That's What She Said! A Foundational Guide To Sustained Healthy Eating

[jjer94]

What I see on the Internet are a lot of fantastic resources on dieting and nutrition. 

What I also see are nuanced scientific studies, messy dogmatic debates, and lots of general confusion. 

What if there were a holistic method that encourages you to experiment with many different foods and diets to tailor to your individual needs? A method that is more of an open-minded, flexible approach, rather than a rigid step-by-step directive? A method that mixes secondhand knowledge with direct experience? And most importantly, a method that allows you to stick with a healthy eating plan for the rest of your life?

I gotchu covered. I call this method Sustained Healthy Eating, or SHE for short. Here's the gist of it.

There are two basic subsets of eating:

Input - flavor, texture, and other qualitative aspects while eating the food. Abbreviations: Input = I; High input = HI; Low input = LI

Output - satiety, comfort level, energy, concentration, and other qualitative aspects after eating the food. Abbreviations: Output = O; Low output = LO; High output = HO

All foods and food combinations you eat give you an I and an O. What's considered "unhealthy food" often has a very HI (amazing flavor and texture), but a terribly LO (gas, bloating, brain fog, lethargy, food coma). What's considered "healthy food" often has a very LI (bitter, flavorless, weird texture), but an amazingly HO (satiated, comfortable, energized).

A common mistake I see people make when starting a new diet plan is that they introduce too many isolated LI/HO foods while cutting out all of their delicious HI/LO foods. It becomes so unbearably tasteless that they inevitably revert back to the HI/LO deep fried twinkies. 

The simple trick to SHE is to mix LI/HO food combinations to create HI/HO meals that act as substitutes for your HI/LO meals. You will be much less tempted to go back to your old ways if your new I is just as high (or higher!) as your old I. Stack that on top of the fact that HO foods make you feel really good, and you won't even need a cheat day. 

Here SHE is, distilled down to two fundamental equations:

The Fundamental SHE Equations:
I(new healthy meal) ≥ I(old unhealthy meal)
O(new healthy meal) > O(old unhealthy meal)

Here's an example of SHE in action: Traditional Pesto. Olive oil, basil, pine nuts, and garlic alone are all LI/HO in my experience, but combine them together and I get a HI/HO combination that is so savory and satisfying, I'm wondering how I missed out on it for so long. Marinade an otherwise flavorless LI/HO humanely-raised boneless-skinless chicken breast with the pesto, and I have no problem eating this delicious HI/HO chicken as a substitute to the factory-farmed deep-fried HI/LO mcnuggets. 

With the SHE model in mind, you can experiment endlessly with different HI/HO combinations without having the temptation to revert back to HI/LO. You can try all the different fad diets out there (e.g. Bulletproof, Primal Blueprint, GAPS, Slow Carb, Paleo, Keto, 80-10-10, Raw, Vegetarian, Vegan, etc.) and pick whichever foods/diets you feel gives you the highest O. I and O are mostly subjective, so don't blindly settle on what someone tells you are the best foods to eat. Test them all out in your direct experience and see how you feel after eating them. 

In addition to creating HI/HO meal substitutes, discover what foods give you a LO and eliminate them from your diet. This may be difficult to discern if your body is used to eating junk food, but as you continue with SHE you will get better at observing your O. Here are a few possible starters with which to experiment: milk chocolate, cow's milk, foods fried in polyunsaturated oils, pasta. Remember, any HI food you eliminate must be replaced with a substitute that matches or exceeds that I. Possible replacements for the above examples would be >70% cacao dark chocolate, almond milk, foods sautéd in grass-fed butter, and spaghetti squash, respectively.

To those of you who already think SHE sucks...I understand why. Yes, SHE has a cost: you will have to set aside more time for cooking. However, you'll find that this actually benefits you in the long run. Not only will you spend more time creating art (yes, cooking is an art form!) that would otherwise be spent surfing the web or masturbating to Sesame Street porn, but you will also begin to appreciate your meals more, become more present with the eating process, feel satisfied about putting good fuel in your body, and develop a skill that will inevitably attract the opposite sex. You will even find that cooking gives you valuable insights into the nature of your other creative ventures.

There is also the monetary cost; SHE can be expensive. Anybody who does a lot of dating knows this very well! Jokes aside, in the long run, you'll be saving money by paying more for high-quality foods today rather than the piles of medical bills resulting from years of sustained unhealthy eating (SUE).  

The initial transition from SUE to SHE may be difficult as your body curbs its physical addiction to junk food. Again, make sure you have good HI/HO substitutes to replace the HI/LO junk. Within a couple weeks, the cravings for HI/LO foods will recede completely. For those of you who also have a psychological addiction to food, I suggest working through your neuroses with professional help and doing inner work as you commit to SHE.

As you can see, SHE is not rocket science, nor is it a directive. It's just an active way of approaching healthy eating that's tailored to your body type and preferences. 

So, SHE in summary:
-Do your own research on what's considered healthy and unhealthy foods. Starting with a fad diet is your best bet.
-Eliminate the unhealthy meals in your diet and substitute them with new healthy meals, keeping the above equations in mind.
-Observe your O. Keep eating foods that personally give you a HO (Hehehehe). Don't rely solely on hearsay (although hearsay is necessary)!
-Look on cooking blogs, this forum, and read books for HI/HO recipe ideas.
-Continue to tailor your diet to maximize your O. Stay open-minded to new foods and diets that have the potential to increase your O.

And most importantly, have fun with it! As you continually increase O, gain more energy and concentration, become more cultured and creative with your cooking, and gain a newfound appreciation for food, you will wonder how the heck you spent so much of your life with SUE feeling so painfully sluggish and depressed. You'll never want to go back down into that tepid sewer ever again. Even if you do break the lifestyle here and there (which I strongly encourage), how crappy you feel after the fact will naturally drive you back into SHE. 

Let me know what you think of this guide. It's in alpha stage. Feedback is welcome. If you test it out, let me know how it goes!

Remember: SHE's the way to go, and SUE's a bitch (for those of you who are actually named Sue: you're still a bitch). 

Cheers!