Imagup General Magazine 2024
Have you ever heard of the TB12 weight loss method? If not, you must have heard about Tom Brady, one of the best professional American football players ever. The TB12 is actually a whole-foods diet and it was created by Tom Brady. In the last couple of years, his eating regime has gained almost as much popularity as his on-field performances.
Some claim that this diet is one of the key reasons behind Tom Brady’s successful football career and that it helped him last this long on the field. Athletes who have tried this diet reported that it helped them improve their energy, athletic performance, recovery from injuries, and their health in general.
What is The Tom Brady Whole-food Diet?
According to medicalherald.com, the Tom Brady diet was introduced to the public for the first time in 2017 when the football player published his book called “The TB12 Method”. In the book, he explained the 12 principles that helped him sustain his top-level performance for so long.
The diet is mostly based on plants, and it focuses on anti-inflammatory, alkalizing, and Mediterranean foods. It’s important to point out that these foods are always organic and the sources are local producers. Animal products are very rarely consumed, and when they are it’s typically something like fish because it includes lean protein.
The diet is very high in protein, and it doesn’t include gluten, dairy, coffee, alcohol, GMO, artificial sugar, and trans fats. The key to this diet is to eat foods that are processed minimally, grown locally, free of hormones, organic, and aren’t genetically modified. The goal of the diet is to exclude foods that he believes may lead to inflammation.
Apart from giving you instructions on what foods to consume, Tom Brady also gives some additional advice on what you should avoid doing during the diet. Meals before bed and combining carbohydrates with high-protein foods are strictly forbidden. He also suggests that water intake throughout the day is very important, just not with meals.
What Should You Eat?
As you can see in the previous paragraph, there are a bunch of foods that are forbidden in this diet. The main focus of the diet is to consume whole-foods instead of those that are overly processed.
The TB12 diet plan includes an 80/20 pattern. The 80/20 pattern suggests that you should include 80% vegetables and whole-grains, and 20% lean meats (like lean beef). Certain fruits, protein bars, and powders, and nuts and seeds should be taken daily in the form of snacks.
Vegetables
Vegetables must be included in both your lunch and dinner. Organic and locally grown vegetables have a huge advantage if you can get a hold of them. Vegetables that are high in solanine (potatoes) and fungi are forbidden.
Fruits
Tom Brady is a huge fan of smoothies and protein shakes. He includes fruit smoothies every day for breakfast. His favorite fruit is bananas, and he highly recommends them to be taken daily. Aside from bananas and fruit smoothies, there aren’t much more fruits included in this diet.
Whole Grains
A large number of professional athletes consider compound carbohydrates essential to their eating regime. Brown rice and quinoa provide great nutrition for your body and that’s why they are largely represented in the Tom Brady diet.
Beans
Beans are typically plant-based, and they are considered to be a great source of protein, hence their belonging to the list.
To sum it up, most vegetables, fruits (bananas especially), whole-grains, lean meats and proteins, beans, and protein bars and powders represent the main foods in this diet. If you include all of them in your daily regime, then you pretty much have the same eating habits as Tom Brady!
Health Benefits
Because his book was published only a few years ago, there hasn’t been too much scientific research regarding this diet. However, some diets are very similar to TB12, so there are some potential benefits in common that can be pointed out.
Weight Loss
Although the Tom Brady diet isn’t specifically for people who are looking to lose weight, it doesn’t exclude it. There are several reasons it could be helpful.
The first reason is that it reduces the number of calories that you intake daily and if you exclude processed foods like you are supposed to you will drastically reduce those calories.
The second reason is that eating before going to bed is especially forbidden. A lot of people make the mistake of having midnight snacks, and they aren’t even aware of how unkind this could be to their health and their weight.
Finally, this is mostly a plant-based diet, and these kinds of diets are popular for their results when it comes to weight loss.
Improves Heart Health
Due to the similarities with plant-based diets, the TB12 is considered to be very beneficial for your heart health. The Tom Brady diet could even be helpful in reducing the risk of getting a cardiovascular disease.
Fights Inflammation
Since this whole diet revolves around avoiding alkalizing and inflammatory foods, it’s a logical conclusion that it helps fight inflammation. Nightshade vegetables are one of the most common causes of inflammation and they are strictly forbidden in this diet. Although there aren’t many studies on this, it’s not unreasonable to suppose the legitimacy of this claim.
Risks and Side-effects
So far, there haven’t been any health risks linked with a whole foods diet such as this one. Some individuals may develop an unhealthy habit of clean eating with this diet which could turn into a potentially unhealthy eating regime and lead to Orthorexia Nervosa.
Also, if people don’t calculate the portion sizes correctly they might end up gaining weight with this diet instead of the other way around.
Conclusion
Even though there hasn’t been much research on this diet, professional and amateur athletes who tried it out seemed to have very positive feedback. If you play some sort of sport and want to keep your body in shape you can try the Tom Brady diet out and see how it.
