Diet Principles Pt 2

Read part 1 here

11. Stay Well Hydrated

-So simple that everyone ignores it. My go to question when people complain of headaches, dry skin, feeling light headed, having low energy, bad digestion, prone to binging, tight muscles and stiff joints; DO YOU DRINK WATER? If the answer is No, then thats the first thing to start doing. Water is so essential to health it cannot be overstated, and the vast majority of people are chronically dehydrated and never address it. If you are one of those people that can ONLY drink flavored beverages and hates water, GROW UP. You are not 5 years old for the sake of the Gods.

A very easy way to spot mild dehydration is to assess your thirst when eating. If you sit down to eat a meal and need to drink tons of fluid to get the good down, you're dehydrated. Ideally, you should be able to eat and NOT be thirsty while eating. Drinking water while eating dilutes stomach acid and makes digestion slower. It also demonstrates you don't have enough bodywater to handle the food you are consuming.

Stay well hydrated between meals, and this issue will be solved.

My general recommendation is to simply aim for 3 liters of water daily. This is average. If you are a larger person, you probably need more. If you are physically active and sweat a lot, you will need more. If you fall short, you fall short, but it gives you a target, and you'll find your personal hydration sweet spot. You'll also be amazed at how much digestion improves.

12. Measure and Manage
-People hate being told to count calories and macros, but the reality is most americans today have no ability to autoregulate, and are clueless to their food consumption.

"what does autoregulate mean?"

Autoregulate means you have internalized, unconscious, competent control of your eating, your bodyweight (bodyweight is biodynamic by the way and is SUPPOSED to fluctuate within a narrow range), and your overall behaviors and attitudes towards food. You don't overeat, you don't undereat, you don't binge.

When you do gorge, you naturally compensate by eating less. When you are very active, you identify the need to eat more food. You are attenuated to when you need protein, or carbs, or fat, or salt.

Essentially, your mode of eating is entirely autopiloted, and it WORKS, without you thinking much about it.

This is often called Intuitive Eating.

If you are read the above though, and you are basically the opposite of what I just described, and have no ability to autoregulate,

Then you have to manage and measure. What you lack is internalized mechanisms and instincts and self-awareness, and the ONLY way to develop those is to PRACTICE them EXTERNALLY.

You need to use numbers them,

This means weighing food, tracking calories and macros, checking bodyweight daily, following a meal plan perhaps, learning how to meal prep, and doing these things until you become unconsciously competent in them and the practices become ritualistic.

This takes time, FYI.

13. Habitualize, then Internalize
-Building off the above point, learning systems and developing your own intuition always starts as a conscious process. It's not going to feel natural, it's not going to feel right, and it probably will NOT be what you want to do.

But as I like to say, if your way worked, we would not be having this discussion in the first place. Your way does not work, because your way is not a way, it's a haphazard amalgamation of reactions, active ignorances, and misguidance.

It will likely be very useful to create RULES for yourself. And to follow them. These are not eternal rules for all time, but they are boundaries that you create and follow (all boundaries are habits, for what we do is equally defined by what we do not do). Rules give you freedom from chaos, and direct your energy to where its useful. Rules becomes habits unto themselves when they are followed long enough.

As you develop rules, habits, and self-discipline thereof, your nature will begin to change. These things will gradually become a part of your being, until you longer feel like a pretender doing them. You are what you practice, and your beliefs will come to align with that. The dissonance is a necessary stage in the experience.

This also takes time, FYI.

14. Be adaptable at all times
-I say follow rules, but do not be broken when you break your rules. Far too often, stricture is mistaken for structure, and people utterly break down when their diet cannot be adhered to.

This is building from sand and fog. Not being able to follow a diet is not grounds for distress. If a birthday party can destroy your mental health and derail you, your mode of eating was and is broken from the beginning.

Learn to not care. Also, learn how to adapt. I eat fast food constantly when I travel. I order hamburger patties, I avoid carbs as much as reasonable if Im not active. I stay very well hydrated. I make a point to eat a big breakfast if nothing else so I have energy for my day. I refrain from fried foods generally. And if it happens that I'm a dinner and the social dynamic is to indulge, I indulge.

AND I DO NOT CARE, BECAUSE IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Refer back to the Flywheel effect. Adaptability and momentum complement each other.

15. Cut fat fast and furious
-Do not misinterpret this and think it means follow a crash diet. Cutting is predicated on you being

*Metabolically Healthy
*Being lean with developed lean body mass
*training correctly and eating healthily

When you are healthy, you can do dramatic cuts and use strategies and tactics that another person would otherwise crash and burn on. Following an intermittent fasting approach, going zero carb and doing HIIT cario, using high volume workouts and specific nutrient timing, you've got fun things to try, and you've the mental stability to handle the hunger and the discipline.

Short cuts in the 4-8 week range such as these can strip fat off, you can resume a maintenance schedule, and its a way to stay lean year around with long term diets. Done year over year, you can GRADUALLY become leaner with time, while still building muscle mass.

Again, you must be already HEALTHY to do this. This is not a suggested approach otherwise. You can play a short game finite approach because your infinite game approach is already in place.

16. But Diet slow and serious
-this is most people. This means that you approach dieting on a LONG term continuum. It goes something like this (adapted from the Mike Israetel model)

*you set up a reasonable diet that you can adhere to
*you aim for 1-2lbs fat loss a week
*you do not do anything dramatic to make this go faster at all
*you adjust only when necessary
*you do this for 2-4 months
*you then change back to maintenance for 1-2 months
*you repeat as many times as necessary
*if you are VERY overweight, you can diet for longer periods of time, with potentially shorter breaks in-between

This is not sexy, but it works. And relative to your current state of living, it's probably going to be a dramatic overhaul and a long learning curve regardless

17. Stay Lean Always
-assuming you have reached a healthy bodycomp, you want to always maintain this from here on out. If you are a man, this means not letting BF% rise above 15%. For women, keep it no higher than 25%.

The reasons for this are clear: your overall hormonal health and insulin sensitivity both begin to be negatively affected when you accumulate excess fat about this level. There is no good reason to gain excess bodyfat, fat is fatal as I like to say.

Staying lean does not mean being "ripped", it means maintaining the lifestyle that supports this state of health.

18. Recognize when diets sound too good to be true
-There is no magic diet that is effortless, painless, requires you to give up nothing, fixes your childhood abandonment issues, absolves you of your emotional void of not having had sex, intimacy in years, you using food as medication, you ignoring your body and wanting a quick fix, you not exercising, your parents not loving you enough, you refusing to change anything except take pills, you being obese, and so on and so forth.

And being blunt, you probably need therapy if food is deeply rooted for you and leads to tears, shame, and guilt.

So no, whatever the fuck diet is not going to fix all the above. EVER.

19. You can never fail following a High protein Diet
-Eventually you will realize that every qualified fitness professional recommends the same diet

-High protein
-Moderate carbohydrates and fat intake
-whole foods
-adjust your overall calories based on your activity levels.

Assuming you exercise as well, this is largely idiot proof. Its almost impossible to get fat when you eat and live this way.

20. Diet is a Continuum
-Final point, and hopefully this has been made clear-learning how to eat is learning about yourself and your needs, and your eating is master metaphor for what you consume in your life as a whole.

Fixing your eating improves many many many others area of your life for this reason; you change what you consume from reality at large.