The Renaissance Diet 2.0

I’ve spent countless hours reading about nutrition and lifting in the past couple of years but there’s always something new to learn. This book though, is a one-stop shop for all-things-nutrition when it comes to lifting, not just general health unlike some of my earlier readings. The primary focus of this book, though, is making use of periodization to optimally alter your body composition whether that’s by being on an iso, hyper, or hypocaloric diet.

The book starts off by mentioning the various factors that affect one’s diet and the results one is aiming for. I then assign weights to each of these factors and explain each and every one of them. We then move on to diet design where calories are assigned to macros and meal timings are discussed. All these are further explained in the light of a fat-loss, maintenance, or weight-gain phase. This is the part I especially liked. I’ve been running fat-loss and weight-gain phases for far longer than ideal and to have explained to me why this is not optimal was an “aha” moment. I immediately started to incorporate certain changes into my current goals and diet.

Lastly, there are talks—more like debunking sessions—on the now-common diets and myths around diets. This is mostly common info but there was also quite a bit of conflicting information for instance, the discussion on intermittent fasting in the book goes directly against what has been presented by the likes of Andrew Huberman and Satchin Panda respectively. But given the complexity of human physiology, I think it’s always better to gain insights and then arrive at the solution that works best for one by trial and error. It’s a really good book if you’re interested in nutrition and lifting.