{"id":16906,"date":"2025-01-06T19:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T03:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=16906"},"modified":"2025-01-07T09:00:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T17:00:56","slug":"food-opening-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/06\/food-opening-update\/","title":{"rendered":"Food – Opening Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing this on the first day of the fourth month in my year-long foundations project.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The focus for this month is on food. See here for my previous months focusing on fitness<\/a>, productivity<\/a> and money<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What we eat is a central foundation in life. Food provides the energy we use to live. It is a bond with our friends and family. It\u2019s a connection to our culture. And it\u2019s a source of enjoyment and pleasure.<\/p>\n

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Still, for many of us, our foundation of food is problematic. Untethered from good health and communal traditions, our eating behaviors are making us sick and lonely. We don\u2019t have time to cook and sit together for meals, and at the same time, obesity rates have skyrocketed.<\/p>\n

Fixing this problem, even in one\u2019s own life, isn\u2019t easy. Just as it is evident we don\u2019t eat healthy on the whole, it is just as evident that the failure to eat healthy isn\u2019t any individual\u2019s \u201cfault.\u201d Our food environment has changed dramatically, and unconscious hormonal and neural signals that served our ancestors well now makes us sick.<\/p>\n

My Food History<\/h2>\n

My own relationship with food is atypical. I had severe allergies to nuts and dairy as a child. Fortunately, I outgrew the dairy allergy, but it meant that my childhood was always centered around caution and avoidance of foods that were utterly normal to other people. I rarely had candy at Halloween, for instance, because few treats were safe. I was often the kid who brought a separate snack to a party because I didn\u2019t want to get sick.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, I was persuaded that eating a vegetarian diet was the path to health. I read a few books, notably, The China Study<\/a>, which made the argument that dropping animal products was a reliable path to healthy eating. Perhaps because of my early childhood experiences with food avoidance, I didn\u2019t find it difficult to stick to long-term.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m more doubtful of the health benefits of veganism than I was as a teenager, but I still think they have a valid argument for both ethical and environmental reasons. Today, I eat fish, eggs and dairy, and I try not to be overly paranoid about other animal products in my food, consumed in small amounts\u2014the way I see it, some degree of vegetarianism is probably better on the whole, but it\u2019s easy go overboard and be annoying to others regarding dietary restrictions.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t advocate for anyone to start eating as I do unless they are already interested in it. Most people fail to sustain extreme dietary restrictions, and it\u2019s not at all clear that meat ought to be the first thing to drop if you are simply trying to improve the health quality of your diet. Still, I tend to think a whole-food pescatarian diet is pretty healthy, so given that this is already the status quo for me, I don\u2019t feel compelled to make a shift to start eating more meat.<\/p>\n

Food Falters<\/h2>\n

Despite what may seem to many to be an already fairly restrictive diet, I can\u2019t say in all honesty that my eating patterns are maximally healthy. It\u2019s still possible to overeat, and plenty of junk food is totally vegan.<\/p>\n

When I was in my early twenties, I could eat whatever I wanted without gaining any weight. Indeed, since I was often lifting weights, trying to gain weight was more frequently my challenge\u2014I had to set an intention to try to put on pounds.<\/p>\n

But, as I reached my late twenties, this was no longer true. Absent any special effort, I started to gain weight. At my peak, I weighed at least 20 lbs. above my typical college-aged weight and probably 15 lbs. above my ideal weight.<\/p>\n

The reasons I gained weight were probably the same as everyone: I ate too much. I ate out frequently. Work and parenting pressures meant less sleep and more stress. I didn\u2019t exercise with the same vigor as my twenty-year-old self.<\/p>\n

Refocusing on Health<\/h2>\n

When I began working on my fitness foundation three months ago, I was naturally drawn to getting a head start on the reading for nutrition, too.<\/p>\n

Owing to the confusion surrounding nutritional advice, and my own history of being overly swayed by a somewhat ideological author\u2019s advice for eating, I wanted to stick more to the science\u2014keeping my focus on higher quality books as rated by independent reviewers, as well as following sources that scrutinize a lot of the scientific details behind dietary guidance.<\/p>\n

This background reading, in combination with my renewed exercise habits, has led to a general improvement in my eating patterns. I\u2019ve now lost about 10 lbs. from my peak weight, even though restricting my food intake wasn\u2019t a priority.<\/p>\n

Some of the things I strived for in the past few months that helped with this goal include:<\/p>\n