'Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants'

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.

[暖冬cool夏]

回复7grizzly:Thank you for your kindness and detailed information. I really shall be very health and diet conscious. Thank you for the word "fasting", such a simple word. How come it did not come to my mind when I was writing it??? Thanks again.

[7grizzly]

回复 '暖冬cool夏' 的评论 :
Indeed. I know people from the strength community practice IF.
And many cultures seem to know the benefits of fasting. Jesus fasted. The Muslims have Ramadan. My Indian colleague told me his grandma used to fast for 30 days and the family had a big celebration after she crossed the finish line ;-)

60 hrs sounds do-able. If you need motivation, there was a good documentary "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead." It told how Joe Cross from Australia came to the US and did 60 days of juice fasting. Very inspiring story.

[暖冬cool夏]

饥饿疗法is actually quite popular nowadays. A guy in our hiking team once tried empty-stomach for consecutive 60 hours plus. He only ate avacados and drank water (or home-made veggie water) in between. He said he felt great, and we all said he did somehow look younger and lighter afterwards. I never tried though, too much for me.:-)