Life of (f)Utility: Hacking the Human Race

Control your diet, control your life: Part 1

Abstract

I believe that if you control your diet, you can control your life. This is a story of how I got control of what I ate, which required me to control my mind, which led me to get results. Over the course of this time, I leaned some valuable lessons or ‘life hacks’ as people are now calling them, about how to get sustainable results.

Though I’ve never been terribly overweight per se, I’ve never felt that I’ve had control of my weight. I’m about 5′10″. At my worst, I was once 175lbs. (BMI of 25, i.e. officially overweight) After implementing my diet I describe below, I am now about 157-160. My mom thinks I’m too skinny, but I like to think of it as “lean”. More importantly - I don’t worry about my weight. I once read that many people’s weight goals are to lose around 10-15 lbs and keep it off. Here’s how I did it:

Things that I practically eliminated:
* fast food
* anything dripping with grease
* large chunks of meat
* soft drinks
* snacks

What I ate instead:
* oatmeal for breakfast (when I ate breakfast)
* rice
* vegetables
* coffee

My entire diet rests on one core principle: when I sit down to eat, I eat till I am full. My mental state when I leave the table is “Okay - I can’t even think of eating anymore. I am not too full, but if I ate a couple more spoonfulls, I would fall over.” As soon as I get to this state - I stop eating. Over time, you find out how much food this is. This mentally prepares me to go for 6-7 hours without even thinking about food.

What prompted me to adopt this diet was not my weight. It was my blood pressure. Though I have absolutely no data to support this (aside from my 2 best friends, who are about my age, *both* having to be put on medication for high blood pressure), I suspect that many less-that-35-year-olds are hypertensive or pre-hypertensive. For a while, my blood pressure was reading ~140/90. At 33 years old, this is alarmingly high. After implementing this diet, my blood pressure now reads around 120/77. It’s not stellar, but it’s a good start.

Here’s a list of other benefits:
1. I now control my weight.
2. Doing “#2″ is a breeze.
3. My grocery bill is a lot less.

… which brings me to the title of this blog post: “Control your diet, control your life”. This “story” contains many of what I feel are the key steps to happiness.

1. I encountered a problem
2. I devised a plan and stuck to it
3. I got results (which are quantifiable and track-able) and am now enjoying multiple benefits.

And of these three steps, the MOST important part is the second part of step 3 about ‘enjoying multiple benefits’. That part is what makes the whole thing work. Don’t believe me? I’ll explain in the next blog post.

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