Eating Old School
Thoughts on Diet as of 2023
Thoughts on Diet as of 2023
I have a long personal history with trying various weight loss diets and strategies. I have written a lot about weight loss. I have helped thousands on their own journeys. Over that time I have learned a lot through my own successes and failures and those of others.
During medical school I gained weight due to a combination of sedentary lifestyle and overeating. It was not until residency that I was really focused on trying to lose weight. I became very interested in diet/exercise research during this period and I thought at that time that all I needed to do to lose weight was to discover the ultimate human diet. It is during this time that I stumbled into the ketogenic diet ("keto") and later fasting. I lost a lot of weight combining these two approaches.
Consequently, I thought I had found the ultimate combination that represented how humans should eat. Like a lot of keto/carnivore advocates, I turned sugar into a villain and became obsessed with eliminating it. I added more and more foods to an ever-increasing set of dangerous foods to avoid. I had what one could call an almost religious zeal for this new found way of eating. There was promise that it could be used to potentially treat cancer and prevent chronic/cure chronic disease.
While I did feel good on the keto diet especially over the short to medium term, I eventually became constantly hungry and cold. I had a lot of cramping. I got a kidney stone. I had to continually consume a lot of salt, potassium, and magnesium to prevent the cramps due to electrolyte imbalances. I was able to suffer through these issues but, unfortunately or fortunately depending how you look at it, I was not able to continue this diet beyond 3 years at a time because I eventually succumbed to allure of the "evil" starches/carbohydrates. When this resulted, I gained all my weight back and suffered from binge eating. I would feel very guilty about eating those dreaded carbs. It felt like I was almost sinning against the perfect diet that I had discovered even though I had issues on the diet. I suffered from this fear of carbohydrates for years. This led to a lot of obsessing and stress. It also made carbohydrates a lot more tempting as they were in a sense the forbidden fruit. This fueled more binging, stress, and regret.
After failing to maintain the keto diet I have since tried various diets and weight loss strategies but it was only relatively recently that I permitted myself to re-examine evidence about sugars/fruit/starches in the human diet. After reviewing this evidence, I have since come to the conclusion that, on balance, many forms of carbohydrates are not detrimental for humans of normal health under most circumstances when consumed in the proper proportions. Certainly there are limits to this statement. For example, I think that almost everybody would agree that decreasing or eliminating processed foods especially if they contain significant amounts of high fructose corn syrup is preferable.
So what diet am I following now?
-save enough room for desert
-Leave room on your plate for more; don't take more than you can eat
Quite simply, I have returned to a diet that somewhat resembles the macronutrient content of what I was introduced to by grandparents as a child. It is now my opinion, that the way my grandparents ate was probably pretty good all along. The only thing that I hadn't learned as a child was to set the proper beneficial boundaries to make this balanced "old school" diet successful.
Here are some of the key boundaries that my grandparents emphasized:
1. Say grace/pray/give thanks before you eat
2. Don't spoil your dinner:
3. Limit junk food/sweets
4. Chew your food/eat slowly until satisfied but no more
5. Save enough room for desert
6. Leave room on your plate for more
7. Don't put more food on your plate than you can eat
8. You can always get seconds later if you are still hungry.
They generally ate things like eggs, bacon, butter, bread, pork, beef, chicken, apples, vegetables, and potatoes. They drank water, milk, and some juice. There was usually a balance of starch, protein, and fat in most meals. They ate generous meals but snacked a lot less. They had a garden. They didn't stress or obsess. They didn't "spoil their dinner". They enjoyed food. The macronutrient content that I am very roughly following which is consistent with how they ate is about a one-third of my calories from carbohydrates, one-third protein, and one-third fat.
So why would I suggest eating carbohydrates when I previously gained so much weight when I incorporated them back into my diet?
The reason is that when I started eating carbohydrates after I was eating the keto diet I often ate a high percentage of processed foods like ice cream, chips, chocolate, and peanut butter. I did not eat more traditional starches/carbohydrates like bread, rice, potatoes, and fruit. It was like when the dam burst I binged on the really bad stuff. It was like the pressure just built up.
Now when I look back on my diet journeys I lament the fact that I had made something like a potato into a great evil. It is hard to rid yourself of that notion when you have engrained it so deeply into your psyche. It can destroy your physical health and raise your stress/cortisol levels which are detrimental health. It sets up vicious cycles.
As a result of that journey, I no longer advocate highly restrictive diets over the long term (ie, carnivore, keto, vegan, etc). While they often tend to work in the short term and can be used as a type of cleanse or for religious purposes, they generally don't work as a permanent eating pattern for most people. I do think eating high quality food is preferred but I don't believe there is one perfect diet. I have suffered greatly from turning certain foods into being evil when I all I had to do was to eat what I had grown up without near as much processed food which was the source of my weight gain.
I felt like the prodigal son who left his father's house thinking he would reinvent a new way of eating and eventually experienced poor results and came back to the original way that had been there all along. What once seemed like an unscientific haphazard diet now seems more correct to me. There is ancient wisdom is how people learn to eat over time unless in situations of depravity.
During medical school I gained weight due to a combination of sedentary lifestyle and overeating. It was not until residency that I was really focused on trying to lose weight. I became very interested in diet/exercise research during this period and I thought at that time that all I needed to do to lose weight was to discover the ultimate human diet. It is during this time that I stumbled into the ketogenic diet ("keto") and later fasting. I lost a lot of weight combining these two approaches.
Consequently, I thought I had found the ultimate combination that represented how humans should eat. Like a lot of keto/carnivore advocates, I turned sugar into a villain and became obsessed with eliminating it. I added more and more foods to an ever-increasing set of dangerous foods to avoid. I had what one could call an almost religious zeal for this new found way of eating. There was promise that it could be used to potentially treat cancer and prevent chronic/cure chronic disease.
While I did feel good on the keto diet especially over the short to medium term, I eventually became constantly hungry and cold. I had a lot of cramping. I got a kidney stone. I had to continually consume a lot of salt, potassium, and magnesium to prevent the cramps due to electrolyte imbalances. I was able to suffer through these issues but, unfortunately or fortunately depending how you look at it, I was not able to continue this diet beyond 3 years at a time because I eventually succumbed to allure of the "evil" starches/carbohydrates. When this resulted, I gained all my weight back and suffered from binge eating. I would feel very guilty about eating those dreaded carbs. It felt like I was almost sinning against the perfect diet that I had discovered even though I had issues on the diet. I suffered from this fear of carbohydrates for years. This led to a lot of obsessing and stress. It also made carbohydrates a lot more tempting as they were in a sense the forbidden fruit. This fueled more binging, stress, and regret.
After failing to maintain the keto diet I have since tried various diets and weight loss strategies but it was only relatively recently that I permitted myself to re-examine evidence about sugars/fruit/starches in the human diet. After reviewing this evidence, I have since come to the conclusion that, on balance, many forms of carbohydrates are not detrimental for humans of normal health under most circumstances when consumed in the proper proportions. Certainly there are limits to this statement. For example, I think that almost everybody would agree that decreasing or eliminating processed foods especially if they contain significant amounts of high fructose corn syrup is preferable.
So what diet am I following now?
-save enough room for desert
-Leave room on your plate for more; don't take more than you can eat
Quite simply, I have returned to a diet that somewhat resembles the macronutrient content of what I was introduced to by grandparents as a child. It is now my opinion, that the way my grandparents ate was probably pretty good all along. The only thing that I hadn't learned as a child was to set the proper beneficial boundaries to make this balanced "old school" diet successful.
Here are some of the key boundaries that my grandparents emphasized:
1. Say grace/pray/give thanks before you eat
2. Don't spoil your dinner:
3. Limit junk food/sweets
4. Chew your food/eat slowly until satisfied but no more
5. Save enough room for desert
6. Leave room on your plate for more
7. Don't put more food on your plate than you can eat
8. You can always get seconds later if you are still hungry.
They generally ate things like eggs, bacon, butter, bread, pork, beef, chicken, apples, vegetables, and potatoes. They drank water, milk, and some juice. There was usually a balance of starch, protein, and fat in most meals. They ate generous meals but snacked a lot less. They had a garden. They didn't stress or obsess. They didn't "spoil their dinner". They enjoyed food. The macronutrient content that I am very roughly following which is consistent with how they ate is about a one-third of my calories from carbohydrates, one-third protein, and one-third fat.
So why would I suggest eating carbohydrates when I previously gained so much weight when I incorporated them back into my diet?
The reason is that when I started eating carbohydrates after I was eating the keto diet I often ate a high percentage of processed foods like ice cream, chips, chocolate, and peanut butter. I did not eat more traditional starches/carbohydrates like bread, rice, potatoes, and fruit. It was like when the dam burst I binged on the really bad stuff. It was like the pressure just built up.
Now when I look back on my diet journeys I lament the fact that I had made something like a potato into a great evil. It is hard to rid yourself of that notion when you have engrained it so deeply into your psyche. It can destroy your physical health and raise your stress/cortisol levels which are detrimental health. It sets up vicious cycles.
As a result of that journey, I no longer advocate highly restrictive diets over the long term (ie, carnivore, keto, vegan, etc). While they often tend to work in the short term and can be used as a type of cleanse or for religious purposes, they generally don't work as a permanent eating pattern for most people. I do think eating high quality food is preferred but I don't believe there is one perfect diet. I have suffered greatly from turning certain foods into being evil when I all I had to do was to eat what I had grown up without near as much processed food which was the source of my weight gain.
I felt like the prodigal son who left his father's house thinking he would reinvent a new way of eating and eventually experienced poor results and came back to the original way that had been there all along. What once seemed like an unscientific haphazard diet now seems more correct to me. There is ancient wisdom is how people learn to eat over time unless in situations of depravity.