Why I’m getting super healthy with 1 crazy new diet (just made it up)

If you’ve ever been to a travel competitive sports/dance/whatever tournament with your kids, you know about dietary hedonism.

Fast food and sit-down restaurants for every meal, pizza and potato chips in the room, just constant alcohol consumption (not for me!).

The veteran families with 2+ kids in these offensively expensive sports cart a cooler full of sandwiches around out of financial necessity.

For the lazy or those with means, gluttony rules.

Yes, a great way to feel terrible about your health choices is to travel for kids’ activities.

Oh, and in terms of fitness, the weekend mostly involves sitting or standing around a ton waiting for games to start, waiting for tables, etc.

This was the point I was at last weekend at a hockey tournament, questioning my life choices as I downed half a pizza and wings while catching Seinfeld reruns on the hotel TV.

Not the best dietary option. (Image licensed under the Unsplash+ License)

Diet, diet, diet

After watching Elaine date The Maestro and Kramer get his big cafe latte settlement, I shut everything down.

As my son dozed off in preparation for two big games the following day, my mind started wandering.

Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about how cognizant we need to be about diet as we age.

In this piece, I touched on actor Rob Lowe’s insights into staying fit as you approach your 60s.

Although exercise is important, and he clearly gets a lot of that, he revealed the real secret.

Here’s what he told Men’s Health recently:

“I hate that it’s 80 percent diet.”

“I’ve tried every way of getting around it. And I love working out, but it doesn’t get you where you need to get at my age.

“And that’s a f**king bummer.”

Oddly enough, the same week, I happened upon another article touching on the very same topic.

Here’s what singer Bruce Springsteen said about staying fit in your 70s, which I wrote about in this article:

“The biggest thing is diet, diet, diet.

“I don’t eat too much and I don’t eat bad food, except once in a while when I have some fun for myself.

“So I think anybody that’s trying to get in shape, exercise is always important of course, but diet is 90 percent of the game.”

Maybe the universe was talking to me.

Our ancestral cousin, the mighty chimpanzee. (Image credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

Life takes over

I haven’t been as healthy as I should be lately.

It’s not that I’m letting everything fall apart — I still eat relatively healthy and I try to do some kind of exercise every day — but the demands on my time are getting more and more aggressive.

I work full-time, coach hockey pretty much every single night, have a bunch of standard life responsibilities, and, now, a part-time business that is pushing to become full-time.

So weekends at sports tournaments aren’t doing me any favors on the health front.

I’m definitely starting to understand why entrepreneurs can let themselves go in the early stages of building a business.

I used to spend 90–120 minutes per day exercising, and that kept me lean, fit, and happy.

Then I tapered down to 60 minutes.

Now I’m struggling to find 30 minutes, and I’m paying the price.

Also, I’m just getting older. I turn 42 this week — a shocking turn of events!

My weight has been steadily creeping up over the last couple of months, to the point I’m flirting with my all-time high.

My dietary shift

My wife grew up in the country, which means she grew up on red meat and potatoes.

I grew up in the city with a health freak mom (I say that with affection) who became a vegetarian when I was in Grade 8, limited red meat for the most part, and made sure we ate salad with every meal.

As such, my and my wife’s diets were very different and continue to diverge.

She prefers hunks of meat, whereas I feel myself being pulled toward a more vegetarian lifestyle.

It’s not only that I generally feel a lot better when I don’t eat meat and that I feel no real natural pull toward it.

I also just don’t want to look like one of those washed dads who just gave up. That’s the path I’m headed down as I write this.

So, how to adjust my life now as my exercise time continues to dwindle?

I’m going to listen to the Boss on this one: Diet, diet, diet.

Dr. Google, nutritionist

In the quiet darkness of my hotel room, I thought about how I wanted to tighten up my diet.

I knew I wanted it to be primarily vegetarian (I’m not ready to go all the way), but I also had concerns about getting enough protein and minerals.

I don’t want to eat soy, and I hate tofu anyway.

Then I thought, “what if I ate according to evolution? What if I ate the way our ancestral evolutionary cousins, the chimpanzees, ate?

So there I was, sitting in the dark, Googling “what do chimps eat?”

I fully understand if you think that sounds insane.

But the truth is, what I found sounded pretty good!

Most of the main staples, I already eat.

According to the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada, the chimpanzee diet consists mainly of nuts, seeds, fruit, and leaves.

They do eat insects a lot too, but that’s going to be a hard pass for me.

The diet will vary according to location.

For example, while chimps are typically thought of as herbivores, they’re known to eat small birds and eggs on occasion.

But that portion of their diet is highly limited.

According to the Goodall Institute, animal products make up about 6% of their diet.

Another article, this one in Scientific American, suggested that chimps have, on average, 9 “meat days” per year.

So, that’s my plan.

I’m going Chimp Mode:

Nuts
Seeds
Fruit
Leaves

The time has come for Chimp Mode. (Image credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

Building it out

After doing some more research on the healthiest foods in the world (I’ll be writing about that later this week so please get my email notifications!), I’ll also be adding a couple more staples to my main diet.

For me, it’s less about adding things than removing them.

Red meat and dairy — two foods that are fairly unnatural for humans to eat — will be the first to go. Other meat, only on the rarest occasions.

It will be a learning process.

The day after I decided to go Chimp Mode, as we killed time between games, my son and I went to grab some Whole Foods salad bar for lunch.

He loved this idea, actually. When he was a toddler, we’d put black beans and chickpeas on his plate and he’d eat them like Smarties and M&Ms. I think, like me, he’s drawn to this kind of diet.

Now, I nearly vomited up said food when I saw the price of Whole Foods salad bar on the scanner, but now that I was trying to embrace a veggie lifestyle, I needed to keep those expensive, low-cal nutrients down.

I’m still not there, but I do intend to see this through.

If it sticks, I’ll be sure to write an update in a month or so!

Thank you very much for reading this post all the way to the end! If you enjoyed it, please give it some claps so others can find it!

Is this your last free Medium article? Subscribe today using my link ($5 a month, cancel any time) — I’ll get a lil’ kickback, and you’ll get all the awesome content Medium has to offer, risk-free!

My most-read stories

The latest from me