The "Alone" Series | A Nutritional Case Study

Published: Fri, 02/17/23

Hello from Functional Strength!

The premise of the show Alone is simple: strand ten people in the wilderness with no tools, devices, gadgets, electricity, or guns. Participants can take ten items, other than a sleeping bag and some heavy clothes. Usually they take a sharp axe, a bow and arrows (each arrow counts as an item,) some sort of big-ass knife, a steel fire-starter as no matches or lighters are allowed, snares for game, a gill net for catching fish. They walk into the woods with what they have in their backpack. Whoever lasts the longest wins $500,000. Let the suffering begin.

The Alone show is profound for a lot of unintended and unintentional reasons. Alone has created a seven-year, 70 participant, highly controlled dietary experiment on how best to shed body fat. All Alone contestants get ripped within two months. The snide response is “Yeah? Well anyone can get ripped when they starve.”

Factually, there is a lot more going on than just starving. The best contestants do not starve. Not starving is how they win. If you starve, you are gone early. The central characteristics of the fat-shedding diet the Alone participants are forced to adapt mimics the type diet primal men ate before the advent of agriculture, which occurred a mere 10,000 years ago. What are the commonalities and lessons of the Alone diet?

Eat organic
Eat les
Eat less often
Eat an extremely limited menu
Fat and protein will sustain life
Protein alone will not sustain life
Foraging for plants and wild edibles, fiber carbs is calorically insignificant
Starch and refine carbs are eliminated
Daily exercise is critical (build shelter, haul rocks, hunting, fishing, daily firewood cutting)

The problem with most dietary studies is they depend on the truthfulness of the participants – no one is locking away diet-study participants and controlling what they eat – except on the reality show Alone where all contestants are forced to reacquaint themselves with the primal man within.

Two beautiful earth mother women finished 2^nd and 3^rd in Season 7 of Alone, a 100 day challenge with a $1,000,000 prize. The ladies were barely outlasted by an uber-alpha SEAL-type lifelong woodsman, a man that (on this show) stabbed a 600 pound musk ox to death with a Bowie knife.

They should have just stopped the show right then and there and given him the million dollars when he killed the beast on day 67. Naturally, he won. While the others were starving and eating kelp, he was roasting bison haunches over the stone fireplace he had installed in his cold-proof shelter. I love this man. In the seventh season of the show I found as a fitness professional that profundities abound.

The Alone participants are all survivalist pros, people with serious credentials and years of experience. The survivalist women are most particularly bad ass. Whereas the guys alpha it out, exerting and overcoming, the beta women flow with nature, earth mothers that gather exotic fauna and berries, make tea and cry when they snare “bunnies.”

Everyone gets ripped: other than this year’s 100-day challenge, the six previous winners all won at around the 70-day mark. Not really a long time, 2 to 2.5 months to get ripped
Everyone detoxes: Alone competitors fast until they get it together enough to land a fish, snare a rabbit, forage berries, mushrooms, edible plants. They are inadvertently detoxing
Carb depravation cleans out insulin receptors sites: no longer overwhelmed with insulin-spiking carbs, insulin sensitivity returns
Participant metabolisms shift from carb-burning to fat-burning in 10-15 days
Alone competitors forage some fiber carbs, find a few berries, but nothing life sustaining
Starch carbs and refined carbs are completely gone
Protein alone is not enough to sustain life, protein and fiber are not enough to sustain life
For Alone participants, dietary fat is the key, critical, life-sustaining nutrient
Rabbits are the most consistent source of land-based protein. Extremely lean, a person could eat rabbit every day and within 3 months starve to death
Man did not evolve consuming carbs. Grain foods produce inferior fuel. While life sustaining, refined carbohydrates have horrendous and detrimental physical effects
Fish proved the perfect food. For the first 45-days, Alone contestants pulled 20-pound fish out of the lake. The high fat content and powerhouse protein reenergized competitors
In seven years, 70 competitors, only two participants killed large land animals: both men won. Fish and rabbit, an occasional bird, were the only consistent protein/fat sources
Fat and protein enabled contestants to retain muscle while shedding bodyfat: had fish been plentiful for the entire period, everyone would have lost fat while retaining muscle

Lessons of the Show

Want a fat-shedding, muscle-retaining diet proven to work? Replicate the Alone diet. No need to stab a deer to death with a penknife; you are allowed more variety, no need to confine the menu to giant freshwater fish, rabbit, quail, and foraged mushrooms.

Replicate with natural organic protein sources, fish, seafood, fowl, beef, pork, lamb, etc. Select proteins with a good balance of protein and fat. To paraphrase Blue Oyster Cult, “Don’t fear the fat” assuming the fat is part of a quality protein source. Replicate fiber with spinach, green beans, broccoli, asparagus, carrots, etc. Fiber carbs are calorically insignificant.

Alone contestants first established a state of starvation. They then stayed on the edge of that starvation for the next 2-3 months. While starving, they would periodically replenish when they caught something. The ideal replenishment meal was combination of protein, fat with some foraged fiber.

Once the Alone competitor’s civilization-based carb-burning metabolisms were deprived of carbs (other than some sporadic fiber) for a few weeks, their metabolisms shifted to a wilderness-based fat-burning metabolism. Now, whenever they got into the red zone and were experiencing starvation, their fat-burning metabolisms drew down from stored body fat. In the absence of glycogen and dietary fat, the body mobilizes and uses its own stored body fat to fuel activity. Fabulous! This is exactly what we want.

In civilization, to replicate the Alone fat-loss results would require the establishment of condition of borderline starvation. Eliminate carbs, other than fiber. Be prepared to eat less, eat less often, and eat clean. You are allowed protein, fat, fiber – nothing else and not much of it. There are no cheat days on Alone.

Once the critical shift from a carb-burning metabolism to a fat-burning metabolism occurs, the serious fat loss commences. Once the metabolic shift takes place, the goal is to stay in the zone: stay right on the delicate edge of starvation. Replenish after training hard, eat to your activity level. No activity? eat less or eat nothing; more activity? eat more. The goal is loose body fat while retaining muscle. This is accomplished through the skillful juggling of exercise and diet…

Upon awaking, coming off the sleep-fast, perform “fasted cardio,” cardiovascular exercise done upon arising forces the body to burn body fat to fuel the accelerated activity
Cardio should be done daily. Vary the type and kind: steady-state, i.e. moderate intensity, longer duration; burst cardio, high intensity, shorter duration. Keep the body guessing
Resistance training: frequency depends on situation. Concentrate on higher rep sets. Use continuous tension, concentrate on feel and contraction, less on sheer poundage

Could one replicate the lighting fast fat-burning results that Alone contestants experience on a uniform and consistent basis? How best could the diet be modified – without compromising results? What are the characteristics and commonalities?

Establish a basic position of starvation, fast, stop eating for as long as possible
Detoxification commences with commencement of the fasting process
When you can stand it no longer, add back small portions of protein, fat and fiber
Establish and maintain the premise of hunger, never eat unless hungry
Select quality proteins with a moderate to high fat content
Jettison starch and refined carbs
Protein, fat, and fiber carbs do not spike insulin
Fiber has a beneficial roto-rotor effect: fiber scrapes intestinal walls of sludge and bile
The longer the gaps between eating the better the results
Stay true to an extremely narrow selection of foods
Eat less, eat less often, eat organic when possible
This diet works: every contestant experiences a profound physical metamorphosis
Discipline is easier when not continually tempted: the toughest part of the diet is adherence
Stay committed to a position of continual hunger even when surrounded with temptation

Denied glycogen (emulsified starch/refined carbs,) the body’s critical fuel becomes saturated fat, the kind derived from animals and fish. Once all carbohydrates are exhausted, the contestants own body fat becomes fair game.

If the new fat-burning metabolism is fed enough dietary fat, no body fat is burned. If the body is given enough fat in the diet, there is no need for the body to mobilize its own body fat. If the body detects a fat-shortfall it will draw down from its own fat stores.

If the body is stuffed full of carb glycogen, there can be no fat burning
If the body is stuffed full of dietary fat, there can be no fat burning.

Once a person’s body fat percentile gets down into the sub-5% zone, serious health problems occur. Obviously, the intelligent athlete does not go this unnecessary extreme. However, using an Alone replication diet might be the fastest, surest, and safest way to get to the watershed 10% body fat percentile.

Attaining a 10% body fat percentile creates the bodybuilder look: six-pack abs are revealed, defined quadriceps appear, crisp pecs with fat-free armpits, defined hamstrings, no more love handles or bubble butt. For more information on nutrition check out the posts from our nutritional planning page.

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Thanks
Marty Gallagher
Get Strong! Live Long!

122 S Broad St
Waynesboro PA 17268
USA

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