- My grandmother was a professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto for the majority of her life, and she taught me a couple of things that have stuck with me and influenced my diet. She studied how nutrition affects, how different foods affect people at a very, very detailed level. But in her day-to-day practice, she was much more laid back. I don't think she ever counted calories or sugars when she was preparing a meal. - From her, I learned to follow general rules of thumb, pay attention to changes in my body, and other than that to not get too obsessed over it. Your diet is one of the most important factors in your overall health and mood. But like anything, being too focused on it can make you a little neurotic. - The biggest thing I try to avoid is being too prescriptive or too harsh on myself. I try to follow good trends and I don't care when I deviate from them, as long as it's temporary. For some people it's really important to police themselves, but I want to avoid that as much as I can in favour of long term, easy to follow positive trends. - My diet isn't groundbreaking, but it works really well for me in my current stage in life. I'm also aware that my body and my needs will change with time, and I plan on evolving it as I change. # Grandmother's diet - The biggest thing my grandmother imparted one was the importance of a balanced diet made up of meat, veggies, grains, and dairy. The majority of her meals was made of whole foods rather than pre-processed, although she wasn't obsessed about making everything from scratch and we still raided many boxes of snacks and pre-made things from her kitchen. - Eating at her place was an exercise in balance. She was not the kind of grandmother that would push us to eat until we burst, but we never left hungry either. Her food covered all of the important categories, but she also wasn't obsessed about everything being whole. She was okay with us eating sweets, and she would order us pizza all the time. # Intermediate Fasting - I try to keep a gap of 12 to 14 hours between supper and breakfast each day. It's pretty easy to do, and it's had the single biggest positive impact on my life - My rule is to eat before 8 p.m. and to not eat anything after that. I sometimes break the rule, and I'm never hard on myself when I do, but it's such an easy rule to follow that it's rare for me to not fast once a day. - I don't know what it is exactly that makes it so good for me, but I really do feel a difference when I practice it versus when I don't. It ranks up there with good sleep, and has a much bigger impact than when I'm eating lots of meat vs. none. # Measurements - I really don't believe that you can have one diet that will work with you for the rest of your life. We just change so much. Our age, where we live, our circumstances - it seems futile to try to find the perfect diet. Instead, I'm much more a fan of measuring how I feel and making adjustments when I start seeing issues. - The main thing that I look for is energy levels. If I'm finding that I'm constantly groggy or low energy or upset, I start to try to break down what is causing that. It's often way more complicated than just diet, but that is something that I'll pay attention to if I notice issues for a long time. - I've got a bathroom scale that I'll step on periodically to make sure that my weight is where I expect it to be. I've been pretty fortunate that I haven't had any major changes in a long time, but that would be a huge warning sign if I start seeing those numbers change. It's pretty easy for me because I don't have any intentions on getting significantly stronger or cutting my weight down. I just want that number to be the same for as long as I can keep it. - I have an Oura Ring and an Apple Watch to help me measure vitals. I'm a really big fan of these background body measurement tools and I plan on adopting as many as I can as long as they work in the background. Background monitoring is amazing. I find the current technology doesn't do a great job of show me how my diet impacts me, but I'm sure that will improve over time. - The big missing piece in my measurements right now is any kind of blood work. This is something I really want try out this year. # Flexitarian - When I met my future wife, I was introduced to vegetarianism. I really enjoy the changes that it brings. - Cutting out a major food source requires you to be a little bit more creative. I find that cooking has an extra layer of fun, an added challenge trying to make it taste good and interesting when you are down by a major player. - I'm much more aware of spices and how to make food taste good. I love the magic tricks that vegetarian cooking uses to simulating taste of meat using ingredients and cooking techniques. - I can't see myself ever adopting a fully vegetarian diet for a number of reasons. I do think meat is pretty important to our diet - although it can be supplemented. I think it's also hugely culturally significant - animals have been such a huge part of our human history. And I really enjoy meat - now more than ever. ## Artificial Meats - I'm not a huge fan of the artificial meat trend, although I do think it is a good thing for the world. For me, it treads into that line of just being a little bit too hard to understand what I'm eating; that goes against what my grandmother instilled in me. - That said, I do think that it's a really good trend and I think it's necessary for the world. I really hope that alternative meats become bigger and hopefully ultimately cheaper than traditional meat. - For now, I tend to eat meat instead of impossible burgers or beyond meat when I have the choice. Mainly because I just don't trust it all that much just yet. But I'm looking forward to a future where we understand this much better and I could see it being a total replacement of meat for me in the future. ## Meeting the quota on a Vegetarian diet - Being a vegetarian forces you to be a little bit more aware of what you're eating and to make sure that you're covering the deficiencies that you might be missing. I find that to be a pretty good habit to form, regardless of what you eat. - Meat provides a lot of important nutrients, protein, iron, vitamin B12, and so on. It's important to make sure that you account for that. Thankfully, there are lots of ingredients that can help maintain balanced diet. Nuts are amazing for this - great in meals and fun to snack on as well. Tofu, tempeh, spinach, kale, mushrooms, nutritional yeast, oat and almond milk, eggs, lentils, beans, and whole grains are also great sources of these missing nutrients. Most of these were rare ingredients before I started cooking vegetarian, so it's been fun to throw them into the mix and learn new recipes around them. ## The other benefits - There are also some nice cost benefits and just quality of life improvements that come from eating a lot more vegetarian. - Meat is expensive, and cutting down on it helps a ton on grocery bills. My grocery bills haven't gone down, but I've used that extra money to buy higher quality ingredients - the best eggs I can find (biggest cost-benefit increase in my experience), more berries, fresher fruits and vegetables. And when I do buy meat, these days I almost always buy it from the butcher; it costs significantly more, but I buy less as a result and the difference in quality is night and day. - Cooking is easier. You can reuse cutting boards more easily. I'm not quite as nervous about what happens if I undercook something. Little things, but they are very nice. - There's also the whole ethical side of it. You're not directly responsible for quite as much death, which is nice - for some people, that's the main reason to be a vegetarian! I am a little shocked when I think of how much I used to treat meat as just an ingredient and how I used to throw out spoiled meat on a regular basis. I can't imagine doing that anymore. When I buy meat, it's much more of a big deal. I look at the cut of meat in its brown paper packaging and get excited at the thought of cooking it that evening. - Personally, I'm a huge fan of a vegetarian light diet. Whenever I cook at home with my wife, we eat vegetarian. When we go out, we typically will order vegetarian, like for food that we share together, but that's when I generally get my meat fix. It's a little bit of a reward when you don't eat meat quite as often, and I find I appreciate it that much more. # Vices - The main thing that I try to do is avoid getting too serious or regimented with my diet. That means having and embracing some vices. - The hands down biggest vice I have is carbs. I am such a sucker for bread. I could eat bread, three meals a day, and be totally happy with it. This has got to be the biggest weakness in my current diet, and I'll be sad when I have to cut it out. - I'm pretty lactose intolerant, but I can't see myself ever cutting out milk and cold turkey. I just make sure I won't be around people all that much on days when I do. - I don't have any restrictions on how late I'll drink caffeine. I'm pretty lucky that it doesn't have a huge impact on my sleep, but I don't care even if it does. If I want an espresso at 8PM, I'll make one. I think one of the benefits of having an overall fairly healthy lifestyle is that you can afford to do stupid things in a while. Unlike my grandmother, I am absolutely not a nutritionist and I have no idea if my diet is actually good or not. It seems to be working well for me, but I think everyone is different, so take this with a grain of salt.