Hi there,
6 books, 18,000 citations and a lifetime of thinking.
You would think I’d have the ‘nutrition thing’ figured out.
Yet, I still struggle to control my weight without excessive exercise.
Because knowing ≠ doing.
If knowledge alone changed behaviour, no one would smoke.
I, like you, am grappling to reconcile the science and practice of nutrition.
Eating well is hard. Distractions everywhere. Willpower is limited.
Most of us fail more than we succeed.
So what can we do? Give up? Get fat and unhealthy?
Or can we tap into some basic principles that help us stay on track.
Or at least, screw up less often.
Three levers to pull for health (I always try to pull at least one)
What you eat
Professor obvious here, what you eat matters. But here’s the forgotten wisdom: Whole, unprocessed food is the foundation of health.
The truth is, you don’t need a lecture on what’s healthy…you need to make the healthy decision the easy decision. Pack lunch, meal prep and be disciplined. By discipline I don’t mean super will power – that’s limited. I mean being organised.
When you eat
Fasting is a powerful tool for metabolic and mitochondrial health and the natural state of humans before the glucose revolution.
Start simple. Can you fast for 12 hours then eat for 12 hours? Can you do this 5 days a week?
Can you get fat adapted and become an absolute fat burning machine and unlock longer fasts? Fasting is probably the most underrated tool in nutrition.
How much you eat
Controversial take, how much you eat matters…
Even with fasting and a great quality diet, where we normalise our blood sugars and insulin. We conquer our hunger signals and everything is humming – we can still overeat. We do this because we are literally surrounded by food.
While I totally agree that it’s not all about calories in and calories out. Our body is way more complex with multiple complex hormonal and neurological feedback systems.
The fact is, you can manually override these and carry on eating.
This is my major problem. I come home, start dinner, and then keep eating until bedtime. Yes it’s off and on, but my snacking means I overeat. This is a calories in calories out problem. I need to stop snacking.
Nutrition isn’t a complex ‘experts only’ topic.
At the end of the day, your health matters to you the most.
You are the expert on your health, you have to be, who else is going to do it?
