Eating Well and being Healthy, these aren’t optional extras in life!
My general health had been reasonable for years and I hadn’t really had any illness to speak of since my mid 30s. The odd cold I guess, but that’s about it. I wasn’t unwell but now I didn’t feel healthy either.
But it was more than that. I wasn’t just out of shape physically, I finally had to acknowledged that my general health was now in serious decline.
My resting heart rate was creeping up, my energy levels were sagging and my mental alertness was diminishing. Rapidly! I was getting old and I was only in my 50s for goodness sake!
As I set about getting myself moving again I had to face up to another truth:
I had become lazy with my diet. I had let my good eating habits slip away!
And now my health was suffering as a consequence.
Why? I’d been making sure everyone else was fine and just got lazy about myself. I had been making sure all the family had a healthy mix of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and their protein foods of choice, but had ignored my own diet.
Fresh vegetables and fruit, the foundation of a healthy diet
I was annoyed at myself because I had been through this before. I wanted my good health back so I went back to re-learn those lessons and set out to rebuild a diet I could live with all over again.
The Good Eating Habits I let slip and A Diet You Can Live With
Some years back I had been through a life changing event and re-building my diet had been the key to turning it around.
Back in my late 20s I was struck down by a tropical illness picked up working in some pretty grim mangrove swamps in Papua New Guinea. I got by for a few years but eventually it got the better of me and as I turned 32 it just knocked me out. I was totally incapacitated for over two years and had to leave my career in mineral exploration for good.
My situation was dire. Despite seeing a number of “specialist”, firstly in Australia and then in the UK, the illness was not properly identified or treated. I struggled along for some years and thought I was going to spend the rest of my life taking a load of medication and living off shakes.
I couldn’t seem to digest any normal food. Well I could eat but didn’t seem to absorb any nutrients. My weight was falling away and dipped below 110 lbs at times. I mean, I was a slim build when I was my optimal weight which should have been around 160-170 lbs. My muscle mass had withered away and with it went all my strength and energy. I was in a terrible state.
But with the help of a Harley Street specialist I did recover. It was a long slow process and along the way he helped me create a simple diet plan that got my small intestines working again.
It was like a new lease of life, I could eat normal food again and for years I thought of it as “A Diet I could Live With”. What’s more, I could take this simple plan anywhere, I could adapt it to my level of activity, it really was so easy.
My modified Food Pyramid built on a foundation of fresh non-starchy vegetables and fresh fruits
In fact my wife and I used the simple plan and modified food pyramid shown above, to make sure our children ate a well rounded, or “balanced” diet enjoying their vegetables, salads and fruits as well as their ice cream and pizza!
And as they got older they were free to make their own choices about food preferences. With a little bit of care, the simple diet plan worked whatever their choices. This might come as a surprise, but there is a simple truth about nutrition that I had to find out the hard way. But here it is:
We all need the same base nutrients
When you cut everything back to the base nutrients, find out how food works and how your body uses these nutrients, then everything changes.
Announcing the Launch of A Diet You Can Live With
Now available on Amazon as a Kindle eBook and Paperback
Re-writing and following A Diet You Can Live With
So, as my 55th birthday rolled by and I had started out to rebuild my fitness & health, I dug out all my old notes on my trusty diet. I needed to revisit the habits that I seemed to have let slip.
Of course the science had moved on over the years so I started following up new research, especially on the Microbiome, the different fibres and the proteins, and set about refreshing and fine tuning the habits all over again. I went right back to the standard guideIines recommended by a number of clinical dieticians before I crossed paths with Dr Younis.
But these are really quite vague and don’t provide a framework to plan out meals through the day or week. So, I took these and refined my nutrition down to 3 simple diet hacks that I still follow to this day.
My 3 Diet Hacks help me make good choices about my daily nutrition. And because they cut everything back to the base nutrients they can provide a “Balanced Diet” to suit just about anyone. Whatever your food preferences you can pick and choose from the wonderful selection of modern foods to build a diet to meet your needs.
We have such a choice of foods now, with foods for all our individual food preferences.
The end result is a diet, or more accurately a nutrition plan, based on three diet hacks. I’m in the process of publishing this as a book or guide and will keep you posted.
But in the meantime I thought I might start posting some notes on different aspects of diet & nutrition trying to cut through the jargon and confusion that seems to go hand in hand with this vital topic, the food we eat.
Which is it ?
Losing Weight, Rebuilding Muscle, Losing Fat or Maintaining Peak Fitness?
Well the answer is all of these!
I found going back to these lost habits and my new refined 3 Diet Hacks was not just easy but also a relief. I didn’t have to fret or worry about calories or follow some restrictive regime. They help me pick and choose the foods I need in roughly the right amounts and proportions quite effortlessly every day.
And looking back I can see I have used the same diet, with a few minor tweaks, to:
- Recover from massive weight loss due to illness
- Lose over 17lbs of fat from my bulging waist
- Rebuild my skeletal muscle mass and recover my fitness & strength
- Maintain a decent level of health & fitness as a Firefighter to the age of 62
- Pursue a host of activities I thought I’d seen the last of years, no decades ago
I can use them every day and take anywhere. In fact they are so versatile they can accommodate the whole family when we meet up which covers omnivore, discerning carnivore, vegetarian plus occasional pescatarian and strict vegetarian preferences.
[/bleed]My Food is an adventure again
Most of the time I find this simple plan is easy and fun. I can eat the foods I like and I can enjoy a beer or two, or wine if it’s more a wine sort of day. And I enjoy my puddings!
But I’m not “following a diet” as though it is some sort of challenge or penance or battle of my will power.
You see, I just don’t buy into the idea that your diet is just about restricting calories or reducing your fats or scrimping on your carbs or drinking 6 gallons of water a day to surpress your appetite or getting by on a few lettuce leaves two days a week.
Of course some of us may need to re-learn a bit of restraint and the concept of intermittent fasting is actually quite valid in my humble opinion.
But, and I understand that this might be a bit radical, I would suggest that:
Your optimal or “balanced” diet is simply the combination of foods that provide all the different base nutrients in roughly the right amounts that you need to power you up for your life.
And being pro-active about my nutrition by using my 3 Diet Hacks means I’m comfortably getting all the base the nutrients I need in roughly the right amounts every day.
But it is a bit more than that because I’m not constantly looking to exclude foods from my diet. I look at my food in terms of which foods provide all thos nutrients so I am free to explore all the food options out there. In other words, my food is an adventure again.
I’m in the process of publishing the diet I have used and I’ve called it:
“A Diet You Can Live With”
The same diet that provides all the base nutrients I need to fuel me up for life could do the same for you. So could your food be fun, enjoyable and even an adventure too?
I’ll keep you posted on the book if you are interested to find out more.