In order to keep this short and sweet, I’ll just be linking away to other people who’ve written more complete explanations with a short introductory paragraph or two.

Background

For the last 4 years I’ve been on a personal journey to dramatically transform my physical fitness and associated lifestyle. Beginning in 2005, I made regular, consistent exercise a priority for the first time in my life. That March, weighing in at around 280 lbs, I began training for the 2005 Portland Marathon, which I eventually completed in 5 hours, 17 minutes and 34 seconds at 255 lbs. I subsequently trained for and ran ran half-marathons in 2007 and 2008 (don’t ask about 2006). During that time, my efforts toward improved nutrition were fairly hit and miss. I tried a few different programs, but with mediocre results. During the summer months, I was able to keep myself between 250-255 lbs, but in the winter, I’d typically gain 10 or so lbs.

13 months ago, in May 2008, while searching Google for information on gyms in Bellingham, I discovered a local gym called Jogo. I’d worked out at Bellingham Athletic Club (a local globo gym) before, but I was looking for something different. After one workout at Jogo, I was hooked. Not only was it a killer workout, but it was the most fun I’d ever had exercising. If I was going to stick with something, I had to enjoy it. At first, I intended it primarily as a supplement to my running, but after a few months it became clear that my workouts at Jogo, and not my running, needed to be the core of my training regimen. It wasn’t long before I realized just how critical my diet was to my performance and overall fitness.

Diet

I’ll start with food because this seems to be the thing in which people are the most interested. There are two main aspects to the discussion of diet and food—quality and quantity.

Quality

Let me preface this by saying that much of this flies in the face of the current conventional wisdom and may, therefore, seem wrong to you on its face.

Let’s start with group food into three broad categories—Optimal, Purposeful and Mostly Bad.

• Optimal—daily; all meals
  • meat—lean beef, chicken, fish, bison, turkey, lamb, etc; preferably grass-fed
  • non-starchy vegetables—broccoli, lettuce, spinach, celery, green peppers, asparagus, etc
  • nuts & seeds—unroasted almonds, walnuts, pecans, sunflower seeds, pine nuts
  • fruit (in moderation)—apples, oranges, mango, kiwi, berries, etc
• Purposeful—once or twice per day, depending on circumstances; for instance, whole milk may be consumed in relatively large quantities when attempting to gain weight
  • Milk—preferrably, raw, whole milk
  • Cottage Cheese
  • Yogurt—plain; greek style
  • small amounts starchy vegetables—sweet potatoes shortly following high-intensity exercise
• Mostly Bad—generally, zero to three times per week; very occasionally (e.g. holiday season) more frequently, but still quite limited
  • refined sugar (and its ilk)—sugar, brown sugar, raw sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, etc
  • grains and grain-based foods—bread (including whole-wheat and sprouted grain), pasta, crackers, rice, corn, quinoa, barley, oats (steel-cut and rolled)

To be sure, this is not a "religious" issue for me. Paleo eating fundamentalists are far stricter and would probably object to the frequency with which I eat from the Mostly Bad category. On the other hand, there are those who believe very strongly that high-fiber diets loaded with whole grains are the key to health and happiness. Others believe, for various reasons, that meat eating is an abomination. Others would say that it matters little what you eat, but instead only that you count calories. To all of them I say that this has worked better than anything else I’ve tried (which is pretty much everything), and I’m sticking with it for now. If I find something that works better (doubtful), I’ll switch.

Now, you might ask, what is the basis for this? Well, it turns out that it largely comes down to insulin. Here’s a good explanation in layman’s terms: The Definitive Guide to Insulin, Blood Sugar & Type 2 Diabetes (and you’ll understand it). So, basically, the Mostly Bad category is comprised of foods that are incredibly dense in carbohydrates and, therefore, likely to elevate one’s insulin to undesirable levels.

Quantity & Proportion

Now that we’ve settled the question of what I eat, let’s take a look at how much I eat. My lean body mass is my primary basis for determining how much I eat and, to a slightly lesser degree, the proper proportion of macro-nutrients. At the time of this writing, my last known lean body mass is 200 lbs.

To figure my macro-nutrient ratios, I typically use the quantity/ratio prescription from Dr. Barry Sears Zone Diet, which recommends that a person consume protein, fat and carbohydrates in a 30:30:40 ratio. The overall quantity is determined by taking one’s lean body mass (200 lbs), multiplying by a coefficient between 0.5 and 1.0, depending on one’s personal activity level, and using the result as the number of grams of protein one should consume. For me, I typically use 0.75, which means that I need to eat about 150g of protein per day. Using that number, I determine the proper amounts of fat and carbohydrate.

The number of calories in 3g of fat is about the same as number of calories in 7g of protein, which translates to roughly 65g of fat per day. So, that’s 60% of my intake right there. The remaining 40% comes from carbohydrates, which can be calculated by various means, the simplest of which is probably to use the known fat and protein amounts to project the total caloric intake and then take the remaining calories and divide by 4, which is the number of calories per gram of carbohydrate. Which leaves us with 198g of carbohydrate per day. All together, it’s a grand total of 1975 calories per day, assuming that I’m doing high-intensity exercise 4-6 days per week.

Occasionally, particularly if I’m more focused on burning fat rapidly, I’ll change the ratio to something like 50% fat, 30% protein and 20% carb. When I do that, I typically eat more total calories as well. For instance, at the moment, I’m aiming for a daily breakdown more like this: 200g 225g protein, 150g fat, 125g 75g carbohydrate. The key factor, though, is properly moderating carbohydrate intake in order to keep my insulin at appropriate levels to prevent the accumulation of fat.

That should cover the basics. If you’re interested in researching this further on your own, here are some places to start:

• Robb Wolf
• Whole 9
• The Paleo Diet
• Protein Power
• PāNu
• Mark Sisson
• The Zone Diet

I also maintain a Google spreadsheet of how much I’m eating and in what proportion.