal Plan
On the other side, if an athlete consumes high-fiber, high FODMAP, high fat, and a considerable quantity of foods, they can’t deliver their performance. A weight-lifter or power-lifter regularly consumes 12000 calories. A vertical diet is the trustworthy source of that requirement. This diet also helps in the muscle building and strengthening of the athletes.
If you as an athlete follow this diet strictly, you will get huge benefits than the drawbacks. You still can feel hungry after the vertical diet schedule. Then you can add another small meal between the prescribed meals or increase the rice and red meat portion.
Besides enhancing the athletes’ performance, this diet is essentially beneficial for hormonal deficiency correction, gut health improvement, and energy-stamina-endurance improvement.