Get the book: http://RunningAFEVER.com/tb12book
This weekend is Superbowl 53. For those not in the United States, that’s the championship game of American style football.
One of the quarterbacks is Tom Brady, who many consider to be the greatest of all time. He is 41, is in his 19th season with the New England Patriots. His stats in the post season are unmatched: He holds 13 super bowl records, this being his 9th appearance, the most of any NFL player in history. He holds 20 post season records and 9 regular season records.
When a man is this successful, everyone wants to know his secret. Obviously, there is no one thing that anyone can do to be as successful as Tom Brady. But he has revealed his diet, which he calls TB12 (12 being the number he wears as a player), in a book by the same name. The book is actually called “The TB12 Method” and is more than just a diet book. It covers exercise, hydration, nutrition, training and recovery, and even mental fitness. We’ll get into a lot of this in the coming weeks, but for now, let’s cover the diet part:
The Basics:
1. Eat real, organic, local food. Local food is fresh. even fruits and veg you get in the groc. may have been frozen and thawed more than once.
2. Eat mostly vegetables.
3. Eat seasonally – we need more meat and fat in the winter, more greens and fruits in the summer.
4. Consume essential fatty acids. They carry oxygen, stabilize body temperature, and absorb fat-soluble nutrients.
5. Eat foods high in fiber. This reduces risk of heart disease, hypertension, cancer and gastro-intestinal disease.
6. Eat a variety of foods. Different foods have different nutrients, even different kinds of greens or different kinds of apples.
7. Don’t eat refined carbs – avoid spikes in blood sugar. Tom says “I try to avoid eating anything that comes in a box or a bag.” (273)
8. Avoid trans fats and saturated fats.
9. Limit dairy foods, they increases inflamation in the digestive tract.
10. Limit salt, it reduces the ability to eliminate toxins from cells.
11. Limit nightshades (mushrooms, eggplants, potatoes, strawberries, bell peppers, etc.). This is not a big deal for most people, but causes enough inflamation that he avoids them.
12. Limit caffeine to no more than 2 cups of coffee. It is related to a wide range of health problems, edginess and stress.
13. Limit alcohol – it contains lots of sugar, so creates inflamation.
Some other tricks:
1. Leave the table 75% full (where have we heard that before?).
2. Eat healthy foods first. Don’t eat so much lobster that you don’t have room for your broccoli.
3. Don’t eat 3 hours before bed. Your body needs time to metabolize the food you have eaten that day.
4. Eat more nutrient-dense meals so you don’t get hungry. Eat fruit and other healthy snacks.
A primary goal of the TB12 diet is reducing or preventing inflamation, which is caused by acidifying foods and reduced by alkalyzing foods. However, acids are needed, they are the building blocks of the protein that in turn builds muscle and essential minerals.
Check out the next episode for more about Tom Brady’s TB12 Diet.
Recorded January 26, 2019.
Weight (change since Jan 2018): 200 (-74)
Workout time: 106 Minutes
Total Distance (total since Nov 2017): 5.83 Miles (408.37)
Steps: 13,127
Muscle Mass (change since Aug 2018): 152.17 (+9)
Body Fat: 23.8%
Daily Sleep Duration 7-day Avg: 6 hours
2019 Goal: 15% Body Fat
The featured photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en). The author is Jeffrey Beall.