Ok, that makes sense. So when I started into this, I researched all of the effective diets I saw out there. They all had some things in common:
- Eat real foods
- Only when hungry
- Not too much
- Avoid sugar and excessive starches
So that made sense to me. And there was like 80% overlap between the Mediterranean diet and a low carb diet. Or at least, by picking and choosing your foods, you could almost fit into both camps at the same time.
Quite often, if someone were to look at my dinner plate, and see salmon, broccoli, and a salad with dressing, they would have no idea what kind of diet I was on. Or see me eat a couple of eggs, with a couple slices of bacon, and a small bowl of yogurt with berries and nuts. Or a lunch of tuna salad, with a side salad of mixed greens, topped with parmesan, some chopped walnuts, and some blue cheese dressing.
It would only be when they started looking for things like bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes, or noticed me passing on the donuts, cookies, or ice cream, that they might think I was eating any sort of “weird” diet.
Because all of that stuff (the meat and veggies, not the starches and sugars) is healthy on anybody’s diet. So that’s the deal. Unless you go out to some of the more extreme ends, it’s just a healthy diet. I use butter in cooking and added to vegetables, but I don’t EAT butter. I eat bacon, but not a pound of bacon, more like 2 or 3 strips, and not every day. I have beef, but maybe once every couple of weeks, not every day. Not that I am trying to avoid it per se, I just never really liked it that much. I even occasionally eat bread, though half a slice, of a high-fiber bread with no added sugar, and generally not on the same days when I am eating other carby options (like the yogurt).
When I got into this, I knew it needed to be something I could do for life. So I have always tried to shade it a bit more towards the middle. I have never given up vegetables, nor berries, nor do I go overboard on fats, and I try to stick with butter, olive oil, and avocado oil where possible, plus those that naturally come with the proteins I eat.
Now I may have had an easier go of it than some, because I don’t have diabetes, and may not have even had metabolic syndrome or have been especially insulin resistant. I just ate way too much, of really bad-for-me things, and was completely sedentary, both at work (desk job) and at home.
Hell, ANY change I made was going to show some improvement. So whereas some may need to go super strict on carbs, or even go carnivore, I didn’t need to do any of that. Just changing WHAT I was eating, and then adjusting WHEN I was eating, and finally managing HOW MUCH I was eating, made huge improvements. And then I piggybacked off that success and started exercising again (I used to, just had gotten out of the habit).
So I am not sure what I would want to go back to. Donuts, cookies, and ice cream?