The vertical diet

[jackie]

I've recently been watching a lot of Youtube videos featuring Brian Shaw (and a few other strongmen competitors), and they all seem to be eating the same diet. The diet is called "The Vertical Diet", and it was created (I believe) by Stan Efferding. The main constituents seem to be meat (beef and bison), and rice. Efferding says that buying steaks are a better choice than ground meat, as the ground meat typically comes from the scraps on the table that are left over after butchering the animal. However, Brian (and Stan) both seem to also eat a lot of ground bison, in addition to steaks.

My question is why? Why not just only eat beef steaks (or bison steaks)? You can grind up the steaks if you prefer to have it a little more looser for digestion. What does the ground bison add that they don't get from the steaks alone? Is this ground bison coming from better cuts than typical ground beef?

[strapping]

Strongmen (or more accurately, SHW strongmen) eat a lot of food and then eat some more. That is called breakfast. They repeat this for other meals.

If you eat a lot of food, you may have digestive issues. Eating foods that do not cause digestive discomfort for a given individual (e.g. beans) is common sense, not a revolutionary new diet. If people want to buy into that and whatever then by all means. The stuff about chicken being an inferior meat or steak/bison being better is generally just a whole lot of nothing. Eat a variety.

I will say, eating one kind of food (e.g. only eating 2 types of meats, 4 types of vegetables or whatever) makes preparing food easier. But also boring to eat.

Eat a variety of different whole foods - meats, vegetables and starches. Eat enough protein to fuel anabolism/decrease catabolism (about 2g/kg of lean body mass), eat some fats (basically impossible to undereat if you're eating whole foods) and then eat some carbs to fuel training. Make sure you have the right amount of calories to meet your bodyweight needs (maintain, gain, lose). You can do this via tracking macros, estimating portion sizes, "clean eating", whatever floats your boat.

Sports nutrition is kind of complicated but also kind of not. Worrying about whether you're eating beef steak or ground beef (outside of the protein/fat/calorie content) is majoring in the minors.

[Blairbob]

Bison is basically free range grass fed so it should have more Omega3. Also it's expensive af. And Bison tends to be pretty lean compared to ground beef even grassfed beef apparently. I'm seeing half the fat of lean ground beef (90/10). So more protein/lb.

[Blairbob]

You can grind up the steaks if you prefer to have it a little more looser for digestion.

I doubt this is really a factor. Hydrochloric acid in your stomach man besides enzymes. Unless of course you find it easier to eat ground or diced beef than a slab of steak.

Pork, chicken, seafood, seabugs (shrimp, lobster, crab), oysters and clam all have a varying AA profile as does stuff like rice and beans and peas, etc.

Something I've thought about regarding pork and chicken in the US is these creatures basically never see the light of day unless they are free range from what I've gathered. Cows are outside whether on pastures or in feedlots. Poultry apparently is fed a lot more antibiotics than cows or sheep. And pigs more than cows and sheep.

Then apparently animals are supposed to be weaned off antibiotics for 21 days before they are shipped to slaughter.