“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” – Hippocrates

There is some wisdom in this statement but it’s becoming misunderstood. This is evident with the modern food and supplement industry putting a health claim on just about everything you can think of. It can be said that we no longer eat but rather we ‘dose’ certain items. This thinking has to change if we’re going to have a healthier and balanced attitude towards food and nutrition.

As a kid food is still food, you eat it because it tastes good, or because it’s ‘dinner time’, or because you might actually be hungry.

As we become adults many other factors come into play that start distorting our view of food. Some of us start medicating with food and use it to de-stress, or deal with emotional problems. It becomes a social tool, as well as a reward and punishment system. It can become an object to control when the rest of your life is out of control, and company when you are bored. It ceases to simply be ‘food’ and starts become ‘medicine’ for bad or for worse.

The most extreme distortion of food is when it transcends being food or medicine and starts to become a drug.

Food as Drug

If you view a food item as the sum of its vitamins, minerals, protein, carb, fiber and fat content, then you might just be seeing food more like a drug than as simply food or even as ‘medicine. You may be asking yourself: What is the difference between ‘medicine’ and ‘drug’.

This is what drugs look like

Medicine can come in many forms and provides a benefit in some way. Exercise can be medicine, a talk with a therapist can be medicine, a vacation from a stressful daily work routine can be therapeutic and considered medicine. Food can also be considered medicine when it provides a benefit to your overall system.

A drug on the other hand suggests a dose response. A dose response means that you can measure an increasing or changing effect and increases or changing doses of a given substance. For example: 5oo mg of tylenol will get rid of your headache, 50,000 mg might give you liver failure. This is a dose response.

Modern food and supplement marketing is starting to turn more and more foods into drugs. Now the chemical constituents of food can be extracted, concentrated and delivered in pill form. Instead of adding blueberries to meal, you can take the extract and get all the purported benefits. Or you can measure the exact ‘dose’ of blueberries required to get the supposed benefit.

This is starting to become common for more and more foods that we used to recognize simply as food. How many oranges does it take to get your daily ‘dose’ of vitamin C? How many servings grains does it take to get your daily ‘dose’ of fiber? How much chicken do you need to eat to get your daily ‘dose’ of protein and branched chain amino acids?

Viewing food as having a dose response changes it from being either food or even medicine into a drug. I think this is a destructive way to view food. Once you head down this path it is hard to regain a sense of what food is supposed to be. You will soon view all foods as a drug that is either for therapy or abuse. This leads to feelings of guilt and regret when you’re not eating the correct food/drug and the correct dose at the correct time of day…a truly miserable way to live.

There has to be a better way.

Food as Medicine 

This is what food looks like

Coming to a better understanding that food can be medicine but not a drug requires you to start viewing food as an interactive part of your life, but not something that must be dosed on a daily basis.

Eat the foods you like when you like but be mindful of the overall amount of food you eat.

Pay less attention to health claims and more attention to eating whole foods.

Focusing on variety and mixing different foods, spices and flavors instead of finding optimal doses of specific foods for specific health outcomes is yet another change that must be made to have a sensible and healthy view of what food should be.

Food can be considered medicine when you’ve got a balanced view of it. When you can eat it without guilt and still maintain your health and fitness goals. And most of all, when you stop viewing it as a drug.

John

I was recently on another road trip to see another college football game…this time we went to east Lansing Michigan to see the Spartans vs the Central Michigan Chippewas. The Spartans won in a rout. It was an awesome sunny Sept afternoon perfect for football.

Are you going to wait until your time has run out?

The night before the game we went out to dinner in a small town here in Ontario to a local eatery that is known for their pizza. One of the people we went out to dinner with was abstaining from joining in eating the pizza with us. I asked why he wasn’t eating with us and it turns out that he has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Earlier this year he was up to 320lbs, and as of this past weekend he had already cut down to 270lbs. That is a 50lbs weight loss since March!

I asked him why he’s cutting down and he told me it was because of what his doctor said to him. So I asked, what his doctor said…and this is the exact quote:

“If you don’t start losing weight and change the way you eat you’ll have either a heart attack or stroke in the next 5 years”

Pretty powerful words to say the least.

Until he got this scare, he clearly didn’t care that he was gaining so much weight. But as soon as he realized his life might be on the line, then it was time to lose the weight. At this point he didn’t start debating the merits of low car vs low fat…or paleo vs vegetarianism vs the blood type diet etc…he just did what he knew he needed to do to save his life…EAT LESS FOOD!

The moral of this story is that we all know what it really takes to lose weight, but most of us don’t have a big enough incentive/scare/reason to do so…yet.

Think about it…if you were just told that you have diabetes and are at a high risk for a heart attack or stroke are you really going to mess around worrying about macro nutrient portions, the glycemic index of your ‘carbs’, or the specific fats and proteins you’re eating…OR are you gonna do your damnedest to eat less food?!

The answer to weight loss is simple (not necessarily easy)…but when there is the will to lose weight, the path becomes quite clear.

So whats it going to take for you to lose weight? (hint: until you have your answer for this question you’ll likely never lose weight)

John

As you move through life it seems that progress or success is associated with concept of addition and making your life bigger. When you’re young you add more friends, more social activities, more responsibilities. You go from a small school to a big school, from no job to a part time job, perhaps you add in a sport or hobby. Then you may add a relationship, and responsibility of a more important job, or maybe new credentials, licenses or certifications.

Maybe you just need a little less of what you already have

From there you might to add to your resume with more responsibility, a bigger title, a bigger family. Then it expands to more  money, two cars instead of one, bigger tv, a bigger house, more vacation time, more social events and so on.

For most of your life the concept of success and progress is quite literally tied to the idea of adding something, anything, to your life.

This concept of addition = success may fall apart on you when you consider the unique situation of diet/fitness/health and weight loss.

Many people make the mistake of assuming the path to a healthier body, a better looking body, being in better shape, improving their fitness and losing weight is the result of adding yet another piece to their life that has been missing.

The addition could be a supplement, a new workout, a new cardio routine, a new yoga routine, a new functional training program, a new kettle bell, a new bosu ball, a new magazine subscription, a new trainer, a new functional food, a new diet, another new diet, another new diet, another new diet (this wasn’t a typo…I’m just trying to capture the concept of how many diets most people try), more supplements, more functional foods, more healthy food choices…more more more.

Most people never consider the concept that what they need to get in shape is simply less of what they already have. Less food, less magazines, less diet and fitness information, less supplements, less functional foods, less workouts get caught up deciding what to do with, less diet books to read, less of all of it.

Simplifying your diet and fitness life is likely the first step that most people need to do nowadays before they can make any real progress towards getting in shape. Once you start down the path of diet and fitness ‘addition’ there is no end to the amount of things you can add (and money you can spend) without making any progress.

In direct contradiction to the rest of your life, diet and fitness progress is almost always made when you take the path of less not more.

Your job is to find the sweet spot and add only what is necessary to make progress in diet and fitness without overloading on too much of everything. In most cases you and I and everyone else has already added way more than what we need. This means your main order of business is downsizing what you consume (both food and information) to get in shape and stay there.

John

Over the past two weeks I have moved from my former dwelling to a new one, in between the two places I went on a 4 day excursion to watch the opening college football game in Syracuse and visit with a good friend of mine. When I got back into town my new place still needed to be furnished and outfitted with just about everything from the ground up.

The point is that I spent almost 2 weeks without being able to cook a meal at home. I spent the entire time eating out and on the road. This isn’t how I would recommend anyone to go about eating but when it has to happen then it just happens.

This is about what my diet and workout routine has felt like the past two weeks

The interesting thing I noticed was how short of a time it takes to develop a habit or routine. When I finally got my new place set up I found it odd and almost as if I was an imposter when I finally cooked a meal at home. I even found the first trip to the grocery store to stock the new place with food to be a unfamiliar event. Even though I’ve been to that store 100 times before and I bought most of the same stuff, it just felt like it was a totally new thing. I almost felt as if it wasn’t my place to be buying groceries because I hadn’t done it for almost two weeks.

This experience just reminded me how quickly habits and routines can be formed. In just two weeks I completely lost touch with what it felt like to shop for and cook my own food.

The same thing goes for working out. It’s fine to take a few days off, and 2-3 times per year I advocate that you take a full week off and let your body recover/recharge/rest. But if you don’t plan for it, and you’re not paying attention to it, a few days off can easily turn into a few weeks off and before you know it a month will go by without working out.

We’re all creatures of habit, your daily diet routine and your workouts are both just habits. Once you get into a groove with each of them it becomes much easier to stick to a plan. But as soon as something shakes you out of your routine you’ve got to work to get it back into the groove that you had before.

It’s kinda like the messy room entropy theory. If you don’t constantly clean a room it will invariably become untidy and messy until it’s a total train wreck. The same sort of thing will happen with your diet, workouts (or lack thereof) and your body…if you don’t constantly work out, and pay attention to your diet your body will also become a train wreck.

John

I just returned from a road trip to Syracuse to see the Orange win their opening game of the college football season (yes college football is my vice, I just can’t get enough of it)

The Orange came back and won in OT!

The weekend included all of the usual stuff associated with a college football game including tailgating and consuming lots of burgers, steak, and whatever else goes with a tailgate.

This brings up an interesting issue about eating and dieting. And that is about the company you keep. If you’re focused on attaining a certain body image or look then it’s in your best interest to associate and spend time with people who are also interested in attaining the same type of body image.

The company you keep on a regular basis will have a big impact on the look and shape of your body, namely you will start to look like the people you hang around with. Or better stated, you will start to look like the body shape and size that requires the least amount of effort.

You’re fighting an uphill battle if you’re the one person in your group of friends who really wants to attain and maintain a lean muscular fit looking physique. Odds are you won’t get there if you don’t have other people around you with a similar goal. This doesn’t mean you can’t spend time with your friends who don’t workout or share you  diet preferences, it just means you have to be aware of how much time you spend with them and how that time affects your body.

It’s not that anyone means to force you to break your diet, or blow off the gym, but the social pressure to do so is subtle and omnipresent when you’re spending time with people who don’t put diet and exercise as a high priority.

It becomes very easy to skip the gym and make an extra stop for ice cream when everyone else you’re spending time with is doing it. The onus is on you to lead the way to the gym, or find other ways to spend time that don’t involve mass consuming calories.

The issue arises because food serves multiple purposes. Food is social, people gather to eat, to celebrate, to enjoy each others company. Some people will even take offense or find the social interaction to be less pleasurable if you don’t partake in all acts of consumption with them. In other words, they might not have as much fun if you don’t go drink for drink and bite for bite with them every time they eat.

This is just the social aspect of food, paying no attention to the physiological and/or emotional aspect of food. We all know how much fun it is to go out and just feast with your friends/family and have a good time. But there is also a good feeling you can get when you’re on a roll with your diet and you can see it affecting the way your body looks and feels.

This second effect of food takes more effort, but the payoff is longer lasting, and it has positive effects on your confidence, self perception, and feelings of accomplishment…not to mention that you’ll just look and feel better too. But this is also the harder thing for people to accomplish with food. It takes more time, more attention, and some self control.

It’s hard enough to get into shape and stay there even with supportive people around. The social temptation to over indulge will always be there, and you must be aware of it, and accept that it’s happening.

For my road trip I was fully prepared for a big eating weekend. I enjoyed the time spent, and now it’s back to eating lighter and leaner. This is all part of the elusive state of maintenance.

The idea of maintaining a lean body isn’t to be perfect every day and have your ideal bodyfat % every single day. It’s really about having smaller swings in weight and bodyfat. Instead of going up and down 30-40lbs (or more) the idea is to pull that range down to 5-10lbs (depending on how tall you are).

After a few weeks of eating ‘loose’ I’ll gain a few pounds, at which point I tighten things up, reduce the calories, and those few pounds start to come off, I’d say it’s about a 5-7lbs range.

The idea is to stay within an inch or two of your ideal measurements or within a few pounds of the weight you have determined to be your ideal.

For me it’s a rough fluctuation around the 185lbs mark, as I approach 190lbs I know that I’m at my upper limit of my maintenance weight that looks and feels good. If I drop to around 180lbs I will look very lean (ready for a photoshoot etc) but it’s tougher to maintain at that level for extended periods of time, and I also feel a bit small at that size. Through experimentation I’ve found that approx 185lbs is the sweet spot for me where I’m lean enough to be happy with my look/definition, my size, and the effort it takes to stay there. The intersection of these three points (definition, muscle size, and effort to maintain it) is the elusive sweet spot state of maintenance that we’re all striving for.

Your job is to find YOUR sweet spot and learn what works for you to stay within a few inches/pounds of it while still enjoying all of the food related celebrations that life has to offer.

John