Eating for Health: 1-Year Progress Report

[Bloviation alert: This is a long one; 4,000 words and then some. You have been advised. —Mike the Author/Ed.]

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'Kay, today's the day. It's been exactly one year since I began my diet experiment, so here's yer helpful friendly one-year progress report. I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist; this is just an account of my own experience, my own journey.

To briefly review, last December 19th, one year ago today, I started time-restricted eating (TRE) and a whole-food plant-based (WFPB) diet. TRE means you only eat during a defined "window" of time every day. WFPB means you aim to get at least 80% of your calories from unprocessed or minimally processed plants. Actually I slowly transitioned to a Dr. Greger / nutritionfacts.org diet, which might more accurately be called a "FAM" diet, meaning "food as medicine."

The science could hardly be more clear: food alone can prevent or even reverse many of the ailments that plague modern men and women. Food is far and away the leading cause of early death. More importantly, it is a tragic cause of diminished quality of life in our declining years and even earlier. And our "food environment" is relentlessly toxic. Active regulation of one's own diet is a vitally important topic. I use the word "vitally" advisedly.

I resolved three things last December 19th: 1. to eat only between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., meaning consuming nothing but plain water during the other 18 hours of every day; 2. to mostly eat the seven healthiest types of food for humans:

1. Greens
2. Vegetables
3. Fruits
4. Legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas and split peas)
5. Whole grains
6. Nuts and seeds
7. Spices

Outside of those things, I also eat mushrooms, which are a fungus, and supplement daily with B-12, in the form of sublingual cyanocobalamin, in the dosage appropriate for my age (63), and 400 mg of D-3. I drink two 16-oz. mugs of white tea with lemon juice every morning (which I love) and two to four mugs of plain water every day. Just recently I've taken to drinking six ounces of fresh-squeezed citrus juice daily.

The third of my resolutions was: 3. to weigh myself twice a day, morning and evening. Using a good scale, which has been an excellent investment. Like everything I've tried to do, this is pragmatic: studies show that people who weigh themselves twice a day lose more weight than people using any other weight-tracking protocol. Made me shrug at first, but who am I to say? If it works, I'll do it. So, okay.

What my 2020 diet was not was calorie-restricted. I've had a lot of experience with this now (see later in this post), and calorie-restriction diets do not work. Don't even bother with them. I only eat at certain times and I try to eat only certain foods, but I eat as much as I want to. In fact sometimes I feel a little more than stuffed. If you're eating healthy food, the more you can eat, the better. It's good for you! Have thirds.

Discipline scorecard
During the past year:

I missed 36 weigh-ins.

On a WFPB diet you avoid all animal protein and all dairy. However, I ate meat between 20 and 30 times (I didn't notate every instance and I don't want to estimate an exact number because I'm doing my best to be truthful here). I ate no dairy during the year with two exceptions: I consumed a grand total of a little more than five quarter-pound sticks of butter, mainly because I like fresh-picked green beans with butter and I use it in the dipping sauce for artichokes, and, between 10 and 15 times, I had small scoops of chocolate ice cream for dessert. (I didn't eat any ice cream at all until July.) I do eat a little oil now and then. Oil is also verboten on a WFPB diet (yet another example of vegan not being WFPB: olive oil is processed, not a whole food. As one WFPB doctor vividly puts it, "oil is the sugar of the fat world"). Carrots are metabolized best in the presence of a little fat, so I add a dollop of olive oil to pots of steamed veggies with carrots in them. And one of the salad dressings I use contains oil. (The others are Dr. Fuhrman's, which are very valuable. Thanks, Dr. F.)

Year-long, in general I would give myself about a C+ or B– for compliance. I had periodic bouts with trouble. All my life I've been a "fad eater," meaning that my natural tendency is to eat one thing over and over again until I get sick of it. In late spring I had a bout of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (vegan but not WFPB), not every day but too frequently. That lasted about a month. (In my defense, fresh-baked Amish or Mennonite bread still warm from the oven is like crack.) During the summer, convenience and laziness got the best of me and I started relying too much on restaurants and take-out for dinners, mainly vegan (Chinese, Thai, or Indian) but not necessarily WFPB. And in October (@#$!% Halloween) and into November I had a flare-up of my sugar addiction that took a few weeks to get under control again. For the most part, during this year I have eaten little candy or sweets apart from a couple of squares of dark chocolate now and then at the end of dinner.

Results
I feel great. That's the biggest result. I probably won't emphasize that enough in this post, but it's very noticeable and it's a real pleasure. I just feel so much better.

Since this day last year I've lost 50 pounds more or less. My weight on the evening of December 18th, 2019, a year ago last night, was 250.4 lbs. (I'm 6'1.5"/187 cm tall). My weight today when I got up this morning was 196.4.

It was interesting how it went. It happened in stages, or fits and starts, alternating periods of steady weight loss with "plateaus" as they're called. Checking my notes, this was my progression:

• I lost the first twenty pounds very fast, going from just over 250 to 230 in only 45 days. This is easy!
• Next I stuck at 230 for a solid week. Somebody slammed on the brakes!
• Then it took me another 11 weeks before I dropped below 220 for the first time.
• That was April 19th. From there it took until June 8th before I first dropped below 210.
• But I last saw a weight of 210 on July 13th, meaning I stuck right around 210 for over a month.

That was a long enough time that I actually resigned myself to it. I prepared myself mentally for never losing any more than that. I figured 210 was a lot healthier than 273—my all-time high (well, I hope!), back in 2012. And it was better than 250. So, okay—if that's what I get, that's what I get.

At that point I shifted my priority to not regaining weight—as you probably know, most people who lose weight tend to regain it again. I figured I should watch myself doubly carefully so as not to start shooting upward from 210.

• But then I started losing again. From July 13th to September 4th I went from 210 to 200.
• And then, stuck again! From seeing 200.8 on the scale on the morning of September 4th, I didn't first see a weight below 200 until October 12th. That was a loooooong wait to drop a single pound! No this is not easy.

I'm still hovering around 200 pounds. The lowest I've seen on the scale is 196.0, but the data doesn't lie, and it shows I've been fluctuating between 196 and 207 from September 4th to today. So this has effectively been the longest plateau yet.

Or is this just all the weight I'm going to lose? I kind of doubt it, because when I'm strict about my plan I see my weight decline, and when I'm less than perfectly compliant I watch it creep up again.

Why lose more? The mirror tells me I could stand to lose another ten or 15 pounds.

'Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?'
Arguably a more important result than weight was that at my annual checkup at the end of September, my blood pressure was 112/60, total cholesterol was 138, and every single measure on my lipid profile was in the normal range. I asked my doctor brother to interpret the blood work results for me. To be honest I was hoping for some drill-down I could use in this post, but he answered with one word: "Flawless."

The most astonishing result among many very desirable health effects was that all my joint pain and stiffness, which I thought were just symptoms of normal aging, went away during the year. Others include better energy, better sleep, and better balance. And no more irregular heartbeat, but I don't know if that's related.

Books
Some book recommendations. I have read more than 120 books on diet and nutrition in the past eight years. (I'm trying a new thing here—Amazon has "Image" linking, where you can click on the image and it will take you to the Amazon page for that item.) Here is a brief list of some of the books I've found most useful and enjoyable:

How did we get to where we are? (Really one of the great non-fiction books—I should re-read this):

The skinny about the food supply's capitalism problem (this contains the not-to-be-missed story of the inventor of Lunchables):

The nuclear option for weight loss, should you want to go full blitzkrieg and blast it with both barrels:

Next, the same author's other great book, in which he takes the 15 leading causes of death and summarizes the scientific evidence about the influences of nutritional choices on each. Although it's a thick tome, it's easy to read. There are revelations every few pages, some of them astonishing:

A primer about glycemic index, a basic concept in understanding why a calorie is not a calorie ("a calorie is a calorie" being one of the great canards of conventional wisdom):

A primer about gut health—not sure this is the best such book, but gut health is important:

I don't like the diet in this next one, so I ignored it. But the author is eloquent and inspired on the topic of "sugar sensitivity" which happens to be my big problem. (This is the most controversial choice on this book list, but I'm loyal to it. Possibly it's just me.) If your problem is a sweet tooth, sugar being the Number Two worst foodlike substance to "feed on":

If your problem is cheese, the most addictive food and the Number One worst thing to feed on (number of pizzas I've eaten in the past year: zero):

If you want a rigorous old-school scientific explanation that demystifies the obesity epidemic:

If you've decided to embark on the WFPB (whole-food plant-based) adventure:

An encyclopedia of every fruit and vegetable strictly from a perspective of health, including what kinds to choose, their history and how they differ from their native forms (did you know broccoli is a man-made invention?), where to buy them, and how to store and eat them (this was recommended to me by a TOP reader, and I'm grateful):

Understanding the "food environment" Americans are imprisoned in:

The best book about food I've ever read, richly entertaining even for anyone who has no interest in dieting (his other book The Botany of Desire is also pretty wonderful):

Some simple one-bowl recipes and a good way to dip a toe in (and the author is a good friend and workout partner of Kirk Tuck's):

Takeaways

• In general, my experiment this year has been a marvelous success. If anything I am more enthusiastic than when I started out. I love this way of eating, I love the way it makes me feel, and I love the food. Could hardly be happier.
• The thing I thought would give me the most trouble turned out to be the easiest: those 18 hours of eating nothing every day. For many years I've tended to get ravenous in the evenings and into the night. I could forego food on awakening and take it or leave it throughout the workday, but I habitually snacked, treated, and noshed continually for hours every evening. I called it "ravening," a lit'ry word from the same root as ravenous. I thought it was going to be bitterly difficult to not eat from 3 p.m. until the next morning. Turns out it isn't hard at all. There was one short period—10 days or two weeks or so—when I started indulging my peckishness a little in the evenings, having maybe a banana or a handful of sunflower seeds or a couple of dates—violating the TRE plan!—but it didn't last long. Apart from that little relapse, generally I have had little trouble with this all year. It turns out when you eat on schedule, your body gets hungry on schedule. If you don't eat during certain set times, you don't get hungry during those times. I've heard that it takes some people as long as 30 days to establish time-restricted eating habits, but it didn't take me any time at all. I was basically fine from the first couple of days onwards. Big surprise, but that's what happened.
• I discovered this year why I've never been a good cook and have never enjoyed it: I don't taste or smell very well. I'm not totally deficient in either sense, but I have great trouble identifying ingredients in a dish, or detecting the effect of one spice from another, or knowing when something's done or how much of something to put in. "Add x to taste" is my bane in published recipes. In short, I don't have the judgement to cook using good taste as the criterion. For me, trying to cook for taste is like someone trying to draw with their eyes closed. In stark contrast, eating for health gives me very clear guidelines as what to eat and when, and how best to prepare things. So FAM really liberates me: it gives me beautifully clear guidelines where before I had few. Perhaps this is to be expected, but I've become a serious health-food, er, nut. (Did you know daily nut consumption is strongly associated with a reduction in all-cause mortality? And eating just four Brazil nuts a month lowers your blood pressure all month long. Both true.) Eating for health suits me to a T.
• I had to be patient with myself. In two main ways. One is that you have to assume you're going to have slips and lapses, and you can't let that derail you. If you get thrown off the horse, you just get back on the horse. The other way of being patient with yourself is to keep working on your problems. There are certain things I needed to get into my diet, and it took a while to figure out how; and there are certain things I needed to get out of my diet, and it took a while to figure out how. My advice would be, keep trying! For example, eventually I'm going to figure out how to eat green beans and artichokes without butter. Some things just require persistence, is all.
• I really like the food. I've enjoyed food more this year than I ever have. The other day I saw a picture of some spinach salad with crumbled peanuts on top, and my mouth started to water...which made me laugh, because in my younger years I avoided salad like it was rat poison.

This is the end of that road
As I've related here before, I started experimenting with diet using myself as a guinea pig in 2012, when I was working 10 hours a day, seven days a week on TOP. That's when, thanks to a diet that mainly consisted of mozzarella cheese sticks and whole bags of candy at my desk, I tilted the scales at a corpulent 273. I looked at myself in the mirror and realized it was only going to get worse. (Most people who are overweight or obese are still gaining weight.) Diet and nutrition seemed like a Tower of Babel when I first looked into it, a hopeless tangle of conflicting information and impenetrable, deliberately obfuscatory quasi-scientific gobbledegook. Crankishness and crackpottery are dialed up to a high level, especially out on the wilds of the Internets. There's a retired surgeon out there, for example, who advocates drinking copious amounts of olive oil as a cure-all; I figure he's either performing some sort of deranged Andy-Kaufmann-style performance comedy or else he's insane.

Of course you would never design a scientific trial with only one subject, either. The results will be anecdotal by definition. I rationalized, however, that I didn't have to demystify everyone's eating problem—I only had to demystify mine. This was convenient, I thought, because my diet is the only one I actually have control over (well, mostly), and also the only one that affects my own health.

So I tried all sorts of diets. The Atkins low-carb diet (made me feel horrible), paleo (the stupidest food ideology out there—here's why), and diets that relied on "grazing" or many small meals (the opposite of TRE). I tried a calorie-counting diet (worked well, but at the cost of misery), and a liquid diet with expensive "shakes" in cans. I went to a faux-medical clinic and paid a lot of money to be examined and encouraged once a week (that's where they told me that 210 lbs. was as good as I could expect, a statement which came back to haunt me like a ghost in June). I did what Oprah said (memo: when it comes to food, don't do what Oprah says). I tried Weight Watchers. I didn't try eating potatoes to the exclusion of all else for a whole year like that man in Australia, but don't think I wasn't tempted. There were so many things I tried that I don't even remember them all. The list was long.

I didn't get discouraged. I just kept experimenting. I tried the programs of several of the most popular and best-selling diet books...and learned that many of those are "indulgence diets," meant to help people rationalize and feel good about their bad habits and impulses. Indulgence diets are a fixture in the diet world. The more popular a diet is, the more likely it is to be an indulgence diet. This is what explains the current "Keto" diet craze. Bad-masquerading-as-good diets come and go—always have, always will—because people are really pretty impressively determined to eat what they want to eat. Whatever you want to indulge in, you can find a diet that will tell you to go ahead.

The absolute worst diet I experimented with along the way was something called Soylent, a beige/gray powder you mixed with water and drank as a meal replacement...for every meal. It supposedly contained all the chemical components of food. Invented by a programmer who didn't want to be bothered with ordering pizza delivery, it's probably the precise opposite of eating whole foods! It was so miserable that my experiment with it only lasted three days. I didn't have the stomach for it, you might say. The kit was expensive, but I threw the rest away. It simply became very clear very quickly that that was not the way I was going to nourish my body for the rest of my life. Glad we settled that. Sheesh.

Clarity finally dawned on my small brain when I was reading about a ruthlessly radical no-carb diet and the author conceded that in addition to all the animal fat and refined oils he wanted you to bombard your poor system with, you still needed a small salad every day because without it you'd...well, die. What? That lit up the light bulb over my head. It occurred to me then that across every diet I'd been exposed to—easily dozens, maybe more than fifty—fruits and vegetables were the least controversial foods of all, and the most commonly shared component. Almost nobody demonizes those two things, even the most radically meat-centric diets, even the most harebrained and far-out food ideologies. That led me to the V-words, vegetarianism and veganism, which describe not diets per se but ethical stances toward animals, not that there's anything wrong with that—and then to WFPB, and then to nutritionfacts.org and Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen. The more I looked into plant diets the better the idea held up, which was the opposite of what had been true of most of my experiments.

And this is it. I've arrived. After eight years, my research project is done. I like eating this way, and it has yielded spectacular results both in terms of measurable health and in terms of the way I feel, and I enjoy food more than I ever have in my life, and I've convinced myself through actual lived experience that this is the best thing I can do for my health.

2021
So what about the coming year?

I do have some clear objectives for 2021. First, discipline: I'm going to loosen my plan somewhat but then re-commit to sticking to it more strictly. I've decided to extend my eating window by an hour and make it 9:00 to 4:00; I'm going to eat a small serving of good-quality meat once a week, and have two squares of dark chocolate after dinner; and I'm going to designate six "feast" or indulgence days so I can participate in celebrations and occasionally have a few of the things I used to love.

I might allow myself one pizza in 2021. We'll see. (Cheese really is the first thing you should banish from the foods you eat.)

Most importantly for 2021, I absolutely need to learn to cook. My breakfast and lunch menus are set and I'm happy with both. (That's how you transition to a WFPB diet, by the way—one meal at a time, starting with breakfast). Both are easy to prepare and allow for a nice balance between habit and variety. Where I have trouble is that age-old recurring problem that Michael Pollan identifies as the omnivore's dilemma: "what's for dinner?" My goal in 2021 is to try enough actual recipes to develop a nucleus of 10–15 dinners that I like and can fix easily enough and that I can rotate through for my dinners in the absence of some other plan. I need some go-to's. A regular repertoire. Amusingly, I have a whole shelf of vegetarian cookbooks and have hardly cracked a one. This is going to be hard for me, because I'm both picky and lazy and after a lifetime of bad experiences I really am negatively incentivized to cook. But it's definitely my next frontier, and it's time to take it on.

The weight goal is much more modest: to go from this morning's 196.4 to 185, three pounds less than my high school weight. From today, I have a year to lose another 11 and a half pounds. Plateaus be damned!

I also want to make sure to eat one green vegetable every day, in addition to my salad. As it is, sometimes I don't.

Oh, and I need to exercise more.

That's it. A.D. 2020 has been a dreadful year in many ways, but food- and health-wise it's had a big silver lining for me. This is officially the end of my eight years of diet experimentation, of using myself as a guinea pig. I've ended up where I wanted to be when I started this journey back in 2012.

See you right here next December 19th for another update, God, good health, and good luck willing!

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JimH: "Congratulations. You have found a nutritious diet you can live with and thrive.

"As a scientist who has lived with a spouse trained in nutrition for half a century now, I've been doing that too. Our diet is quite different but the results are similar. However, a word not found in your post is 'organic.' After understanding more about the hundreds—or thousands—of chemicals are used to grow food, we started eating organically over 30 years ago. We were organic farmers ourselves for 15 years. Stewart brand in the Whole Earth Catalog described it well 50 years ago: 'You are what you eat.' We recommend eating organic food as much as possible. And we're in our mid 70s, take no medicines, walk 3–4 miles every day (morning/afternoon/night for the last 50 years) and during the pandemic have been finding peace hiking in the mountains along the coast here in CA. Nothing like a two-hour hike in the mountains to clear your mind!"

Mike replies: This post was already about three posts in one—the books list and the history under the "end of that road" header really could have been separate posts. It's just that I'm conscious that many people don't want me talking about food all the time, so I've been holding my tongue waiting for today. But I agree organic is very important in many cases. Also toxins, which are surprisingly prevalent in a few foods and even some packaging. I originally had a paragraph about not being doctrinaire, taking everything case-by-case instead, but it quickly grew into too long a digression. Here's to your good health!

David Raboin: "Congratulations Mike. That's a stunning weight loss. You showed remarkable self-discipline. It's an inspiring achievement."

Mike replies: Thanks, but actually there's very little self-discipline required. You have to eat a lot. Arg speaks to this (I added the link), so I'll defer to him:

Arg: "Well done Mike. I have gone Greger Green Light since March. The great thing is that GGL is not a caloric restriction diet (where you feel hungry all the time but suffer for the cause—until the dam bursts). In fact, my main problem is getting his minimal Daily Dozen into me every day. Since his 'green light' list of foods has low calorie density, the Daily Dozen adds up to a lot of food. The weight kind of comes off by itself, with zero suffering. And health solves itself. My doctor took me off anti-cholesterol statins in October; no longer needed. My wife and I completely reject weight-loss fads and diet gurus. Greger and GGL is none of these; instead, it is hard-core science rolled up into an 'easily digestible' package. Cheers."

Peter Wright (partial comment): "I bought both How Not to Die and How Not to Diet. They are the scientific, non-doctrinaire approach I was needing. I was so impressed, I got extra copies for family members. I went from 205 lbs. in February to 175 lbs. today. (I am 6 feet tall and 72 years old.) My doctor has taken me off my high blood pressure drugs and cut my cholesterol drugs to half for now. And like you, I feel better and don't count calories."

Mike relies: I've also given many copies of How Not to Die to family and friends!

garlo: "Isn't the hardest part of time restricted diet when you meet with friends and family? How do you not be a party pooper and still stick to water only after 1600 hours?"

Mike replies: Well, I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. The issue hasn't come up much this year.

Mike Ferron (partial comment): "Very encouraging but I am a bit confused on oil consumption. I have read several articles explaining the health benefits of healthy fats including quality olive oil. They encourage a tablespoon of this oil every day. Hmm."

Mike replies: Olive oil is pure fat, with the highest caloric density of any food: 4,000 calories per pound. Olive oil has a poor ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids: 14:1, whereas a good target is 4:1; omega-6 contributes to systemic inflammation. And it's high in saturated fat, at 14%, when 7% is considered a practical maximum for healthy foods. Consume it if you want to if you feel it's really called for in the foods you prefer, but I'm not aware of any health benefit to eating extra amounts of it for no reason. In any event it's a highly processed food, not a whole food, so it doesn't belong in any whole-food diet. And don't forget what John McDougall says: "the fat you eat is the fat you'll wear."

Jim Kofron: "First off, congratulations!!! As you know, you inspired me to do a similar approach (no TRE yet), but the mainly WFPB diet has gone very well for me (now over a year). When I started I was around 245 (been as high as 250); I stepped on the scale on Thanksgiving morning and saw 204 (and said to myself—I won't see that again until January!). I've given myself permission to do celebrations (like turkey, sushi); I will use a bit of oil for stir frys; and I'd like to get back on legumes more. Blood work has been awesome, and I've been feeling very good.

"With regards to cooking, I started baking sourdough late last year (whole grains, more healthy carbs), and that's been an exercise in deliciousness. Sourdough pizza is on the menu for tonight—although for mine, it'll be more like a flatbread (with no cheese). Homemade marinara sauce, kalamata olives, basil, spinach, jalapenos—delicious! Thanks for being so public on this experiment! It's been a great learning experience for me, and I'm looking forward to reading the 'How not to Diet' cookbook!"

Comments

[Dave Karp]

Congratulations Mike! Glad you are feeling well and, as your brother's review indicates, doing well.

[JOHN B GILLOOLY]

Great stuff Mike. So glad to see this come full circle and hear how successful this has been for you. On to 185!

[James Werekes]

I love that you have found what really works. The only suggestion I would make would be for your recipe search. When you find one that you know you will cook many times, print it out, put tin a sleeve, and then in a three ring binder in your kitchen. You will probablybend up with more than 15 and it will be a quick reference the dreaded "What's for dinner? question pops into your head. Congratulations!

[Malcolm Myers]

Congratulations and thanks for sharing. I will never be as disciplined as you but I have lost weight before and plan to do it again. Lockdown and snacking was my nemesis this year.

[MikeR]

I began reading TOP in 2012. So, in this eight years, you've burned off 70+ pounds, and are healthier. Good job!

Glad I could help.

[Tom Hassler]

Thanks for the fantastic compilation of resources. It’s been interesting following your healthy eating quest. As someone who’s been eating fresh, organic food almost exclusively for nearly 50 years, I totally get it. It feels great to feel good!

Re: that Soylent stuff, if it ever starts coming in green, we’re in a heap o’ trouble...

[Dave Stewart]

The links in the 'Books' section seem to be mostly missing.

[Are others having trouble with this? They all work for me in the two browsers I have. Perhaps you're not in the USA? They're all links to US Amazon. --Mike]

[C.d. Payne]

Good information here. It would be helpful to know your height. If you're 5'2" you may have a way to go. The paleo video was an eye-opener.

[Fixed! Thanks. --Mike]

[Richard Chomko]

Wow. Congratulations Mike and thanks for sharing the results of your research. One factor you don’t mention though and which I wonder about, is whether you make any effort to eat organically grown foods in preference to those grown in a chemical agriculture environment? I’ve heard glyphosate in particular has been identified as not beneficial for humans — just one example.

[John]

Congrats. You almost persuaded me, but telling a Dutchman to give up cheese first isn’t going to work...

[Mike Ferron]

Mike many thanks for reporting on your dietary experiment and results. Very encouraging but I am a bit confused on oil consumption. I have read several articles explaining the health benefits of healthy fats including quality olive oil. They encourage a table spoon of this oil everyday. Hmm. Also how do you feel about potatoes? Some think they are a bit demonized and actually have decent quantities of vitamins and nutrients. Especially red potatoes which I love.

[Speed]

Congratulations! You found what works for you and you've stuck to it.

"Oh, and I need to exercise more." You could start next spring by planting some fruits and vegetables. I am a big fan of lunching on cantaloupe freshly picked and still warm from the garden.

[Benjamin Marks]

Mike: I have been exercising in the evenings during COVID. 45 minutes on an exercise bike while watching TV. I put an existing bike on a fluid trainer under the rear wheel. I haven't lost weight particularly doing this, but I have stopped having an evening snack, and my sleep is much improved. My pet theory is that I am burning off a bit of excess sugar with my light evening cardio. They say, "exercise is the best medicine." I can report a lift in mood, and the loss of an urge to have an afternoon nap. Also, if I am cold in our old farmhouse at night, the exercise takes care of that right quick - proof that there is some metabolic "afterglow" to my activity. If you are mixing things up for 2021, you might think of giving it a try. I find that doing it every night takes the "should I/shouldn't I" internal debate out of the equation. Maybe we should swap insights. I'll try your diet discipline and you try my exercise. . . Good on ya' for your 2020 successes! Here's hoping for a bright 2021.

[Peter Croft]

Don't be afraid to write about food and dieting on my account. I like reading this stuff.

[TimRG]

For pizza you could try Marinara, which despite the name is not seafood but just tomato paste, garlic, oregano, olive oil. No cheese. Good Italian run pizza joints should offer this, as it is regarded as the original pizza.

[Barry Reid]

Congratulations on your weight loss. I've been on a somewhat similar journey over the last 18 months, losing 42lbs and taking me from Obese to almost normal on the BMI scale.

I agree that a lot of diets are nuts and you need to look at the various options and work out where things have worked or not for you. Like you, also, a main driver for success has been a move to a plant based diet. This has almost automatically let to an increase in home-prepared food. Vital, as processed, cooked, chilled and pre-packaged foods really are full of rubbish.

[Peter Wright]

Mike, thanks for your good work. I bought both "How not to die" and "How not to diet". They are the scientific, non-doctrinaire, approach I was needing. I was so impressed, I got extra copies for family members. I went from 205 lbs in February to 175 lbs today. (I am 6 ft tall and 72 years old.) My doctor has taken me off my high blood pressure drugs, and cut my cholesterol drugs to half for now. And like you, I feel better and don't count calories.

Each person has their own journey to make on diet issues. Among the things I discovered in my case is that you need to get buy-in from your spouse if like me, you are fortunate to have one. Especially if they have always been the cook, food purchaser, and nutrition person of the family (which most wives tend to be for us guys). This can be a slow process, but it is very important not to force things. My other discovery is how habit-based I tend to be: In the evening I sit down to watch Netflix or similar, get myself a gin and tonic and some nuts (for health!!) – and repeat. And that is the problem... I may need to try your time restricted approach and see if I can manage that and break a bad habit – sounds hard!

Also, (and I realize this could be self serving) I think it may help to allow yourself to relapse from time to time, i.e. order in a pizza very occasionally, or eat a bar of chocolate from time to time. That way you are not giving yourself the additional burden of telling yourself that you are giving up some treat for all eternity. (I realize this does not apply to serious addictions like alcoholism or drugs.)

What a great blog! Not only has your writing improved my photography, it helps me live better (and probably longer)! Please keep it up.

[Richard Arsenault]

Thank you Mike.
Congratulations on making it through this year and actually coming out of it healthier and better than when the year started! I truly enjoy reading all about your OT stuff; I have enough GAS as it is and need to actually need to start using my kit instead of accumulating more (plea: please do not start anything up about lighting gear this year!). Hope you get to enjoy that new pool room, and stay safe. 2021 is nearly here, and it is going to get better.
Best of everything!

Rick

[MikeR]

The Amazon link is there, but the image is merely a "token." I assumed that one would see the book cover.

I'm using Firefox on Windows 10.

I just checked and found it works on Chrome, which I do not use - Google already knows too much about me.

[Richard Nugent]

Thank you, Mike. You have resolved one of my more pernicious worries: that TOP would cease to exist before I did. Either because you just ran out of steam or you went off to the great pool room in the sky.

I am about 15 years ahead of you on the road of life and there are only a few constants that I look forward to as I trudge along: reading TOP and following the Atlanta Braves. Based on your dieting success (which is most impressive by the way), I can now focus my anxiety on whether the Bravos can sign both a power hitter and another starting pitcher who will get them to the World Series!

P.S., Thanks as well for the reminder to watch what I eat more carefully.

Cheers

[John Krumm]

I've also been WFPB for the same time period, but without the time restriction. Lost about 20 lbs, could lose 10-15 more. Cholesterol (high) got a little better than on my unrestricted meat and fish diet, but not as much as you might expect. Appears to be partly a familial thing, as my brother is dealing with the same problem. Blood pressure is a little better, but still need a little lisinopril. I also find myself steering towards peanut butter and jam too often (with the bread I should avoid).

It sounds like a very human experience, nicely recounted. The problem I have with all of this self-help stuff is that I know that it's entirely an individualist approach, not a society fix. We need a society fix, like for instance slowly lowering the salt in all commercial foods. Self-help is like shoveling the road just in front of your house really well, when what we really need is a public snowplow. Still, at some level, we all need self-help.

[Animesh Ray]

Congratulations! That was impressive. But how do you know it was all due to a change in food? Did you increase or change the regularity of your exercise pattern? I would love to know. I too decreased my weight during this same period but not as dramatically as yours--only 7% as opposed to about 20% in your case. But I did not change my diet, only increased the frequency and changed the type of exercise.

[Alex Buisse]

To Dave Stewart regarding the book links, I had the same issues. Turns out they were caught by my ad blocker and seamlessly removed. Opening the page in incognito mode with adblocker disabled fixed it and the links worked just fine.

[Michael Korsholm]

Thanks Mike and congratulations. I like hearing about your health journey as I have been on one in parallel and my experience has been similarly effective. While there are differences in our food choices, there are a couple of common threads that I suspect play to the 80/20 rule. That hypothesis being we get 80% of the benefit from a near elimination of sugar and vegetable oils combined with time-restricted eating. They seem to be the most powerful levers. The journey for me started out as a weight loss project, but quickly turned into a health centric one when at the 4 week mark I had to stop taking hypertensive drugs (Dr supervised of course). Turns out, I was causing my elevated blood pressure with my poor food choices and once eliminated, blood pressure quickly returned to normal. Thanks for doing your part to keep the dietary conversation alive and well. It is important.

[Kenneth Voigt]

Thank you ! (and I welcome more)

[c.d.embrey]

I'm not you and you're not me. I don't eat sweets and despise green beans. The last stick of butter I bought was about two years ago.

I'm an excellent cook, and have many recipes. What's for dinner is never a problem.

Lots of luck on learning how to cook, it make eating what you like easier. BTW there's an app for that. Check-out https://www.mealime.com/

BTW I haven't made a shot with a real camera in five years—I'm using an iPhone XS exclusively these days. I'm using Hydra https://creaceed.com/ihydra to shoot 32 megapixel photos. Ain't AI wonderful.

[Jnny]

I lost 30 lbs this year to a nasty staph infection and surgery that followed. Do not recommend.

[Malinda Tamlyn]

Congratulations on all your success. I have been on a similar journey and come to some of the same ideas, but also a few difference. I think the first greatest similarity is the time restricted eating. Your body needs a minimum of 16 hr rest each day from digestion. It is during this “break” time that your body works on the healing processes and breaks down old cells and cleans house. The more healing in the body you needs to do the more benefit you can get from longer fasts such as a 24-36 hour two to three times a week, especially if you have diabetes or severe inflammation. Other ideas that are similar, eat real food not processed foods, real foods (single ingredient foods) are needed to heal your body. i do think something that is important to understand is that a large percentage of the population is sick with something called metabolic syndrome or insulin resistant. This causes about 80% of our diseases. We over eat, mainly sugary processed foods, which causes our pancreas to continually produce insulin (to deal with the increased blood sugar) until our body becomes desensitized to it. Our body then produces more insulin to deal with it. Insulin is the hormone that tells your body to store fat. You body gets in a cycle, you eat carbohydrates and your body produces insulin, when insulin drops the hormone gherlin, the hunger hormone, makes you want to eat more sugar and continue the cycle. This is why that break in eating becomes so important. Remember the three macro nutrients are protein, fats, and carbohydrates. All carbohydrates turn into sugar in your body, some faster than others causing a bigger insulin spikes. The primary role in any diet should be in getting our hormones back in balance and working properly. It’s too bad most doctors are not checking or testing for this. By the time a person is diagnosed with diabetes they have been high in insulin of 10-15 years, but their doctor has never checked it. This is why a low carb diet works for many, it breaks this insulin/gherlin cycle. It is best if we make our bodies metabolically fit, meaning we can run on both fat and sugar. Some organs prefer to run on fat, others on sugar. Most people have lost the ability to burn fat, making them metabolically unfit. As far as oils, yes the problem is the omega 3 to omega 6 ratio. The closer you can get to a 1:1 ratio the better or even a 1:4 ratio. Most people are round 1:20 or 1:30, this is one of the causes of inflammation. I would argue that we need more healthy fats in our diet. Every cell in your body is surrounded by a phospholipid bi-layer, these healthy fats are your building blocks needed to make these cells. Out of the three macro nutrients protein, fats and carbohydrates: only two are absolutely necessary, proteins for the amino acids, and fats for the essential fatty acids. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. I am curious on your lipid panel, the two most important numbers are your triglycerides to HDL ratio. To be metabolically fit you should have a low triglycerides (below100) and a high HDL(70-90). This is the best determinate of your metabolic health and hearth disease. LDL is basically meaningless.

[Thank you for this Malinda. My triglycerides in September were 84 and my HDL was 46, and chol/HDL ratio was 3.0. --Mike]