Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the diet plan that will change your life: We call it “The Doing Things Diet”. Here is how it works.
- Do something physically hard for at least one hour every day.
- Determine the amount of calories you need to support your daily activities.
- Eat the amount of calories that supports that work.
- To lose fat/weight, eat less calories than you burn. To maintain, eat the same calories as you burn. To gain, eat more calories than you burn.
That’s it. That's the whole book. If we make it into a movie it will be a really short one. It's just four simple steps that are easy to understand. The process is what seems to get in the way.
We humans are built to do things, to move in lots of different ways, not to sit for over 8 hours each day slumped in an ergonomic chair, shoulders rolled forward in front of a blue screen. Our prehistoric ancestors used their limbs and toro’s to survive the elements, run from predators, to hunt and gather food. We don’t have those same types of survival challenges in the modern world, but it doesn’t invalidate the fact that we are made for doing things. If you are one of the few who do something hard each day for a living, good on you. The rest of us need to create opportunities to do something hard for at least an hour or two each day. AKA exercise.
Don’t get us wrong. Getting started with this whole “doing things” thing isn’t easy. It flat out sucks at first. But as you get consistent with it, little by little you wake up each day less sore than the day before, you get better at it, improve your strength, stamina, mental focus, your whole outlook on life. Success breeds success, makes you hungry for more. So you start paying attention to the details that can help you to get even better, such as the type and amount of food you eat. A person can fuel activity on chocolate cake, but that will not be a sustainable source of fuel long term… accompanying sugar crashes, type 2 diabetes and all. Getting even better at doing what it is that you have come to love, requires a different and cleaner approach to eating. It requires seeing food as something that fuels the enjoyment of your experiences of doing things, rather than a source of pleasure in and of itself.
You know the kinds of foods: vegetables, fruits, good carbs, essential fats, lean proteins. These are what we referred to in our last post as Foundational Foods. They give you the base you need for optimal health and wellness, while giving you a little extra rope to take an occasional side-trip to a food truck for street tacos, or having a few scoops in a waffle cone from the ice-cream shop around the corner.
Dieting should be based on common sense. The word Diet literally means the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats. The fad diets that are now a part of popular culture are like walking down the midway of a Dieting carnival. All you hear is a cacophony of food vendors, ride and game stand operators trying to lure you in. “Step right up, play the amazing Keto Shoot out. Winners take home 25LBS of bacon!”; “Vegan funnel cakes here. Get your Vegan funnel cakes”; “Ride the incredible Whole-30 Tilt-a-whirl. Guaranteed to confuse the hell out of you with rules and restrictions.” Just don’t go to that Carnival. Also, you don’t need a WHOOP watch to count calories or your steps. All you need is the will to simply get out there and start doing. A diet that works starts and ends with the work itself. Your best life memories will not be of the food you ate, but of the things you did that were enabled by the food you ate.
Keep It Real
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