My New and Improved Approach to Nutrition

As promised when I launched this Substack, I'm going to occasionally focus on health and fitness.

Over the past nine months I’ve been developing a new and improved approach to my nutrition.

After changing jobs, buying a house in a you’re-drunk-go-home market, and moving to a new part of the DFW metroplex, my eating was out of control and I was gaining weight.

While I’ve always enjoyed exercising in some form (basketball, weights, running) since I was a teenager, I have also always struggled with consuming more calories than necessary to support my level of daily activity.

Which means if I’m not consciously regulating my consumption, I can workout every day and still gain weight.

So I have paid attention to my eating habits for most of my adult life.

In my twenties and thirties I was a stereotypical yo-yo dieter, embracing the latest fad to lose ten or fifteen pounds, and then gaining back fifteen or twenty when I could no longer follow the extreme rules of the diet.

In my late thirties and through my forties, I used a combination of CrossFit and low-carb diets (Zone, Paleo, Keto) to maintain my weight somewhere between 195 and 205 pounds, with a few temporary excursions above and below those norms.¹

Last summer, after being introduced to the work of Dr. Trevor Kashey in Michael Easter’s The Comfort Crisis,

I began experimenting with some of the takeaways I was able to glean from Easter’s chapter on nutrition, as well as a few other articles and podcasts featuring Dr. Kashey.

When I began experimenting with this new approach in late July, I weighed 208 pounds.

Just over three months later I weighed 188 pounds.

As of this writing in May 2023, I weight 186 pounds.

With the exception of gaining five pounds during December, I’ve managed to maintain a weight at or below 190 pounds for six months.

I’ve been at this long enough to know my current weight is only as maintainable as my current plan is sustainable.²

So far, this new approach—based upon flexible principles and realistic practices, rather than extreme fads or expensive supplements—feels doable for the rest of my life.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

What follows are the basic practices of this new approach. I’m sharing these not as a prescription for anyone else, but as a description of what’s working for me.³

1. Adopt a long-range mindset.

This is about changing old habits and developing new ones, not losing twenty pounds in two months to get ready for bikini/speedo season.

Having a long-range mindset reduces both the pressure I put on myself to succeed and feeling discouraged if I’m not seeing quick results.

2. Embrace the experimental nature of this process.

One of the reasons a long-range mindset is essential is this approach requires experimentation.

All experiments yield results.

All results are beneficial in that they teach us something.

Since this is a  personalized approach, it took some time to dial in how much and what kind of foods were going to be most helpful in supporting my weight loss and fitness goals.

This means there were some weeks I didn’t lose any weight or maybe even gained some.

Rather than giving up because the plan wasn’t working, I kept making changes to see what would happen next.

I now approach my bathroom scale with curiosity, not dread, because I know I’m about to learn something useful.

3. Start with a baseline.

You can’t chart a course for where you want to go unless you first know where you are.

In addition to logging my starting weight, I wrote down everything I ate the first week so I could see what and how much I was eating.

From this baseline, I was able to make adjustments to the total number of calories I consumed each day.

If you try this, don’t be surprised if you automatically eat less simply because you’re observing and recording your behavior.

The Hawthorne Effect is real.

4. Get in the habit of tracking.

I track almost everything I eat.

This means I weigh and measure my food when eating at home, and do my best to estimate it when eating out.

I track my calories and my macros, especially protein.

I weigh myself every day so I can notice trends.

This allows me to make experimental changes to what and how much I eat.

5. Begin to pay attention to the stories you’re telling yourself about what, why, and how much you’re eating.

Am I eating because I’m hungry?

Am I going back for seconds or thirds because I’m still hungry?

Or is it because I’m anxious because I’m at a party and small talk makes me nervous?

What do I hope eating this bowl of ice cream will do for me?

Help me relax?

Take my mind off of work?

6. Develop other methods of meeting the emotional needs you’re trying to satisfy with food.

Instead of eating out of boredom while watching TV or entitlement after a hard day at work, what are some other ways of occupying or rewarding myself?

What can I do to change my mood or state without consuming seven-hundred calories?

These strategic practices were enough to get me started nine months ago.

In a future post, I’ll share some specific lessons I’ve learned from their implementation.

1. I start to feel “Are these pants too baggy?” lean when I weigh less than 190 and “Where are my stretchy pants?” heavy when I weigh more than 210.

2. Brutal truth alert: If you can’t see yourself doing in six months or a year from now, what you’re currently doing to lose weight, you’re probably going to regain it when you go back to your normal eating habits.

3. I am not a certified nutritionist or registered dietician. Each individual's dietary needs and restrictions are unique to the individual. You are ultimately responsible for all decisions pertaining to your health.