The title basically explains it haha.
It works for some people, but there’s nothing magic about it. If you have trouble sticking with a diet because it’s not interesting to you, maybe the newness of the vertical diet is just what you need.
I’d love to hear what Dr. Feigenbaum thinks about this, too. Personally, and this goes for any “diet” mentioned in the Q&A segments, I don’t think it’s unique at all. I do appreciate that they prioritize high-quality meats and vegetables with complex carbohydrates, but as with keto/carnivore/paleo/etc. it’s just another way of staying adherent… and getting the Stan & Matt duo that sweet revenue.
But for the record, keto/paleo/carnivore are silly.
The Vertical Diet by Alain Braux involves eating specific amounts of food from each of the three nutrient categories — proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. The recommended amounts vary from person to person and may change as you age. In general, the rules are: get 65% of your calories from proteins, 25% from fats, and 10% from carbohydrates.
All I know is it its co-authored and endlessly promoted by the worlds strongest bodybuilder, Stan Efferding.
So it must be legit.
Stan Efferding, the inventor of the KOOLER (defunct) and stan has a seemingly endless supply of XXL Get Vertical T shirts.
I can still remember Stan flogging that convoluted Babushka doll - esque shaker back in 2014.
Stan is one hell of a marketeer I tells ya.
I think it work for some people…
There is zero need for if you aren’t a high level strongman or powerlifting competitor. It is a diet designed to allow you to eat enough to weigh 300 to 400 and try to compete with the best in the world. That is less than 1% of the lifters in the world.
Essentially the base is your run of the mill diet any lifter would use and you add extra calories with beef and rice.
It is worth looking at though. Stan places a lot of emphasis on macro nutrients. Something we lose with the emphasis on macros. So there is a lot of discussion about where to things like magnesium, zinc, idodine etc. which we probably all should think about more.
It really grew out of the bodybuilding diets that ignored micronutrients and were often deficient in them meaning a lot of less optimal supplementation. So it has some good concepts but unless you want to eat 10,000 calories a day and step on a platform with Thor well it may not be for you. Still I think the emphasis on making sure you get the right foods to get the micros in is good. There just isn’t any need for the adding meat and rice so you can actually eat at a level a world class strongman would. Take that away and you get make sure you get your omega 3 and 6, iodine magnesium, etc from your food. It really boils down to how do you stuff enough food in your face to eat 10k in calories and not throw up and have all kinds of digestive issues. Something the vast majority of us don’t need to worry about.