eating – The Brilliant Beast Blog

Food First

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Brilliant Friends,

The “diet versus exercise” debate deals with the wrong question.

Living well isn’t about choosing between eating right and exercising. It’s about taking one step at a time. If you’re going for weight loss, or slimming down, don’t overestimate exercise.

Food and eating are much more powerful beginner tools in the hormone and metabolic shaping of your body and mind. Your body will respond immediately to good foods, especially healthy fats.

I had six pack abs and under ten percent body fat all my adult life – and I still could see the explicit changes in how I looked, felt, and performed once I dropped the protein shakes, avoided wheat and sugar, and ate more fat.

Timing of meals is ultra important. I’ve learned to not force food upon myself. If I’m not hungry, I’m not going to eat. It just makes sense. It also turns out that hormones coordinate hunger, fullness, and digestion of food. So eating on someone else’s clock doesn’t make too much sense.

Two hormones in particular are predictable and determine what happens with the food you eat: insulin and cortisol. Insulin starts low when you awake and rises when you eat. Cortisol inversely starts high in the morning and drops as you fall asleep.

Insulin is released when there is lots of glucose in the blood. When you eat carbs, insulin comes. Insulin is the signal for your body to take glucose out of your bloodstream into your cells. Liver, muscles, and fat cells take in glucose when you eat because insulin commands it.

It’s important that your body can release insulin when you eat a meal. This ensures that the glucose in your blood gets absorbed by your body. Too much glucose floating around in the blood, and you have high blood sugar. This happens when you eat and there isn’t enough insulin released to take in all the glucose.

Cortisol counteracts insulin. Since cortisol is highest in the morning, insulin will be least effective in the morning. It makes sense to avoid eating until later in the day, when cortisol drops and insulin response can be more effective.

In this way, your body has a system and timing for food absorption. Play around with timing your first meal. Try skipping breakfast. Try a later lunch. Delaying your first meal will give your body a chance to absorb the food better. Cortisol won’t be so high. Insulin will be released more effectively, ensuring the glucose from your food gets properly absorbed from your bloodstream.

Use fatty foods to regulate hunger when you do eat. Fat satiates hunger much better than starches, and tells your body to burn fat. Skip the fat and you’re going to have cravings all day long.

Imagine how strenuous exercise can complicate matters for you. Your energy needs will drastically change. Your body will need more building blocks, more vitamins, more minerals, and different timing of meals.

It’s all doable, and I support your decision to become stronger through exercise. But before you toss yourself into the algorithms of traumatic exercise recovery, figure out your practice of food and eating for your current state.

This will allow you to measure subtle changes and observe differences more clearly. To summarize eating if you are not exercising:

Eat your first meal later in the day
Eat lots of healthy fats, until you are full and satisfied. If you have cravings or feel hungry after meals, try eating more fat.
Eat carbs, such as starches, at the end of the day
Adjust the amount of carbs you eat based on your body fat and your energy level in the morning
- Fat gain or hung over feeling – eat a bit less carbs
- Low energy, dry eyes – eat a bit more carbs
- If you do exercise, you will need more carbs

Live powerfully,

Steve

Photo credit daBinsi/Flickr. Posted under this Creative Commons license.

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Never Too Late To Eat Well

It’s never too late to eat leafy green veggies.

It’s never too late to eat healthy fat.

It’s never too late to try wild caught fish instead of farmed.

It’s never too late to buy from the closest farmers’ market.

It’s never too late to eat well.

It’s never too late to rethink what you’ve been doing your whole life, and how you could do things differently for your own good.

It’s never too late to ask questions and find answers.

Until the moment you tell yourself it doesn’t make a difference.

Until you say you’re too old, too fat, too tired.

Until you think you aren’t that kind of person.

Until you blame it on someone else.

What difference does it make? No one’s keeping tabs. You have every right to seek what’s good for you. Your happiness is yours to find. Your health is yours to build and protect. Your life is yours and no one else’s ultimate treasure.

Who cares what you’ve been eating up until today. Who cares whether you’ve been misinformed, or manipulated into eating things that make you feel bad. If you have the will, you will find your way.

Your diet is your responsibility. It is your well being. The food you eat is what becomes you. It makes the body that you have. So you have every right to eat well.

If you want to eat good food that makes you feel good in every way, but you won’t because you are confused, ashamed, embarrassed, shy, or scared, I’m here to tell you that no one has the duty to approach you and lead you to it. I would do it if I could. But I can’t, and no one else can.

I had to go from one source to the next, to the next, and another, to find truth. I thought that if it was in print, or from the government, that the food I ate would be good for me. I learned that that’s just simply not true.

I found that my health depends on what I eat. That the way I feel depends on what I eat. That my strength, my livelihood, my body, and my mind, depend on what I eat.

And when I learned this, I became angry. I was frustrated that I had followed the words of people who did not know, who did not care, and who wanted only something for themselves when they told me what to eat.

Then I decided to not follow. I decided to abandon the “food pyramid”, to pull the “doctor” down from his pedestal, and to shred the texts on food and eating that spoke for someone else.

I realized that I am the only one in this world who can choose for myself.

I realized that my Self is the one thing in this world I have the power, the responsibility, and the willingness for which to live.

I can blame no one else for my pain and my suffering. I can ask no one else to bring me out of it.

There is no other point. I am the point.

If this is you, too, take the lead in your life. Leave the diet and the paradigm and the thinking that hasn’t given you a life of fullness and joy. Just go. Get what you want, find what you are seeking, eat what you will.

Discover the power of food. Respect it. Own it.

Live powerfully,

Steve

Eat Powerfully

My wife and I met with an old friend (by “old” I mean elementary school days) in Hayward for brunch the other day. It was past one in the afternoon and neither of us had eaten. We were all eager to get something to eat, but not suffering from hunger.

In passing, we brought up the fact that both of us often train on empty stomachs. For both of us, it was common that a good workout happened without food for several hours. When I say good workout, I mean a focused, energy-steady, and positivity-surging session of training.

I mentioned to my friend that without eating, I am able to maintain steady focus and get a lot of work done. As long as I have a task at hand, I feel just fine. If I have nothing to do, though, it’s common that I get hungry sooner in the day. He agreed, saying he thought it was the distraction from food that enabled us to drive forward without it.

I don’t think it’s necessary to gloat over the fact that I can go through the day without food. I’m not an ascetic, I eat a lot, especially at night, and I love love love food. But I think it’s important to see what’s going on with each of our own selves in the realm of hunger, satiety, productivity, focus, and overall effectiveness and quality of life.

If we can master the knowledge of our needs and our natural ebbs and flows of energy, we can position ourselves to be effective at the time we are needed and rest ourselves when we are not. We can consume our resources when they are most effective to our minds and bodies, and we can set them aside when they’ll have little to do with the outcomes of life.

I speak to the short and long term for myself in terms of food and eating. On a short term, day to day basis, I’ve reduced my eating to twice a day. I have butter coffee in the morning, and a large dinner at night. As for the long term, I’ve been living with this eating schedule for the past four years without any sign of energy deficit, malnutrition, or chronic illness.

The only significant break from this has been my three and half month long travel this year. There have been differences while I was overseas and backpacking. I’ll get more into this in another post. I want to focus on long term pattern and effects here.

People have asked me if I don’t get stomach problems from eating so much at night. In fact, I’ve never felt better since having fats in the morning and eating all of my food at night. My stool is regular, my energy is regular and full, and my body is well-toned and responsive. As long as I follow this well-fitted pattern of eating and nutrition.

The truth is, I’ve always had digestive issues. Since I was a teenager, I’ve had bad gas and upset stomach much of the time. I remember so many nights out with friends, during deep talks, where I was just dying from the struggle to hold in my farts.

Looking back, and with my present knowledge and experience, most of this had to do with what I ate. So much wheat in the form of bread, pasta, and sweets, bad fats, and milk were among the culprits. I had energy when I did, and I forced energy when I had none. I was often exhausted at night and in the morning.

This unnatural living created a deficit that continues to suck energy from me today. I’ve found the gaping holes and leaks and stopped the flooding, but I’m still getting leaks of energy here and there. Enough with the analogy.

At thirty years, I’m at a sort of turning point. I know what’s good for me. I’ve discovered it. During my mid to late twenties, I went to all ends to capitalize on it. I did everything I could, within my means, to make myself better. I had to with the circumstances I was in, but I also wanted to.

Now I’m at the tail end of this stage of awe at what has been discovered. Many, many other people, including you, have also found out that we’ve been in a matrix version of the truth about nutrition and eating. And you’ve also come to navigate your way through the webs of lies spun around us. Something was not working but everyone was trying to ignore the skips in the beat. The glitches.

The thing about our world, as opposed to that of the Matrix, is that even though we’ve been out in the cold, hard reality, and have found how to light the fire and thrive, the webs continue to spin around us. Just go to the nearest “health foods” or “farmer’s market” store and see how many gluten-free and paleo products line the shelves. They’ve simply taken the spotlight from cereals, which are still the next aisle over, and they’ve become the new idea of healthy eating.

The matrix of this world continues to expand. We’ve definitely torn away the webs at the fringes and made our way out, but it’s more like Harry Potter’s Triwizard Tournament hedge maze. It keeps growing, changing directions, and trying to engulf us.

What to do? Remember that the prize lies within you. I have to keep the focus on me. I have to remember, day to day, and year to year, that the ultimate goal with eating, food, and wellness is my own self. The closer I can get to fulfilling the center of me, the further I stay from the web of the food matrix.

Yes, there is truly good stuff out there. You can find good food. Clean veggies. Happy meat. People who give a damn, who want you to share in the wellness of their products. People who do the high level research to find more of the truth to share with us.

We’ll find it, we’ll invest in it, it will grow, and truth and goodness and thriving will overcome the lies and suffering. We’ll keep guiding each other, and the universe will fill in the gaps.

The key is to stay true to yourself. Seriously, that’s all.

Live powerfully, eat powerfully,

Steve

P.S., a big thanks to my friend for coming out and sharing deep thoughts. If you read this, you know who you are.

The Brilliant Beast Blog Daily

Schedule

There’s something to be said about waking, eating, and sleeping on a schedule.

These are connected in some way. One leads to the next which leads to the next. Sleeping a while after eating the last meal seems to result in better rest than sleeping right after.

Eating seems to require a buffer time before sleep. This may have to do with digestive processes. It might be a primordial defense against aspiration. Or a social evolution, geared toward post meal bonding.

Whatever it is, this buffer period makes it difficult to sleep early when I’ve eaten a late dinner. Almost invariably I’ll stay up for a while, sort of wired on even though I’m tired. On the occasion that I’m exhausted and fall asleep anyway, I wake and find my digestive process stalled.

Incidentally, I found myself getting drowsy much earlier at night after earlier dinners. Four or five o’clock in the afternoon seems to be the magic hour. Starting dinner early allows me to digest and relax for a while, getting into slumber mode before it gets too late at night for a full stretch of sleep.

After discovering this, I’ve tried several times to replicate the result. When I successfully make dinner early, I end up falling asleep much earlier. There just seems to be a natural internal process, aside from digestion, that needs to take place after dinner. Rushing it doesn’t seem to be an option, so shifting dinner time solves it from the other end.

In addition to things like magnesium, meditation, and mobility, try eating dinner earlier in the evening to bring yourself to rest earlier. The tricky part is reorganizing the day to get dinner ready earlier.

To powerful living,

Steve

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