My Diet at 35

Received this question through the twitter grapevine:

Thanks for the question!

To be clear, I rarely PSMF; the last time I did was ~10 years ago before this past January. I’ll likely do one again with blood testing later this year to confirm or deny the hunch I have.

To Aureus’ question: how do I eat the rest of the year?

1. Long Term Attention

First, I love food. La comida es hobby (y el gringo habla un poco español). So the workaround has been doing time-restricted feeding for the past 10 years. For the longest time I’ve done 16/8, getting all of my calories between 12pm and 8pm. However with the start of Smart Strength and being busier than I’ve ever been (think growing almost 300% in 18 months), my eating window is now typically between 4pm and 9pm during the week, and moves out to 11am to 7pm on the weekend unless Sarah and I have a date.

This is one of those “strong beliefs held loosely” tools. As long as I’m eating my calories in a window that is smaller than I’m fasting, it’s cool. I don’t agonize about if my fasting window was 3 minutes shorter today, as if the human body does arithmetic in that fashion. It doesn’t, which is my beef with “biohacking” in general.

My leanness, therefore, is a long term habit married with gentle changes as my circumstances have evolved. You have to do this stuff until you die.

2. Real Food

I know, I know. It’s so not vogue to say you eat paleo anymore because it’s a term void of meaning and co-opted for selling things. I get it.

That said: I eat mostly paleo, most of the time. Real food as close to its natural packaging as possible. Lots of nuts, tubers, and meat, with fruits and veggies for variety and flavor. Still high fat, but “moderate” carb. I don’t go over bodyweight in carbs on most days, just because if you’re eating real food in the narrow feeding window, it’s really hard to do.

3. Relaxed Saturdays

I don’t “schedule” a cheat day, but on Saturday we tend to have friend visits so I loosen up my eating and include things that don’t fit with my normal intake like homemade bread. Bread + butter is awesome, especially homemade bread.

I don’t try to eat ALL of the garbage food and the eating doesn’t start at midnight just to see how much junk I can stuff. If there is a craving or a get together, I enjoy.

4. Celebration food for celebrations

I try to be the model for my children: cakes, ice creams, and the like are celebration foods and should be enjoyed predominantly for such events. So my birthday fell on a Wednesday, so I had cupcakes and ice cream because it was a celebration. I went back to my normal habits at the next meal.

That’s the long and short of how I eat to stay lean year around, in this case around 11%, give or take 2%.