Diet Management Specialist

Diet Management: Why and how

Part 1: Nutrition in the Animal Kingdom

The complexity and confusion in both understanding and applying modern nutritional science come from looking at the human diet as something special that needs to be perfectly adjusted to give results. The diets of all animals are determined by their biology, physiology, and lifestyle. By looking at humans as a type of animal and analyzing them in this manner, we can easily establish the most important rules that human diets should follow. This allows us to simplify the vast information in the market and pick what makes sense and works. This also gives us a way to introduce the correct amount of diet flexibility needed.

Learning Objective:

To establish basic rules of nutrition that will enable the student to filter relevant and correct diet strategies from misinformation

Content:

1. The food web: The importance of the food chain and nutrient density
2. Cellular energy and nutrient needs
3. Additional energy requirements for Multi Cellular life- Aerobic respiration
4. Energy requirements of complex body systems- Energy economy of organisms
5. Energy requirements of digestion vs activity- Tradeoffs and strategies in the animal kingdom: Cows, big cats, whales, primates and dogs
6. Metabolism in Branches of the family tree and its relationship to body and brain size
7. Herbivours vs Carnivours: Why are omnivours rare?
8. Lifestyle and nutrition

Part 2: Human Evolution and Nutrition

With the knowledge of how nature determines the nutritional needs of animals, we can start from the beginning and figure out what is different about human nutritional needs. In this section, we will begin at the start of human evolution and see how evolution slowly separated us from our ape relatives, covering the major landmarks in human evolution, at least as far as nutrition is concerned. With each step, came a change in our diets and way of life. By tracking these changes until modern man, we can easily use the simple rules established in the previous section to determine what human diets should consist of and what is important, and what is not. This will lead to a deeper understanding of the origins of human diets which will allow us to apply nutritional rules in a consistent and result-producing manner.

Learning Objective:

To understand how and why human diets differ from other animals.

To establish the critical features of a successful and healthy human diet

Content:

1. Primates and apes: Lifestyle, dentistry, brains and grasping hands
2. Fermentation: Uric acid and dental adaptations
3. Cutting and tool use
4. Sweating, temperature regulation, bipedalism, and energy efficiency
5. Meat eating and bigger brains
6. Fire and clothing
7. Cooking
8. Hunting and gathering and human energy efficiency: Child mortality, immunity, and lifespan
9. The agricultural revolution: Rise of diseases and adult mortality
10. The industrial revolution: Sleep, Work and stress patterns
11. The modern era: Lifestyles changes, food availability, and artificial foods that skew nutrient vs calorie density

Part 3: Creating and managing Diet plans

By now, you should have a deep understanding of how human nutrition and metabolism work. In this section, you will be given the guiding rules to make correct diet plans and then understand how to wade through the sea of nutritional content and select the approaches most likely to work. Once we have an eagle-eye view of the diet options and tools available to us, we will do a deep dive into modifying and correcting diets for both special cases and as a diet plan progresses.

Learning Objective:

To be able to create base templates for your clients and then modify them according to their responses and special needs.

Content:

1. Critical takeaways about human nutrition and lifestyle: The China study vs Eskimos
2. Rules of diet planning: Understanding the difference between rules for health and rules for transformation
3. The process of creating a diet plan: Idealized case study
4. Troubleshooting a diet plan: Dealing with metabolic adaptation
5. Dealing with special cases: Diabetes, Hypertension, PCOD/PCOS, Metabolic syndrome, athletes/lifters and obesity
6. Making compromises for practical constraints
7. Base building/ Health diet plans
8. Peaking/Transformation plans
9. Transitioning between types of diet plans
10. Hydration and basic supplementation
11. Fad diets and their origins: Weightloss/Transformation vs health
12. Diet logging and hacks