NUTRITION IS LESS COMPLICATED (& MORE COMPLICATED) THAN YOU THINK

99.99% of people look at nutrition all wrong. Nutrition is less about what you eat, and more about when you eat how much of what.

"Healthy", "Natural," "Gluten-free," "Keto"—marketing and branding companies/teams have taken all of these words as they pertain to nutrition and MADE THEM MEANINGLESS PLOYS. We've moved far beyond the realm of scientific claims and into the realm of profitable selling points. That all gets recapitulated (often unknowingly) by us because we hear some wild claim about how GMOs are killing us and we desperately want to have something interesting to tell people and feel knowledgable so we just regurgitate articles we read online not knowing anything about the validity or credibility of the claim(s).

We're fixated on tips, tricks, cheats, buzz words, and everything else that could potentially be the answer to why we don't look and feel the way we want to... other than what actually matters. I mean, I've mentioned before in another writing, but the fact that 'Gluten-Free' exists on water bottles in the store is absurd. It's like putting 'strychnine free' on baby food... For those who don't know—strychnine is a deadly poison. We as a society would hope there's no strychnine in baby food and no need of a label to ensure that. 

From the USDA monstrosity that is MyPlate, to the Food Pyramid, and everything else you know about nutrition that's either irrelevant, wrong, or just misguided—it's the industries best attempt at helping guide the people. You can't really be upset with them for genuinely trying.

The problem is we're all so damaged by the incessant bombarding of unsubstantiated claims made regarding diet and exercise that now we've all pretty much thrown our hands up thinking: it seems as though all hope is lost. Every attempt at better nutrition is futile. Why start if I'm going to read from yet another expert that this diet isn't actually going to yield me any results? I understand your plea. You're not wrong for feeling this way, but there is a way out.

We bandwagon ourselves to follow whoever yells the loudest. What's the trendy thing to avoid in the moment? Carbs? Fat? Gluten? GMOs? Nitrates and nitrates? Red dye #7? Phytoestrogens? Pesticides? The list goes on and on and on. But we never stop ONCE to ask ourselves what the mechanism behind any of these things are. And I don't mean the claim. The claim will fall along the lines of "the compound in question is: inflammatory, an allergen, atherosclerotic, a hormone disruptor," etc., but what's the supporting evidence behind these claims? Who published the first study on this? What's the conclusion of the study? What was the research goal? What are the methods? The sample size? Repeatability? Where did the funding come from? You should want to ask yourself these questions in order to have confidence in the information that is presented to you. But again, do you actually care to know the answers to these questions? If not, then your health is not a priority. At least, it's not a priority until you have no other option. But by that point we're usually already in a disease state.

The big question you should be asking yourself: do I even care enough to adhere to a specific eating pattern? Or better yet, am I even able to? Do I understand enough about nutrition to see how and why one approach would work over another? Do I know enough about myself, my habits, my regimens, and my lifestyle to select an eating pattern that will check as many of the boxes as possible? 

Educating yourself on the implications of a bad diet is crucial. These are things that our younger selves don't think of. We've literally all heard the classic adult line: "I remember when I used to be able to eat like that." Like Adam Sandler said in Big Daddy, "When I was your age I could eat anything I wanted. Wouldn't gain an ounce. Now, I have a chocolate shake and my ass giggles for a week." The problem here is the sentiment. Yes, age brings with it deteriorated cellular function and an inability to regulate energy in the way it once used to, however, it's far worse when over the years we've done nothing but put our mitochondria into the octagon everyday with our terrible patterns of eating i.e. flooding ourselves with glucose. (I use mitochondria because mitochondrial health is key to cell health and longevity (especially energy regulation), and therefore your health and longevity)

When thinking about nutrition, we need it to live fluid with regard to certain aspects. Remember, nutrition is: when you eat how much of what. This will look slightly different for each person as we all live our own lives and have different genetics and epigenetics at play. The fixed, universal factor: when. When is the thing that doesn't change. When exists at the most fundamental level. What you eat is variable, how much you eat is variable, but when you eat what is not. The fundamental principles keep you from having to put each drop of food on a scale. It's not that complicated. But it's more complicated in the sense that you have to take so many external factors into consideration when discussing nutrition and how to adopt a healthy eating pattern.

People always ask me about how I eat. I hesitate to talk about it because in order to explain it while maintaining their attention, I have to leave out so many important factors. It's like trying to teach somebody how to drive in 30 seconds. You could give them the gist, but there's so many nuances and things that are context dependent it's difficult to grasp it all in a short period of time. After a 30 second description of how to drive, that individual would in no way be ready to get behind the wheel of a car.

What to look for in an eating pattern:

You need an eating pattern that is sustainable, one that isn't restrictive to the point where it's impossible to follow over the course of your lifetime. It needs to be flexible. You need an eating pattern that can adjust with you. Life rarely stays the same day in and day out. We shouldn't feel suffocated by our eating. You want to have a chocolate chip cookie? Great. That should be able to fit into your eating pattern just fine. And no I don't mean as a cheat, I mean it's in there and it's not compromising the integrity of your eating pattern.

An eating pattern needs to be based on physiology, not the demonization of a specific thing because we've decided it's bad. After all, "it's the dose that makes the poison." There need to be specific mechanisms that we are leveraging. Nutrition is not guess work and therefore any "diet" should be outlining, to the greatest extent of detail possible, exactly why you're eating a certain way, mechanistically speaking.

Does such a thing exist?

I discuss this eating pattern in my books which are officially available. I discuss all the mechanisms. I discuss all the reasons. We dive into the literature. I keep it digestible (no pun intended). I will be writing more about this in another writing, but for now all the info is in the books. Which you can probably guess given the link, are now available.

As always, happy learning.

~ Bonde