It is the morning of January 2nd, 2013, and I woke up bright and early to go to work.  I still felt bloated and full from all the conventional foods that I consumed during the holiday season and decided to officially “weigh myself in” to see where I stand.  I weighed 210 pounds, with my height of 5 feet and 11 inches that brought my Body Mass Index (BMI) to 29.3, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes me “Overweight”, with a real close margin to “Obese”.  I will have to agree with the CDC here and say that yes, I am indeed overweight.  Regardless of how much muscle mass I may have, or how thick my bones are, I still am overweight and I am going to “practice what I preach” and will post my updates here following this new diet that I am creating, which shall be called “The Would John Eat It Diet”.

It must be noted that having a 6-pack in your abdominal area like those from the movie 300 is not healthy, nor is it intrinsically attractive to the opposite sex.  Your body is supposed to have some fat reserves that can help you get through a period of starvation, and having 6-pack abs means that once you skip a meal your body starts burning muscle, as opposed to fat.  As long as the amount of fat you have does not decrease your agility and stamina, it is okay, plus it helps keep you warm during the cold winter months… There is an article on this somewhere on naturalnews.com, but I don’t have the time to look it up right now.

So, for 2013 I will be regularly weighing myself using multiple scales, noting the time and location of each scale and will be posting the results here.  I will also keep a detailed “diet” log where I write down to the bet of my abilities everything that I eat.  Hopefully this will provide some usefulness of the efficacy of my own diet that can help you and others see its effectiveness.

Anyway, my diet guidelines are as follows:

• • Avoid Coffee
    • If you have any, get an iced coffee from Pret a Manger.  No Starbucks, no Dunkin’ Donuts.  Oh, and did I mention no sugar or sugar substitutes?  Only some half and half.  Yes, you heard me right, half and half is preferred, not skim milk, not soy milk.  Whole milk is okay.  Soy milk, by the way, often contains sugar!  And the soy milk at Pret a Manger contains sugar… so drinking soy milk instead of whole milk leads to your consumption of sugar without even realizing it.
  • Drink tea
    • When sitting at your desk at work, use a tea steeper to brew loose tea throughout your work day.  Never use sugar, never add milk, just straight water.  I am lucky that my workplace has a Poland Spring water cooler that produces warm water suitable for my tea steeper.
    • I purchased my tea steeper from Teavana.  It fits only one cup of water, which is good because it results in my taking many trips to the pantry for refills.  Here is a link to my specific tea-steeper:
      https://www.republicoftea.com/travel-mugs/c/94/?
    • I like a brand of loose tea called “The Tealogist” (see http://www.thetealogist.com). You can find that at upscale tea shops and health food stores.  You can purchase any loose tea you want, I tend to avoid the naturally caffeinated ones and the non-organic brands.
  • Eat raw, unfiltered honey
    • If you are drinking tea and want to add some “sweetness” to it, or if you are sick, buy raw, organic and unfiltered honey.  I like to get my honey from farmers markets, which means it is hard to find in cold weather.  So in the winter, go to an expensive supermarket and get yourself “raw” organic honey.  Sorry, only expensive supermarkets carry this because the “poor” are not entitled to organic food.  Write your senator and ask them to lower taxes on the poor to allow them to deduct organic food expenses… yeah, not happening, Big Agra won’t let it.
  • No grains
    • I like the paleo diet theory of avoiding any and all grains.  Of course the anti-nutrients in grains are mostly diminished if you properly prepare those grains (and legumes) in the proper method.  However, I have to analyze each grain and legume to make sure that it is properly prepared before adding it back to my diet.  So the paleo diet is for cavemen, but if you eat grains, you are a little bit more modern right?  Maybe this diet should be called the “Bronze-Age” Diet, or how about the “Minoan Diet”?
    • Avoiding grains means no bread, no whole wheat bread, no rye bread no bread of any kind.  The theory goes however, that rye bread and other types of “fermented” breads such as sourdough should be better for your health, because the souring aka fermenting process used to create these breads breaks down enough phytic acid making the effects of these anti-nutrients negligible on your body.  The only problem is that these breads are no longer lovingly made by a housewife, which probably did soak them for the right amount of time to break down the phytic acid, but instead they are made by a factory that is “farmer-owned” which has been optimized to produce as much sourdough bread in as little time as possible and to make sure that the FDA allows them to call it sourdough bread.
    • No corn, no potatoes.  Yes, I too was saddened when I found out that corn is a grain… Especially after I found an organic farm that produces non-GMO corn that tasted so good raw.  Also, you want to avoid corn at all costs because 99% of it is GMO and you don’t want to eat GMO products, especially if you are a female because they have been linked to many cancers and infertility that specifically target females.
  • No sugar
    • This should go without saying, you are not supposed to eat the amounts of sugar that we do in any of the civilized world.  From a creationist standpoint, our bodies weren’t “made that way”, and from an evolutionary standpoint, our bodies have not had enough time to “evolve to handle sugar” ever since we started consuming it 10,000 years ago.  So there you have it, no sugar, no sugar substitutes, no agave, no stevia you name it.  Just avoid it and all of a sudden you will start tasting the actual food you are eating, and not the sugar or sweetener that was added to it.  Ever have an actual carob? Or have you ever chewed on an actual sugar cane stalk?  They taste nothing like the products we derive from them.  And remember, we removed the fiber from your sugar products, they were meant to be eaten along with their fiber.
  • No chicken
    • Free Range, organic, all-natural, cold chilled are all words used by lawyers after successfully lobbying to make the FDA not regulate these words to mean anything that they are supposed to mean.  Free range chickens are as free range as a lady receiving counseling on how to raise children at Planned Parenthood.
    • Believe it, no chicken in this country is clean.  No chicken was raised in the outdoors, roaming free, eating small rocks and pebbles, flowers… etc.  Even chickens that are fed a “vegetarian diet” are fed a diet consisting mostly of grains.  Even if those grains are organic, chickens aren’t supposed to be eating them.  No animal eats grains, not even cows.  So eating that chicken will not only not help you lose weight, it will not taste good, will be dry and you will have to add a lot of sauce or some other kind of condiment to it in order to eat it aka make it palatable.
  • No meat during the week
    • I sometimes cheat and have meat on a friday, but my typical routine is to go to Whole Foods on saturday morning and find some nice cuts of beef or lamb that have been rated with a Whole Foods Animal Welfare Rating of 4 or 5.  Then along with some local and organic garlic, onions and mushrooms  I sautee them and make a nice simple stew.  The goal is to buy so little meat that I eat it all in one sitting without having to save any for a later day. If you do go to Whole Foods, notice that none of the chicken in poultry section has an Animal Welfare Rating that is greater than 2.  A grade of 2 means it is basically veal.  So either stop eating chicken or start eating veal.
  • Eat sashimi, not sushi
    • Sushi contains white rice.  Lots of it.  White rice is empty of nutrients and full of phytic acid and other anti-nutrients.  Sashimi served in a restaurant has to be “sushi” grade, which although I haven’t researched yet, is I am sure much better than your “frozen foods grade fish”, which probably means the fish can be frozen for 6 months and then it can be sold in your local market…etc
    • Sashimi also is typically served as a dinner dish in a Japanese restaurant containing a nice selection of various fishes.  This is good because each fish contains a lot of nutrients that the others do not.  Skip the salad, which has some sweet dressing, and ask for a Japanese Clear Soup instead of the usual Miso Soup.