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> I’d add though that unlike you, my diet more or less went the opposite direction and I feel much better too. I went completely plant-based with an emphasis on

> I’d add though that unlike you, my diet more or less went the opposite direction and I feel much better too. I went completely plant-based with an emphasis on whole foods and as far as I can tell my entire body works better. I’m not saying you’re wrong because I absolutely believe you and agree that we were probably just extremely unhealthy before. Maybe any healthier diet would have sufficed. But yeah, this thing seems extremely variable from person to person. Plant based with heaps of carbs might annihilate your brain, but a bowl of barley with steamed tofu, broccoli, carrots, and peanut sauce is like heavenly brain food for me. The great thing about the SAD (Standard American Diet) is that most any not-totally-insane restrictive diet will be significantly better. It hardly even matters which you choose, it will be better. When you start with terrible, even "bad" is an improvement!

steve_adams_86 4y ago
It's true. I think we collectively know this too, but trick ourselves into thinking we're not the ones eating the SAD. In reality, most of us are; it's sort of like we think we aren't the traffic. McDonalds doesn't serve billions because none of us eat there, and the grocery store doesn't have aisles of garbage because no one's eating it. I think we also have a tendency to under estimate just how frequent our indulgences are, even if we generally eat a bit better than the SAD. This is how we gradually become obese. It's definitely a weakness in the human psyche. A major eye opener for me after the last couple of years has been how crazy our diets really tend to be and how easy it is to just stop it. Like, I used to battle internally about if I ate well enough that day to eat [insert garbage here]. Like that's ever a conversation worth having with yourself, or it would ever make sense to want the garbage in the first place. But I figured I was eating whole foods (usually, I guess, maybe?), eating meat from "good" and "ethical" sources, eating what I thought was a lot of vegetables. And yet the science shows that people who eat like I did are dying earlier than they need to and suffering from diseases people didn't typically get up until recently. And I found myself gradually gaining weight despite not noticing a change in my caloric intake. I'm not sure exactly what caused me to snap out of it (there were several factors), but in any case, I'm glad I did. And you're right – eating well is trivial if you're starting anywhere near the SAD. With a bit of motivation you can level up tremendously with minimal effort.

steve_adams_86 4y ago

It's true. I think we collectively know this too, but trick ourselves into thinking we're not the ones eating the SAD. In reality, most of us are; it's sort of like we think we aren't the traffic. McDonalds doesn't serve billions because none of us eat there, and the grocery store doesn't have aisles of garbage because no one's eating it. I think we also have a tendency to under estimate just how frequent our indulgences are, even if we generally eat a bit better than the SAD. This is how we gradually become obese. It's definitely a weakness in the human psyche. A major eye opener for me after the last couple of years has been how crazy our diets really tend to be and how easy it is to just stop it. Like, I used to battle internally about if I ate well enough that day to eat [insert garbage here]. Like that's ever a conversation worth having with yourself, or it would ever make sense to want the garbage in the first place. But I figured I was eating whole foods (usually, I guess, maybe?), eating meat from "good" and "ethical" sources, eating what I thought was a lot of vegetables. And yet the science shows that people who eat like I did are dying earlier than they need to and suffering from diseases people didn't typically get up until recently. And I found myself gradually gaining weight despite not noticing a change in my caloric intake. I'm not sure exactly what caused me to snap out of it (there were several factors), but in any case, I'm glad I did. And you're right – eating well is trivial if you're starting anywhere near the SAD. With a bit of motivation you can level up tremendously with minimal effort.