Thread: The Never-Too-Late Nutrition Plan

The Never-Too-Late Nutrition Plan

You can rebuild yourself—no matter how badly you’ve trashed your body.

Originally featured in:
Men's Fitness January, 2002


Remember when you spent your weekend nights drinking to oblivion and your summer days burning your body to a crisp in pursuit of a tan? Remember when you could chain-smoke and still play three hours of b-ball? When eating as many hamburgers as possible was considered sport among your friends?

Sure, it was fun to be the local legend at every bar, beach and all-you-can-eat joint within a 15-mile radius of home, but the time comes when you need to rein in your debauchery so you can live long enough to brag about it. Fortunately, your years of youthful hedonism haven’t inevitably doomed you to a lifetime of portly regret.

“The good news is that your body adapts to almost every form of stress you put it through, including the toxins most of us put in it over the years,” says Susan Kleiner, Ph.D., R.D., nutrition consultant and author of Power Eating. “With enough time and the right amount of rest, your body can reverse almost all of the temporary damage you’ve done to it.”

Once your rebellious days are over, changing your nutritional routine can help your body undo some of the carnage that’s already been done to it, and can
take some of the pressure off your beaten-down immune system. If you find yourself in one or more of the following profiles, read on to learn how to quit your bad habits cold and start a few new good ones.

The Beer Drinker

The Bad News

“Passing massive amounts of liquid through your body flushes away stored vitamins and nutrients essential for stimulating your body’s natural defense systems,” says Allan Magaziner, D.O., author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Living Longer and Healthier. “You may also be depleted of essential minerals critical to muscle contraction, relaxation and growth, including calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus.”

Long-term bottle abuse also impairs your ability to effectively use whatever vitamins you do have in your system, including calcium, leaving your skin blotchy and dry.
“Another problem with alcohol is that it is a tremendous source of calories, which means people who drink heavily do so instead of eating the same number of calories, leaving most serious alcoholics vitamin-depleted,” says Wilkie Wilson, Ph.D., co-author of Buzzed and professor of pharmacology at Duke University Medical Center. Part of the memory damage associated with severe alcoholism is actually a thiamine deficiency, which is why alcoholics are immediately treated with the vitamin if they’re hospitalized.

How to fix yourself

Make sure to choose a multivitamin that includes all the B vitamins. “This reminds the immune system to do its job while giving it the necessary nutrients to do so,” says Magaziner.
Eat nutrient-dense foods rich in vitamins A, C, protein and zinc (all of which revive skin and hair follicles), such as chicken, turkey, citrus fruits, peppers, carrots, squash, broccoli and kale. Also, drinking plenty of water throughout the day will restore your good looks within a few months.

Taking an antioxidant-rich supplement may counteract the cell damage to the liver and brain caused by free radicals, but that theory remains speculative. “There is active research that shows antioxidants may help minimize this type of damage, but they may not necessarily reverse it,” says Wilson.
For the most part, the liver damage caused by moderate alcohol use is reversible after you quit drinking. Most damage to the brain also tends to reverse itself, unless you have been drinking heavily for a long period of time.


The Smoker

The Bad News

You’ve read enough warning labels and seen enough Truth.com commercials to know that smoking is a fast pass to lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema.
Smoking also decreases your lung capacity, while it increases the movement of bile salts from the intestine into the stomach, making your digestive juices more harmful.

How to fix yourself

Once you stop, the effects of smoking on your digestive system, lungs and heart will eventually diminish over time. However, you should start eating at least six servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Studies have shown that men who regularly eat both can cut their risk of lung cancer by 50 percent.

Giving up smoking can also mean gaining a few extra pounds as compensation. To avoid this, “break up your daily caloric intake into six or seven smaller meals, compared to three or four larger ones, to help curb binges while keeping your glucose levels even throughout the day,” says Kleiner. Small, frequent meals also require less acid for digestion, which will help ease any problems until your digestive system returns to normal functioning.
Make sure to include foods that are high in complex carbohydrates (such as rice, breads and pasta), which can tie up excess stomach acids and give your stomach a well-deserved break.

Starting an exercise program is the single most beneficial thing an ex-smoker can do. Why? Regular exercise can produce biochemical changes similar to those caused by nicotine, including enhanced mental sharpness and a greater sense of calm. Exercise generates catecholamines, chemicals that help increase mental alertness, as well as endorphins, which help decrease feelings of anxiety and depression. Burning more calories also keeps your metabolism in high gear, helping to stave off any excess weight that can be brought on by quitting smoking.


The Pothead

The Bad News

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, say that smoking pot can cause precancerous changes in lung tissue, as marijuana contains up to 50 percent more carcinogens than tobacco. “However, most pot smokers don’t smoke 20 joints a day like a cigarette smoker would, so the total amount of smoke inhaled is usually much less,” says Wilson. (Marijuana smokers do tend to hold the smoke within their lungs longer than cigarette smokers do. This may increase the lungs’ exposure to the chemical by-products of smoking, but research has yet to reach a conclusion.) The fewer daily hits that pot smokers take may lower their risk of lung cancer, but it doesn’t put them in the clear. They still confront the same lung-restricting effects faced by cigarette smokers. Researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health found a greater incidence of cancer within the heads and necks of pot smokers.

“THC [tetrahydrocannabinol], the active ingredient in pot smoke, also binds to the hippocampus in the brain, creating short-term-memory loss in most smokers,” says Wilson. Because the chemical can stay in the brain for up to eight days after the smoking of just a single joint, chronic users may suffer from constant memory lapses, never giving their bodies a chance to completely purge excess THC. The effects, however, are usually reversible.

How to fix yourself

Follow the same prescription recommended for cigarette smokers—and stop returning David Lee Roth’s phone calls. He’s a bad influence.


The Sun Worshipper

The Bad News

If you’re fair-skinned and have suffered at least one bad burn in your lifetime, you’re already at risk for developing skin cancer. If you’re red-haired or blond and are from the southern regions of the U.S., where sun exposure is nearly year-round, your skin is even more vulnerable.

Besides resulting in chronic dehydration, baking yourself to a golden brown breaks down stores of collagen and elastin in your tissues (the proteins that give your skin its firmness and elasticity). Over time, when collagen is depleted, the elasticity in your skin decreases, which is why your skin tends to wrinkle and weather over time. But excessive sun exposure can speed up that process, causing your skin to lose collagen faster so it ages prematurely. Exposure to all those UV rays can also damage your DNA, affect your immune system, and cause an increase in free-radical production within your body, producing long-term damage to skin cells and an increased risk of cancer. “Getting rid of these free radicals is a battle your body will be fighting long after you stop tanning,” says Kleiner.

How to fix yourself

Once you’ve received a full screening by a dermatologist and stocked up on SPF 45, it’s time to start fortifying yourself. “Although your body has a natural defense mechanism to eliminate most of the free radicals left in your system, excessive sun exposure can sometimes leave your body too overwhelmed to do its job properly,” says Kleiner. “Supplementing your diet with foods high in key antioxidants, including beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, copper, zinc and manganese, can help.” Here’s how to add one serving of each to your daily diet.
• Beta-carotene: carrots, cantaloupe, dark-green leafy vegetables
• Vitamin C: citrus fruits and juices, green peppers, kiwi
• Vitamin E: nuts, seeds, polyunsaturated oils, fish
• Selenium: bran cereal, whole grains, chicken
• Copper: shellfish, eggs, beans
• Zinc: oysters, mushrooms, whole grains
• Manganese: grains, egg yokes or beans
If eating all these foods is too much work, taking the recommended daily allowance of each vitamin and mineral is fine, but add an additional 400 to 800 IU of vitamin E, especially if you’re on a low-fat diet that doesn’t include nuts and oils on the menu.
Finally, “Staying well-hydrated will keep all your cells and organs nourished so that protein metabolism and tissue maintenance and repair can all function at peak levels,” says Kleiner. Drinking at least eight to 10 glasses of water each day should do the trick.


Boob Tuber

The Bad News

Just because there’s no surgeon general’s warning printed on your TV set doesn’t mean that spending countless hours glued to the tube can’t do its fair share of damage to your health. Research has shown that if you watch more than three hours of television a day, you’re twice as likely to be obese than those who watch less than one hour a day (which may explain why the Amish are so slender). “The main reason is easy to see: The more time you spend channel surfing, the more you deny your body the opportunities to condition it,” says nutritionist Susan Kleiner.

It’s not just inactivity that makes excess TV-watching lethal to your waistline. “Studies have shown that many people use food as a way to combat feelings of boredom,” says Kleiner. “Since research also shows that people use TV for the same reason, you may already be prone to eating more from boredom whenever you’re sitting in front of your TV.”

Being constantly bombarded with food commercials every few minutes can create a false sense of hunger. “Plus, dashing to the kitchen between commercials leaves less time for a guy to figure out appropriate serving sizes,” says Kleiner. “It’s a lot easier
to bring the whole cereal box than worrying about pouring the right amount into the bowl.”

How to fix yourself: Endless hours parked in the La-Z-Boy won’t deprive you of any key nutrients; the issue is overeating. Putting down the remote and incorporating exercise into your day (at least three times a week for 30 minutes a session) can help burn off excess fat. Adding more whole-grain products, beans and other high-fiber foods to your diet (40 to 50 grams daily) can provide you with enough extra roughage to leave you feeling fuller, in addition to helping bring down your cholesterol, which more than likely is elevated from eating so poorly during Nickelodeon’s Family Ties marathon.

To go completely cold turkey from television would probably require your set to be stolen. A less traumatic way to prevent any unnecessary weight gain, Kleiner says, is to make a habit of eating food only at the kitchen table. If you must bring food in front of the TV, choose low-calorie options such as celery, carrots, peppers and other vegetables. You can ratchet up your resolve by watching TV only while doing some type of exercise, such as riding a stationary bike or sitting on a physioball.


The Soda Swiller

The Bad News

It may be cool, refreshing and the real thing, but “soda is essentially liquid candy,” says Kleiner. If you haven’t been good about brushing your pearly whites on a regular basis, you can probably expect to make your dentist a very rich man in the future.

A diet high in sugar can deplete your body’s supply of chromium, a trace element responsible for helping insulin transport glucose into cells and for aiding the cellular uptake of amino acids into your system. If you’ve been pounding one too many two-liters all your life, you’ve disrupted the way your body metabolizes carbohydrates and proteins, a chemical imbalance that can lead to less energy due to poor blood-sugar control, and less muscle tissue due to a lack of amino acids.

“Drinking all those empty calories from sugar also automatically limits the amount of other nutrient-dense foods you could be eating,” says Kleiner. Your diet is likely to be devoid of many minerals, along with many other important materials such as fiber and phytochemicals. “The high levels of acid pH in soda, plus its high phosphorus content, may cause leaching of calcium from bone tissue as well,” says Kleiner.

How to fix yourself

Simply switching to water, low-fat or nonfat milk, or fiber-loaded juices that are 100 percent natural (no sugar added) will provide your body with the nutrients it’s been lacking while giving your chompers a reprieve.

Avoid sugar and other sweets in order to bring your body’s blood-sugar levels back within a normal range.

Finally, begin taking a chromium supplement of 35 micrograms (the recommended daily allowance) for the first few months into your new diet. “That should raise your chromium levels high enough so your systems can run efficiently once again,” says Kleiner. By keeping your insulin levels stable, chromium helps control your appetite while enabling your body to burn more fat as energy, instead of storing it. Letting chromium do its job of regulating insulin also prevents your body from breaking down your hard-earned muscle tissue for protein, which is why the mineral is so important for men trying to lose weight and maintain muscle.


The Carnivore

The Bad News

Even if you’ve been blessed with a body that doesn’t look like it’s lived off triple-patty burgers and 72-ounce porterhouses, the immoderate amount of saturated fat from a diet high in red meat has probably helped raise your cholesterol levels.

Most high-fat eaters have trouble controlling their weight, because, aside from the fat consumption, they don’t have enough energy for an adequate workout. “This can sometimes result from being low in nutrients found predominantly in plant foods that they’ve passed on in lieu of eating meat,” says Kleiner.

All that artery-clogging fat has also increased your risk for certain cancers of the lower-intestinal tract.

How to fix yourself

If you haven’t made the necessary dietary changes already, substitute leaner cuts for the high-fat meats in your diet, eventually replacing all red meat with poultry, fish and veggie burgers.

Supplementing with 400 to 800 IU of vitamin E may help blunt any arterial oxidative damage you may have done to yourself, while taking 400 mcg of folic acid daily may lessen the risk of arteriosclerosis.

Lastly, to aid in lowering cholesterol and reviving your abused digestive system, up the fiber in your diet from the daily 10 to 20 grams that most Americans eat to between 25 and 35 grams per day.