The Diet

In the past, I have blogged about some of the interesting challenges I taken on for while pursuing physical fitness.  But the biggest challenge for me is the diet.  Calories in, calories out, right?

My friend J had this idea for the ultimate fitness book. 

- Chapter 1: Intake - write down how many calories you ate today.

- Chapter 2: Output – write down the number of calories you burned today.

- Chapter 3: Analysis – subtract the number from Chapter two from the number from Chapter 1.

- Chapter 4: Strategy – make sure the number from Chapter 3 is less than or equal to zero.

- Chapter 5: Lifestyle – repeat Chapter 4 indefinitely.

But me, I tend to over think these things.  I’ve always wanted to follow some name brand diet plan.  But here are the problems I have ran into:

The Zone Diet – I think the idea of optimizing your ratio of grams of carbs, fat, and protein sounds like a mathematically sound approach.  But actually trying to do that for each meal is damn near impossible.

Raw – The idea of eating primarily raw foods seems pretty exotic, simple, and fundamentally healthy.  But in practice, this is pretty difficult too.  Though the food is not cooked, it takes a lot of work to prepare.  This isn’t really quick, cheap, or easy and can leave a lazy bachelor with a lot of rotting food in his kitchen.

Vegetarian – I have a friend of a friend that is a vegetarian and inspired me to take a closer look at this.  The reason is that he is built.  I always have thought of vegetarians that are in good shape as extremely lean.  But he managed to main a vegetarian diet and sustain a substantial amount of muscle mass.  That’d seem like a win/win, but with my allergies, I’d be down to a pretty limited set of sources of protein.  So I don’t think this would work for me either.

The Movie, Food Matters – This movie encourages a raw/organic diet with mega doses of vitamins.  I’m a bit skeptical on megadosing.  I don’t think there is enough scientific evidence to support some of the claims that were made in the movie.  It may not be fatal, but there are studies that have shown that the extra amounts of the vitamins will be pissed out, can cause toxic levels in the body that can trigger negative side-effects, or can interfere with prescribed medications.

I’ve ultimately determined that I need to devise a custom diet lifestyle for myself.  It’s a work in progress, but here are it’s tenets:

- Try to have protein and produce with every meal.

- For my produce, eat more vegetables (bonus points for raw veggies).  Seriously, when’s the last time you heard someone say, ‘dude, you’re really letting yourself go.  You need to cut back on all those vegetables.’.  Never.  Not ever in the history of medicine and diet has that phrase ever been uttered!

- For protein, I am limiting myself to poultry.  I am a HUGE lover of burgers.  So I feel like eventually, I’ll create some exception to this rule.  Like, one burger per month, or something.  But red meat just seems like a gateway to a lot of poor meal choices.  Like Burgers, hot dogs, Italian sandwiches, anything with bacon, etc.

- Start with the worst of the healthier stuff – I’m kind of afraid of tofu.  Its texture scares me.  But it needs to be in my mix if I am losing red meat.  So my game plan is to start with fried tofu.  As I get used to it, I will then switch to the healthier methods of preparation.  I think this is a good strategy for most healthy alternatives.

- Vary what I eat so I don’t get bored.  My current experiment is sprouting.  I’m still not exactly sure what to do with these.  Right now I am just throwing them on my sandwiches; which is tasty.

- Shop and cook weekly.  This isn’t too overwhelming a time commitment, but it keeps me consistent and stocked up with the good stuff.

- Shop at the Pike Place Market.  It’s kind of embarrassing that I live so close to this landmark and haven’t used it more.  Cheap, fresh, local produce.

- Shop at the yuppie markets (e.g. Whole Foods).  It is a little more expensive, but they have a better selection of healthy options.

- Drink lots of water.

- Have a few bad meals.  It’s ok to enjoy some junk food.

- Slow down my pace of eating and practice portion control.  Yeah, this one is a work in progress.

- Accept that this is a transition and don’t expect everything to be perfect immediately.

- Have Fun!