Is The Spartan Diet a Weight-Loss Diet?
The answer is actually more interesting that you might guess.
The answer is: yes and no.
If you’re overweight, you’ll almost certainly lose weight on the Spartan Diet and achieve an optimal, healthy weight naturally as you adhere to the whole program. But the weight loss comes as a result of fixing what was broken by getting to the root cause of what causes the body to be fat in the first place. Through optimization of eating nourishing foods and taking care of yourself by following the whole spectrum of Spartan Diet prescriptions, you'll notice improvements and changes in your metabolism generally, and this includes the normalization of weight.
But weight loss is not by itself the goal of the Spartan Diet. The goal is total health and wellbeing, and weight loss is a happy side-effect for people who are overweight. To oversimplify, excess weight results (by definition) from an imbalance. Most fad or dogmatic diets offer weight loss by creating another imbalance, neglecting important and nutritious food groups or imposing "hacks" that trick the body into ketosis. The Spartan Diet corrects the imbalances that cause excess weight by creating balance, which naturally boosts your immune and metabolic systems so they can perform optimally.
Most people believe, and many "experts" will actually say, that weight gain is the result of taking in more calories than burned, as if the spectacularly complex biochemistry of metabolism was comparable to filling up the car with gas.
Different foods affect metabolism in different ways. The calorie content of food is just one factor. Another is the biophysics of food. "Soft food," such as the majority of industrial processed foods, lead to more weight gain than "rough food," such as whole, raw, natural foods, even if the biochemistry is similar and the calories are the same.
Diets high in bad fats and refined sugars radically alter the composition of intestinal bacteria in a way that leads to more weight gain than eating identical calories that didn't modify the gut ecosystem.
Non-food chemicals commonly added to industrial food products can significantly affect weight as well. Chemicals in artificial sweeteners added to diet soda, ironically, can contribute to weight gain, even when the soda itself has zero calories. Other chemicals can enter the body in ways other than through food, and have unpredictable effects on metabolism.
The average Western woman applies literally hundreds of chemicals to her body every day by the application of shampoos, skin lotions, make-up, deodorant, perfume, face creams, nail polish, toothpaste and other “beauty” products. Many of these chemicals make their way into the bloodstream and may cause havoc in the body. A poor or bad diet lacking in healthy foods combined with food chemicals and other environmental toxins will almost certainly cause a host of health issues. Ultimately, these chemicals throw off the human body’s ability to function well, resulting in underperforming immune and metabolic systems and alter the balance and populations of gut microbes. The latest research and experts point out that having a healthy gut flora is integral to well being and a strong immune system.
The total and unpredictable combination of dietary imbalance, as well as unhealthy chemicals from food, the environment and from everyday consumer products can lead to hormonal imbalance in women which can contribute to irregular menstruation, infertility, obesity, hypothyroidism, breast tumors, early menopause, metabolic syndrome, hair loss, depression, fibromyalgia, stress, autoimmune disorders and unhealthy pregnancies and other health issues.
Men also experience a host of health issues as a result of eating a diet of unhealthy chemicals, preservatives, sweeteners, emulsifiers and other biologically incompatible additives that are common in many industrially processed conventional and organic foods and fast foods and sugary drinks. Obesity, infertility, premature hair loss and aging, prostate problems, skin issues, poor libido, hemorrhoids, insomnia, backaches, mood disorders, depression, weakness, heart disease, diabetes and cancer are some of the health issues that are common among men and which often have dietary or lifestyle causes.
For children who eat nutrient poor diets, sit in front of a TV, laptop or tablet for hours everyday and also play with toys full of lead, PVC, BPA, the consequences are even more tragic. Very young children tend to enjoy the healthiest foods and have fun with healthy toys and activities, but adults sometimes push bad health on children by making uninformed choices. In the most extreme cases, these choices can impose on children stunted growth, behavioral problems, cognitive issues, underdevelopment of the brain, childhood obesity, diabetes, heart disease and even cancer. A poor start in childhood can magnify and accelerate health problems teen and adult men and women suffer from.
In addition to a bad diet, there are many factors that impact health negatively. Stress, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, inadequate intake of sunshine and other non-dietary factors can lead to weight gain and a host of other health related issues as well.
Most dieters wonder: How can I discover the secret of how to take in fewer calories than I burn? This is the wrong question. The right question is: What's overriding my natural born system for maintaining healthy weight?
Healthy newborn babies enter the world with a complete, lifelong set of self-regulating systems designed to keep everything in balance. Our bodies maintain balance in temperature, blood water levels, blood pH, blood pressure, blood salt levels, sleep and the elimination of wastes. The human body is magnificent at simultaneously maintaining balance of hundreds of sub-systems throughout life. Calories in, calories burned is another system the human body is great at balancing. Our taste and olfactory senses are programmed to enjoy foods that keep us healthy. The hunger-satiety cycle tells us when to eat and when to stop – at least it does until we interfere with it.
If we gain weight, it doesn't mean we're not effectively counting calories. It means our metabolism has been broken. Usually this damage is caused by factors that our DNA never anticipated. Industrial foods are incompatible with human biology. Drugs, personal care products and everyday household cleaning products are loaded with chemicals and weird substances our bodies don't really know what to do with. Nature never anticipated, and therefore did not prepare us for, sitting all day, drinking liquid sugar, lacking sun exposure, being away from nature, and other behaviors very new to human culture. These kinds of actions in combination and over time break our system for maintaining weight, and our bodies can no longer maintain balance. We gain weight. We get fat. We get sick.
Worse, many of these factors are mutually reinforcing actions. Bad food causes stress, and stress motivates people to eat bad food. Lack of sleep leads to weight gain, and overweight people don’t sleep as well. Bad food increases the risk of depression, and depression increases the likelihood of eating bad food. Eating fatty, sugary junk food stimulates cravings for fatty, sugary junk food. Lack of exercise makes people lose sleep, feel depressed and crave junk food all of which reduces a motivation for exercise.
If you simply cut calories, or embrace some gimmicky fad diet – in other words try to lose weight without bringing your physical body into balance – sooner or later the weight will come back. And worse, you’ll knock things further out of whack. Weight-loss dieting simply piles on another weight-gaining trigger. Faking health through weight loss is a losing proposition, and an unworthy goal. A vastly superior goal is to actually achieve lifelong health, and healthy weight is just one part of that equation.
Most weight-loss schemes barely scratch the surface of what’s really causing excess weight, which is an entire lifestyle that breaks our bodies. The Spartan Diet solution is not weight loss tips, or tricks or gimmicks. The Spartan diet solution is to fix everything by getting to the root cause of your health issues: eat healthy and live healthfully to be maximally healthy.
Is the Spartan Diet a weight loss diet? The answer is yes: If you’re overweight you’ll lose weight on the Spartan Diet. And the answer is also no: It's beyond a weight-loss diet.
Recipe: Spartan Cashew Milk
In addition to being far healthier than cow's or store-bought nut milks, Spartan cashew milk tastes a lot better, too!
Spartan Cashew Milk is ideal on Spartan Muesli (recipe coming soon) and will be specified as an ingredient in many Spartan Diet recipes. Spartan Cashew Milk is great on any kind of hot cereal, too, or used in preparing dishes that normally call for the use milk or nut milks.
It’s also delicious with coffee liqueur or in your favorite smoothie or beverage that calls for milk or cream.