Over the past years, I have been implementing
these three ideas articulated so well by Michael
Pollan in his book "In Defense of Food." Here's a
report on my experiences.
First, some background. At the age of 40, obese
and pre-diabetic, I started to count calories to lose
weight. That and the daily one hour fast walk
helped me to lose the first 40 lbs. It was in the
process I discovered Pollan.
Soon, I zoomed in on food, i.e., real instead of
processed food. The biggest change I made was to
remove refined wheat flour from my diet. Simple,
but not easy. I had to kiss goodbye my beloved
Chinese dumplings, noodles, naans, and buns, and
Western pastry, bread, cakes and donuts. I even
stopped making Korean gimbaps. These days, I
cook one pasta meal a week.
At the time when I was running long distances, I
took the "Mostly Plants" idea to the extreme.
Scott Jurek the vegan ultra runner was my hero. I
was mostly on a vegetarian diet. That changed,
however, as I realized that going vegan was not
practical for me. For one thing, it would make my
wife and kid suffer. So I came back to eating some
meat, mostly grass-fed beef and small fish. But
the craving for meat was gone. I could handle
myself in front of it or without it.
I practiced it from the start in the form of counting
calories but never gave "Not Too Much" much thought.
I weighed myself often and every time the poundage
went up, I would cut dinner and maybe ran more.
That has changed since mid 2016 and I have
tried intermittent fasting. I learnt one trick, called
the warrior's diet, first from the StrongFirst
community, but haven't followed it religiously.
Basically, I just have one meal a day. Again,
simple but not easy. Some people have problem with
it but it has worked great for me. I feel sharp and
energetic and only hungry in the late afternoon.
Then I can enjoy a big dinner. An empty stomach
does not seem to hurt, or maybe it even boosted,
my physical performance.
With an active life style, I maintained a healthy body
weight but kept replacing fat with muscle. Early
Sep 2016 saw me at 14.7% body fat. I felt on the
right track and never better in my life.
