Eat Food, Not Too Much

Hey {{first name | reader}},

It’s Tuesday, which means your weekly fitness check-in. Welcome to Week #28. No matter how much I enjoy a vacation, it’s always wonderful to be back at home and sleeping in my own bed. 

I returned from France having eaten considerably more bread, fries, butter, and dessert than I do at home. This was neither an accident nor a crisis. It was France.

But by the time I landed in San Francisco, I was ready for vegetables, protein, and food that arrived without a basket of bread beside it. I did not need a cleanse, a detox, or a week of culinary repentance. I needed groceries.

Getting back to my normal diet requires grocery shopping, which I approach the way most people approach a root canal. Too many choices. Too many decisions. I've been known to stand in the produce section for an unreasonable amount of time and leave with less than I came for. My solution is a list so rigid it borders on compulsive and a rule that I only shop the perimeter of the store.¹

My normal diet is not particularly inventive. After the gym, I eat something with protein. Lunch is usually a large salad built around chicken or another protein. Dinner is vegetables and meat, often cooked on one pan. I snack on nuts throughout the day. I also enjoy butter, ice cream, and the occasional bag of chips. The system works not because it is perfect, but because it requires very few decisions and I actually like the food. The system works not because it is perfect, but because it requires very few decisions and I actually like the food.

It seems like we are bombarded with new dietary advice every day so it’s difficult to sort through all the conflicting advice. At the end of the day— there is no single ideal diet for everyone. Diets I’ve tried that haven’t worked for me include keto, low-carb diets, and paleo. Keto left too little room for the carbohydrates I enjoy and use to support my training—and even I eventually reach my limit with bacon and butter. I do try to keep my carbs down to the essentials, but it was too difficult for me to live without potatoes. And while paleo has its appeal, giving up butter and ice cream was a hard hill for me to climb.

What I eventually settled into is not Whole30, although it borrows some of its better instincts: build meals around foods that look like food, cook most of them yourself, and treat highly processed snacks as extras rather than the foundation of the diet. Unlike Whole30, my version includes potatoes, butter, ice cream, wine, and absolutely no thirty-day countdown.

I didn’t do anything wrong in France. The point is not that bread and fries are bad, or that two weeks in France must be corrected by two weeks of virtue. Vacation food belongs on vacation. Ordinary food belongs in ordinary life. I’m not punishing myself for what I ate last week or the week before. I’m getting back to the kind of meals that feel like home—preferably those that do not require twenty minutes of indecision in the produce aisle.

Question: What’s the ideal diet?

Answer: Michael Pollan rose to fame and made a boatload of money telling people: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." It’s good advice, but if you’re trying to build muscle and get stronger, getting enough lean protein is also important. There is no single ideal diet. A good diet gives you enough energy, enough protein to support muscle, plenty of minimally processed foods, and enough flexibility that you can follow it without making everyone around you miserable. If you strength train, protein deserves particular attention; the exact balance of carbohydrates and fat can vary considerably according to your preferences, activity, and health needs.

Personally, I aim for plenty of lean protein and enough carbohydrates to support my training. That's what works for me.²

Myth: If I work out enough, I can eat anything that I want.

Reality: Exercise is extraordinarily good for you, but it is not an eraser. The math doesn’t math— 30 minutes on the elliptical burns about 250 calories if you’re lucky— good for you, yes, but it is not a banana split, A hard workout can coexist quite easily with eating more energy than your body needs, and training still requires adequate protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. You do not have to earn your food or perfectly balance every meal against your activity. But what you eat most of the time still matters.³

First real meal back in my own kitchen: roasted chicken thighs with whatever vegetables survived the two weeks I was gone. This week that meant carrots, a head of broccoli, and half a red onion. Sheet pan. 425 degrees. Forty minutes. Salt, pepper, olive oil. The chicken thighs go skin-side up and come out crispy.⁴

Toss the vegetables in olive oil and season. Add the chicken thighs skin-side up. Don’t crowd the pan. Roast at 425° for 40–45 minutes until the skin is crispy and the chicken is cooked through (165°F on the thermometer). One pan, minimal decisions, nothing mushy.

If you've spent any time on fitness social media, you've probably been told that you need to chug a protein shake within 20 minutes, take six different supplements, and follow an impossibly precise routine to build muscle. This article from Precision Nutrition does a wonderful job separating what actually matters from what doesn't. The takeaway is reassuring: lift consistently, eat enough protein, and don't get distracted by the internet's latest optimization obsession.

The Reset Audit

Had a vacation? A stressful few weeks? Too many restaurant meals? Before changing anything, spend three days writing down what you actually eat—not what you planned to eat, what you actually ate.

Most people are surprised. 

Do not count calories unless that information is genuinely useful to you. Record meals, snacks, drinks, and the circumstances around them: hungry, rushed, bored, social, or simply presented with excellent French bread.

The goal isn't perfection. The goal is information. Once you know what you're actually doing, you can make one change. Just one. Start there.⁵

Stay strong,
{{first name | reader}}

P.S. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Also, occasionally, a jambon beurre. Pollan would understand.