Let’s discuss some food fails. I have been working at this for decades and continue to amaze myself at how someone so informed can get it so ridiculously wrong. Back in my 30s, I had the idea that regular store-bought packaged granola would be a good, healthy thing to eat for breakfast. Sugar crash fail. After a few months of feeling horrible by late morning, I gave that one up and moved on to eggs. Not to leave well enough alone, a few years ago, I went for oatmeal in the morning. This time, I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor and found that no version—instant, regular, steel cut, whatever—would keep my blood sugar from going ballistic.
Having recently had my gut thoroughly tested, my doc wants me on a no-dairy, no-gluten, no-lectin diet. Having been a huge Greek yogurt eater, I thought I would just switch to coconut yogurt. Good move, right? Wrong. Sure, it has a bit of probiotics in it, but otherwise, it is just a bowl of saturated fat with almost no protein or other nutrients. That one took me a month of self-fattening to figure out. My doc now wants me to eat more organ meat, which seemed weird, but okay, I’ll try it. It started with a ground venison that is mixed with 10% organs. Okay, not so bad. Then I thought, let’s try liver, only to discover a familiar name: liverwurst. This seemed like liver, but better. Wrong. It turns out that although it does have liver, it is also 40% pig fat, which my gut was overwhelmed with and unable to break down. Bad outcome. Liverwurst to the trash.
Putting aside my food ignorance above, it is clear that just because something is healthy for one person, it can be horrible for someone else. Take hummus. Nice, friendly chickpeas with some Middle Eastern spices. Yum. For my wife, even a tiny amount of it will cause her to feel terrible. (She claims it is the lectins.) Another woman I know cannot tolerate salad—this seemingly robust, healthy person needs all her veggies cooked. My biggest all-time world-class fail was trying our friend Bryan Johnson’s Blueprint vegan diet a few years ago. It seemed like such a good idea, better for the planet, very low toxins, kind to animals. Right? After three weeks of that, I had put on 10lbs, was energyless, and was having trouble thinking. Bryan’s diet is perfect for Bryan and maybe other people, but not me. This week’s new experiment: steak, eggs, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and berries for breakfast. It looks like I am preparing for a day of lumberjacking, but so far, it’s working out. Let’s see how long this one lasts.
Onward and upward,
David Stewart
