Always Hungry?

I know, you’ve heard it before. In fact, I’ve written about food and eating many times, like that time I did the Whole 30, or when I was very in to The Four Hour Body. In my defense, those two and Body for Life are the only diet plans I ever followed (and the Whole 30 is really an elimination diet targeted on finding which foods work best for your body, while The Four Hour Body really just makes suggestions about diet changes rather than dieting) – well, ok, my sister and I did some strange cabbage soup thing way back when I was in high school, but we weren’t really serious about it. My point is that I haven’t just jumped on every diety band wagon that has come along.

Now that I have that out of the way, let me go on to say that I promise not to gush too much about this book and the ideas contained therein. I am very clear that part of the reason I think it’s great is because I already knew and believed a good bit of what it says before I read it. We’re always looking for confirming evidence, no?

I mean, I remember when I first saw the Robert Lustig video, Sugar: The Bitter Truth. I tried to get everyone I knew to watch it, but since it’s some 90 minutes long, I didn’t have many takers. I found this video (Sugar: The Bitter Truth, The SHORT Version), though, and it’s short and sweet (haha, see what I did there?). Worth the 11 minutes. So when this doctor, David Ludwig, started talking about refined sugars, I was all on the wagon with him.

Then he started talking about eating whole foods – shades of Michael Pollen and his tenet of “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” He even spoke well of legumes – like The Four Hour Body. He talks about sleep as part of the cause of metabolic issues and medical ailments – and I’m like, yes! Read that in The Promise of Sleep! Then he started talking about the passagiata (one of my favorite things about smaller Italian towns, and I was done.

Here’s the plan. I’m going to follow the Always Hungry plan starting in June. It consists of two weeks of very structured eating and then gives you some room to navigate while you reach your body’s ideal set point. In Phase 3, he gives a structure for the rest of your life – again, this is not a diet as it is a change in diet and, I think, lifestyle (note the passagiata). The author has put up most of the material to do the thing (shopping lists, recipes etc.) online. Click here to find all kinds of goodies. Who wants to join me?