The Peter Attia diet is a diet put forward by Dr. Peter Attia from the USA. He is also a speaker and author now. What are the key points of this diet? What are its benefits? Is it safe in the long-term?
The Peter Attia Diet
The Peter Attia diet is a diet that the American physician, Dr. Peter Attia advocates for his patients. It promises better overall health, weight loss and longer lifespan. It is a multi-pronged approach and includes nutritional biochemistry, exercise physiology, physiology of sleep, and also distress tolerance.
According to Peter, it is a nutritional framework that has three levers of food restrictions, calories restrictions, and time restrictions. One or two of these levers are used to achieve the desired goals.
Peter Attia (Source: Tim’s blog)Peter has completed his MD from Stanford University. Later, he did his surgical residency from John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He followed this with surgical oncology fellowship at National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute. Subsequently, he joined consulting firm McKinsey & Company Corporate Risk Practice and Healthcare Practice team. He has penned books and is the Chief Medical Officer of Biograph. The Drive is his podcast on longevity.
Peter’s five tools for longevity
These five tools are:
Nutritional biochemistry -This is all about the molecules that one eats and their timings.
Exercise physiology – These are the workouts of four groups namely stability, aerobic efficiency, strength and anaerobic performance.
Sleep physiology – These are in terms of regularity, depth, duration and its continuity.
Distress tolerance – This is basically stress and its management. High cortisol destroys the body. Hence attempts to decrease it is vital.
Exogenous molecules – These are molecules we take such as drugs, supplements, and also hormones.
Control of all five above determines longevity and health, according to him.
The diet details
There are no set guidelines for it. And it is based on the latest research in the field. He emphasizes on nutrition to support metabolic health and overcome diseases and these are the focus of this diet.
The diet has three main levers – dietary restriction (what to eat), calories restriction (how much to eat) and time restriction (when to eat). He suggests to use one or all of these levers to achieve the goals of health.
Levers of the diet (Source: peterattiamd.com)Peter does not want his patients to eat anything (no dietary restriction) or eat as much as he or she wants (no calories restriction) or eat whenever you want (no time restriction). He believes that this is how most Americans eat. This is the standard American diet or SAD. And it is not healthy. Peter feels that one should try to be away from this wrong way of eating. The further the eating pattern is from the standard American diet, the better it is for health and weight.
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In dietary restriction, sugars, fructose corn syrup and junk foods are prohibited. Vegetables and healthy starches are okay to eat. For calories restriction, his advice is to do customized fasting. And he encourages people to gradually expand the window period of fasting.