"Now What?" Energy Balance and Optimal Nutrition, That's What!

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my own "food rules" that I am establishing now that I am in maintenance.  Having read and re-read Dr. A's Habits of Health, and books like "Refuse to Regain", and observed my own physiological responses to certain TYPES of foods (high-glycemic nutritional wasteland foods) I feel I am really coming into my own in terms of realizing what FOODS I will be eating on a regular basis, what MINDSET I need to cultivate to do that, and what BEHAVIORS I am choosing to engage in to now MAINTAIN optimal health and move into ULTRA health.  Indeed I am passionate about health.

I read an interesting article in Outside Magazine entitled "Your Diet is a Cult", an Interview with Matt Fitzgerald who recently wrote the book Diet Cults (Link to interview at Bottom) and it's main premise is that diets (not used here in the "weight loss" term, but in the "eating-for-life" term), can somewhat be considered cults to a degree, that there are vastly different philosophically based ways of eating out there, and all think THEY are the RIGHT way, in fact the ONLY way.  Paleo.  Vegan.  Vegetarian.  Whole Foods.  Plant Strong.  Atkins.  Carbs-are-Good.  Carbs-are-Bad.  High Fat.  Low Fat.  Raw.  The Maker's Diet.  Juice.  The list can go on and on, and there seems to always be a new bandwagon in town touting yet another "this is the ONLY and BEST way" philosophy.

Note I am not adding "Organic" or "Gluten-Free" to the above list, because these are done by necessity (Gluten-Free) or the desire NOT to consume pesticides, etc, and I'm all for that! 

He begins by making the observation that people are, at their core, passionate about what they eat, and they way they eat.  He says: 

"Food is such a basic symbol of identity. We become emotionally invested. Even three-month-old infants show dislike for puppets who don’t like the food they like. I think we are all susceptible to the mythology that one diet is best."

WOW.  I read that and it absolutely clicked.  Eating is so fundamental to human life that we tend to search for MEANING in what and why we eat.  What is the solution, what is the determination that he concludes in his book?  That we should all embrace what he calls "healthy agnostic eating".

He expounds on what this means with the next two questions:
In your book, you propose we embrace agnostic healthy eating. How do people eat like this?
They don’t demonize any nutrients. No entire food categories are eliminated. They have fruits and vegetables with almost every meal. There aren’t a lot of fried foods or sweets. It’s pretty basic stuff, but can fuel the best athletes and weekend warriors like us. 
Do a lot of people already embrace agnostic healthy eating?The silent majority of health conscious eaters out there want to eat healthy and are turned off by diet cults. In my exposure to world-class endurance athletes, very few Olympic-caliber athletes do any kind of diet with a name. They don’t demonize any nutrient. My personal instinct is that I don’t want to trust fear mongering salesmen who vilify a lot of the food people eat.
What about all the people who don’t care about athletic performance, but just want a diet that helps them lose weight?I call it the suck-it-up diet. The secret to successful weight loss is motivation. Get out of the mindset of finding one way that works, and realize a lot of ways work. You still have to choose something specific. Anyone who loses weight and keeps it off doesn’t just wing it. They have rules and stick to them, but they’re not necessarily the specific rules of a diet cult.
How would you rate your own diet?It’s much better than average. My diet looks pretty normal, but is high quality on two levels. The first is that it’s weighed heavily toward the highest quality food types, such as fruits and vegetables. I have very few fried foods and sweets, and not a lot of refined grains. I eat more fish than any other kind of meat. It’s also quality in that I buy high quality food, such as organic food, and grass fed beef, and try to pay a lot of attention to ingredient quality. But I still have at least one beer a day. My wife and I like to eat out. We celebrated my birthday on Saturday and I had French fries at a restaurant, and I almost never eat them.
What does that mean?
I particularly appreciated what he said about those trying to lose weight.  Bear in mind that he says those attempting to lose weight need to be on the "suck-it-up" diet and that they need to "pick something and stick to it".

I think this is where people have a misconception about the Medifast 5&1, since it DOES eliminate fruit FOR THE SHORT TERM (as we are losing weight), it seems on the surface that he would not be in favor of this method.  This is NOT what he is saying, because the Medifast 5&1 is a SHORT TERM program FOR THE PURPOSE of weight loss so would fall into the "pick something that works and suck-it-up" philosophy that he DOES espouse. 

What he IS saying is that someone's long-term "diet" (food consumption for maintenance purposes) should not fall into the category of elimimating any single food groups OR nutrients.  This is very congruent with Dr. A's Habits of Health as well as the Transition and Maintenance portion of the overall plan.  Dr. Andersen doesn't advocates elimination of entire food groups for long-term weight maintenance either.  His approach is very simple, very scientifically based and considers the WAY our bodies PROCESS food and HOW to harness that for long-term weight maintenance and optimal health.  I dig it!

I think that if I could sum up my "diet philosophy" moving forward (and not "diet" meaning "lose weight" but "what I eat now that I am at a healthy weight", it could be adequately expressed in two sentences of two words each:

Energy balance. 
Optimal nutrition.

My Maintenance Credo. 

How will this express itself moving forward?  Quite a bit like the interviewee described HIS own diet.  Nothing is demonized, but basic common sense about the physiology of the human body and how food interacts with it causes him to eat very healthily.  And this is what I have always heard from Dr. A as well! 

So if I see a Twinkie, athough it may be able to be shoehorned into my "Energy balance" portion by logging it and not going over my TEE for the day, it CANNOT be equated at ALL in my "Optimal nutrition" portion.  It is an empty wasteland of pseudo-food particles that will only increase my inflammatory response. 

For me, these two will be inseparable and non-negotiable.  And that is how I will choose to mindfully and intentionally remain at my ideal healthy weight.

Rinse and Repeat!
Link (cut and paste):

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/bodywork/performance-plate/Sticking-It-To-Diets-An-Interview-With-Author-Matt-Fitzgerald.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebookpost