The Do-Nothing Diet grand finale

And lessons learned

This is an update I’ve postponed writing because — Dang! — look at that embarrassing picture. I didn’t want to admit how out of shape I had become. I mean, I rode a bicycle around the world and already have an amazing before and after picture. I was supposed to be a self-actualized person, right!? I wasn’t supposed to revert to that soft, pasty guy stuck in front of a computer, right!? Well, a few things happened…

The explanation of what happened is best left for the sequel to Falling Uphill. (Yes! I’ve finally had an adventure that rivals riding a bicycle around the world.) But in short, I got stuck in front of a computer again. You could say I got complacent, sat on my laurels, or became too fond of my new cozy, comfy life. I earned it, didn’t I? Worst of all, I became chronically sick and stressed out. There’s more to it than that, but this article is about the solution not the problem.

By the way, I don’t want to pretend that I’m a fitness coach or nutrition expert. I do believe everyone is very different, and nutritional needs vary. This is just my story of how I lost 45 pounds of fat, gained 5 pounds of muscle and surprisingly, took a dent out of my depression. A key to my success was learning how diet and exercise control hormones.

Rule #1 — Don’t eat carbs except for fresh vegetables.

My Do-Nothing Diet focuses on how to eat, NOT what to eat. You could call it a mindfulness diet. I had the theory that I only needed to find one or two rules to follow. You can see all my food rules here. It took me a while. My first mistake was trying to do them all. 

My new favorite rule, as seen above, is: Do not eat any carbohydrates except fresh vegetables. This one rule was like a miracle. It peeled off the extra pounds. Carbohydrates, if you don’t know, are a nonessential macronutrient. In other words, you don’t need to eat carbohydrates to survive.  

My goal was not to restrict my calories. And this diet worked. Contrary to the fat-free 90s, I could eat fun stuff like steak, cheese and salads swimming in olive oil. Basically, I was doing a combo version of the Mediterranean and ketone diet. It seemed a natural way to eat.

The surprising part about not eating carbs is that I was not hungry. Sure, I would have loved some French fries, but I didn’t crave them. I was feeling full for the first time in my life. If only I could go back in time and give myself some advice. 

Sheep don’t eat grass

The reason I included fresh vegetables in my rule is that it eliminates a lot of the starchy root vegetables. It’s hard to eat a raw potato or onion. Potatoes are delicious, but they are almost nothing but carbs, which is basically sugar. Potato chips consistently rank as one of the worst foods you can eat. Some hardcore dieters don’t even eat vegetables, but I wasn’t going to sacrifice all the vitamins and, especially, the fiber. I think fiber is essential to a good gut microbiome (gut bacteria). One of the interesting facts I learned along the way is that grazing animals, like sheep, don’t eat grass. The sheep are actually feeding the grass to their microbiome, which then digests the grass for the sheep. The byproduct of the microbiome is fatty acids, which, in turn, is what the sheep really live on. So, the fiber was essential. It may sound funny, but if you are not farting, you probably aren’t getting enough fiber. In other words, you need to learn how to feed your microbiome. 

Different microbiomes explain people’s different nutritional needs and cravings. In addition, there is evidence that a healthy microbiome helps regulate hormones. Fun fact: there are more serotonin receptors in your gut than in your brain. The microbiome is so important in regulating mood that it is now being called your second brain. Indeed, my haze of depression lifted.

As I said, I’m not a nutritionist, but if I were, I’d write a book about a microbiome diet called “Sheep Don’t Eat Grass.”

Setbacks — My microbiome needs a beer

Anyway, things were going slow but fine. But too often, I would joke, “My microbiome needs a beer.” I kept making exceptions. It was the weekend. A holiday. A friend’s party… Worst, all too often, I would tell myself: “I need a day off. “I’m depressed. I’m upset.  I need a break. I deserve a break…” You could say I hit a plateau. Without food as a source of entertainment, my life became a grind. Depression has been a constant enemy lurking in the shadows, and until now, food was my friend. 

Certainly, my mood wasn’t helping. But I also suspected that my diet rule only worked up to a certain point before my body adapted. 

Rule #2 — Exercise until I sweat and shake

After a year of slowly losing weight, I decided it was better to front-load the effort and just be done with it. So, I added a new rule: exercise every day until I’m sweating and shaking. Surprisingly — surprising to someone who used to spend all day on a bicycle — it only takes about 20 minutes to get a good workout. The personal trainer at our apartment helped me to build muscle, which ironically added weight. I swam almost every day. And even while doing mundane chores, like cooking, I would do pushups while waiting for the pot to boil. I had already been exercising, but instead of 3 or 4 times a week, I was now exercising 2 or 3 times per day, including a simple walk. By the way, the endorphins generated by exercise are also great for relieving stress.

The boiling point

Habit Tracker

To help you reach the boiling point, I suggest downloading my Don’t Break the Chain worksheet. I used it to help keep track of my goals. It makes it easy to see patterns to your bad habits.

I started to make significant progress. I actually had to eat more and better to keep up with the new demands of my body as it rebuilt itself. I wasn’t putting in much more effort than before, but it was enough to finally reach critical mass. I give my friend and fitness coach, Garrett Stangel, credit for helping me along the way, especially for the following analogy. 

He said, “99º centigrade is water, but 100º is a steam engine.” Imagine: you can slowly add wood to the fire all day long yet never reach boiling. Sure, you’re burning energy. You’re doing work. You’re invested in time. But, unless you reach 100º centigrade, you can’t make steam. However, take the same pile of wood, throw it all on at once, and you’ll reach boiling. Another fun fact is that a nuclear power plant’s only function is to produce heat to make steam to spin a turbine to produce electricity. That always amazes me—the pinnacle of technology just to boil water. 

So that was me: the little steam engine that could. Choo! Choo! 

By the way, I love this concept so much that I’ve decided to apply it to other areas of my life.  

Weightloss goal

In case you are curious, this increased my weight loss from 0.1 pounds per day to about 0.2 pounds. It was perhaps too much, but I just wanted to be done and enter a maintenance level. 

A healthy weight loss rate of one pound a week requires about a 3600-calorie deficit. For me, since my goal was not to restrict my calories, this meant about 6 hours of swimming per week or 12 hours of walking. This is hard because exercise makes you hungry. 

Lessons learned

Of course, I got the usual benefits. I lost weight, gained muscle and lowered my blood pressure. Better yet, my confidence improved, my depression lifted and I feel like myself again. And I learned some important lessons along the way:

• I had to keep reminding myself that getting in shape is a slow and tedious process. I could work out all day and not notice a difference. Likewise, weight gain is a similar process that creeps up on you.
• Dieting has a lot to do with hormones. For example, carbohydrates increase insulin, which increases fat storage and blood pressure. And many foods stimulate hormones that control hunger. 
• Speaking of hormones, it bears repeating that low carbs and high protein shifted my mood dramatically. And exercise released endorphins and burnt off anxiety.
• Don’t eat food that doesn’t taste good. I learned to tune into what my body actually needed. The first thing I did when I reached my goal was eat a bag of potato chips. Not only did they taste like grease, but they made me ill. It was surprising. 
• Eat a wide variety of food. Doing so will give you some nutrients that you may not know you are missing, i.e. causing cravings. Similarly, another food rule that has served me well for a long time is to eat fresh food. The less processed and the closer to home the food comes from, the better it is for your body and the better it is for the environment. One of my greatest joys is to eat a tomato out of my own garden still hot with sunshine. 
• My particular body doesn’t like corn. This was an accidental discovery. I wasn’t trying to eliminate corn; it’s just hard to eat raw. Anyway, I had no idea it was giving me indigestion.
• Set one simple keystone goal. Years ago, my goal to ride a bicycle around the world helped organize all the other areas of my life, including losing weight. So, rather than go on a diet, you could set a bigger goal, like finding a romantic partner or hiking the Appalachian Trail. 
• A small but big realization after experimenting with intermittent fasting is that I know that no matter how hungry I get, I never need to eat junk food to survive. 
• And I realized that when my life is not focused on eating and drinking and the related chores of shopping, cooking and cleaning, I have a lot of extra time.

Conclusion

There are more lessons learned, but I hope you find one in my Do-Nothing Diet that works for you. I believe that one keystone goal or one rule can make all the difference, but in reality, a healthy lifestyle is a learning process and probably requires a multi-pronged approach. That being said, trying to do it all simultaneously is also not feasible. So, as you learn and your body adapts, try switching out your rule. 

Anyway, now my challenge is to maintain this new healthy lifestyle. That was the goal of the Do-Nothing Diet — to create a sustainable and enjoyable healthy life. It’s exciting times here on Planet Earth, and I want to stick around to see what happens.