Nutrition Overview

The other day a question came in on nutrition, specifically on how I eat. So today I’ll give you an overview and get into the details in the next couple posts.

Hi Bud:
Thanks for all the wonderful information that you give us from the site and other links. It really inspires and gives the impetus to move towards the goals one has set for oneself.

I have a question and this is probably out of scope here and also personal;)

What is your typical nutrition in a day, I mean YOUR eating habits? I am nowhere near you in terms of size or strength, but I have been reading about your swing cycling workouts and I am thinking what does a guy that possesses strength of your calibre eat to not go out of wind when you do these ultra-long cardio style workouts?!

Your reply as always would be highly informative and useful.

Thanks a ton Bud!

God Bless.
Ni’n

I actually have a great deal to say on nutrition that I’ll be putting out in articles soon. Some of this may surprise you. One thing is that I don’t believe in a set “plan” for nutrition. Using an organized approach with a clear pattern yes, but weighing every ounce of food and using exact ratio percentages? 17.1% fat, 27.1% carbs, 55.8% protein, eating every 2.35 hours when the moon is full and Mercury is in retrograde – No. I think you ought to enjoy food, I think you ought to have room for spontaneity and seasonal food. Eating what you like (within reason) and sometimes what you crave (also within reason).

If you’ve read this site you’ll inevitably find me at some point saying that finding the productive pattern of anything is often more important that the specifics. Specifics are great but they often cloud your ability to see why something works on principle by telling you how something is working after being adjusted for the individual. Most diets do this. What I have done personally is to look at the broad perspective of how/why many nutritional approaches work and find the common ground.

Obviously there are some nutritional approaches that are just ridiculous that need to be ignored, so what I mean is the major smart ones such as Weston-Price, low carb, vegetarian, near vegetarian, low fat, food combining, Zone-style eating, etc.

Here’s what I found/think on this. No one is the clear provable winner. Each of these has success/failures and most of them can be traced to a particular ancient geographical food culture. This is why they work. The real common ground is that they force the user to go to natural unprocessed foods. That, my friends, is the secret to health and weight loss/control/gain – Food as close to its natural state, season and style of production as possible. No secret formula at “x%” portion or high this or low that. Weston-Price is probably the closest to right of anybody out there and that’s because they’re about natural food from local environments prepared in the ways of your culture pre-modern technology.

Within this I think you will find that they all tend toward balance with fruits, vegetables, meats or dairy and grains. Really none of the ancient food cultures were low fat, or proteins, or carbs (with a few exceptions here due to environmental availability not choice). I think you need plenty of all these macronutrients which in turn usually assure lots of the micronutrients for the greatest possible health and performance. That being said, if you’re eating them in close proximity to their natural state you will mostly control your calories by default. You want to get bigger, eat more and what Jon Hinds/Mike Mahler call “strong foods.” You want to get smaller – control your portions and eat some more things that are volume dense but low calorie (greens, legumes, etc).

Bob Hoffman said that every culture around the world had produced big/strong/healthy people even though they all eat wildly different diets. If you think about that it’s really hard to argue with and provides a great deal of freedom in thought about food. The only real common factor is that it’s food not chemically destroyed, produced, preserved or Frankensteined together. Post to that, eat what you like, what makes you feel good and strong. Be a grown up about it. You might “like” Twinkies but they are not food. Develop a taste for real food and you will rarely ever even want trash food. Eat close to the culture of your ancestors and don’t over complicate things.

God bless,
Bud Jeffries

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