The Nine Percent Solution

Circa 1996, when I was in my mid-twenties, I decided, already for the umpteenth time, to get in shape, and to develop a healthy relationship with food. Here’s the strategy I chose:

• I became a hardcore vegan. No meat, eggs, dairy, or fish.
• I made my food from scratch as much as possible. Which, since, I was a part-time student supported by my parents, was a lot.
• I avoided fats of any kind. Most of my cooking used recipes from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. At the back is an index of vegan recipes, and another index of fat-free recipes. I methodically went through them both, creating my own modified index of recipes that were both fat-free and vegan, and those were the recipes that I made.
• I worked out for several hours per day, six days per week. I used the exercise program in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia Of Modern Bodybuilding (now apparently out of print). Read the rest of this entry »

The “Get Some Rest” Diet

I don’t know any overweight people, including myself, who are in the habit of actually giving their big tired bodies the sleep that they so badly and obviously need. In my six weeks of recent unemployment, I’ve woken up to an alarm exactly zero times. I’ve also stopped drinking coffee, and started (returned to) eating better. I’ve lost weight. There is a direct connection.

When I wake up to an alarm, I feel awful. I can’t just have a cup of coffee and shake it off like most people. I either sleep until my body wants to wake up, or I feel energy-deprived every second of the day.

For the first three or four hours of consciousness, I mainly want to fall back asleep. Since that’s not possible, I fight it by mainlining caffeine. Unfortunately, coffee has a creeping effect on me (like hash brownies), so it doesn’t really kick in until about noon. Read the rest of this entry »