My eating, diet and nutrition background.
I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s in Australia living on a relatively standard western style diet for the time. Most of the diet included simple, unprocessed foods, your standard meat and 3 veg as we used to call it. It was a diet characterized by a relatively high carbohydrate content and a moderate protein and fat content. In part due to my parents and in part due to the environment, I was not exposed to many, highly processed or “junk” foods. That certainly changed when, in the early 90’s I moved to Adelaide (the capital city) to study. Relying on myself to shop and cook as well as a greatly increased exposure to highly processed “junk” foods and a decrease in my physical activity, I began a slow and steady incline into the over-weight category. A diet that I am sure was characterized by a high carbohydrate content, moderate protein and a high fat content. It would have also included a high level of highly processed foods.
Nearing my 30’s, I was able to, finally, lose the weight and get my eating habits and diet back into shape. I was able to achieve my weight loss quite quickly, losing around 60 lbs (26 kg’s) in 6 months. I achieved this by following some pretty simple ideas. Firstly, don’t drink calories. I had not only a bad soda habit but I also drank a lot of milk and a lot of juice. I still drank soda but changed to diet soda and removed drinking juice and milk from my diet. Secondly, I removed as much fat as I could from my diet. I ate no-fat yoghurt, snacked on fruits as opposed to candy, removed the skin from chicken, and so on. Thirdly, portion control. I started to limit my intake of food each meal. If something I cooked was for 4 serves, then I made sure it was 4 serves for me, not 3 or even 2 sometimes! And lastly, I got active. Thanks to Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley, I purchased a Total Gym XLI and begun using it for 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week. The first few weeks were tough but once I saw the results, there was no stopping me. The weight seemed to literally melt off. It was really easy to stay motivated when you get good results and so I stayed motivated.
That was in 2003 and even though, with my current knowledge and understanding of diets and weight loss, I myself might not do exactly the same thing as I did before, it worked for me at the time and I got great results. I have continued to lose weight and get more lean. I have lost maybe another 20 lbs and feel in the best shape of my life. At the very least, the equal of my late teen years. I continue to look at my eating and my diet, mostly from a performance point of view but also, as I have aged, from a general health point of view.
I began an intermittent fasting eating plan in May 2014 and have been intermittent fasting since. What this involves for me, is to schedule all my eating over about a 9-10 hour window (as often as I can, I’m not perfect but 6 out of 7 days I achieve it pretty easily). Or, to look at it in intermittent fasting terms, I try to go for around 14-15 hours every day not eating. I am not the type of person that’s been able to control my night-time eating very well (I used to have a really bad habit of always snacking some time between midnight and 2am ) so what this has meant for me is that I simply postpone/delay my first meal of the day, my breakfast (the breaking of the fast). My first meal of the day is usually around 1pm in the afternoon. I am then able to spread my daily meals (2 or 3) over the next 9-10 hours, up until some time around 10:30pm or so.
It works with my lifestyle. It has helped me control my weight, even helped me lean up a little and, more importantly for me, to keep lean. Intermittent fasting has a lot of support in academic research for overall improving many aspects of general health and well-being as well as for weight loss. I think it’s a great (and relatively easy) way to modify your diet/eating schedule and there are very few who wouldn’t gain some benefit from following an intermittent fasting plan.
I continue to explore blogs, websites, podcasts, scientific journals and anything else I can. I continue to experiment with my own diet in an attempt to find what works for me but also to hopefully be able to help others in their own journeys to improving, not only their performance but their general health as well.
About my Training.