I marvel at my dog’s ability to hit top speed. She could be in a dead sleep and pop to all fours in less than a second. That same feat normally takes me several snooze sessions and a few groans. I’ll open the door and she’ll be at full stride chasing a bird the minute she hits the ground.
Her diet consists of the same exact thing every day. Roughly a cup of Blue dog food in the morning, a couple treats at lunch and another cup of food at night. She only drinks water.
Is there something to this?
I recently read “Born to Run” and the centerpiece of the story was the Tarahumara tribe that is famous for running super-human distances of 50 to 100 miles just for the hell of it. By all accounts their diet seems remarkably consistent and simple.
Hall of Fame baseball player, Wade Boggs, is another guy who pops into my head. He allegedly ate only chicken before games. He was one of the steadiest hitters I’ve ever watched in baseball. Nothing flashy, but almost like endurance hitting. Night after night he would step into the batters box and perform one of the hardest sporting feats with amazing consistency.
And as I write this, a friend reminds me of the old Dannon commercials featuring 100 year old Russians who ate yogurt like fiends. And man were they spry!
Now, I’m just throwing this out for discussion, but are modern diets too diverse?
It goes without saying that it’s harder to work out when we’re not feeling well or exhausted. Could we be putting unnecessary strain on our digestive and immune systems with a wide variety of foods?
Today’s Diet:
Breakfast: Coffee
Lunch: Salmon, broccoli, blue cheese potato chips, cinnamon rolls
Snack: Hershey’s Bar
Dinner: Homemade chicken noodle soup, cottage cheese, two small pickles
Writing drinks: De-caf Coffee, Seltzer Water
Interesting post. There’s conflicting scientific literature about “boring yourself skinny”–if you eat the same healthy foods everyday, you will lose weight, but eventually, your body will adapt, and you’ll hit a plateau; and it’s common for people to regain the majority of the weight they lost. I love food–cooking, baking, trying new dishes–but I definitely revert to the same healthy eating “staples” on a regular basis. I’ve found my body responds well to things like almonds, salmon, and Greek yogurt, while cereal, cheese, and red meat don’t work for me.
I think I may do a little experiment and eat some staples for a week and journal about it. I agree that we probably need diversity of foods on some level just to “keep the body honest.” I actually wrote a weird post that I have in draft mode about pushing the immune system with bad foods on occasion. I think a lot of factors, like heredity, come into play with each individual. I grew up in the midwest and we had that meat and potato thing going, which still works for me.
Watched an interesting documentary this week, “Forks over Knives”, talking about the benefits of a plant based, whole foods diet.
You may be onto something there… Interesting.