There is no way to avoid it. An effective nutritional game plan combines science with taste. Diet food sucks because the food is bland, repetitive, and unimaginative. Either that or it’s trans fatty acids, frozen TV dinners, nightmare foods being sold as “healthy alternatives.” Frozen “diet foods” contain more chemical preservatives than your local hospital medical lab. Some people use willpower to overcome taste habits.
Most people don’t have (or want) this iron-willed determination and drive for perfection. Iron rule types tend to fire those who can’t hang out with 24-7-365 servings of George Foreman grilled chicken breast, rice and broccoli. (Ad infinitum ad nauseum) Iron Ruler types say “You just don’t want it bad enough!” The sensible way to develop an effective performance eating regimen is to gather the science and nutritional data and then seek out food preparation advice from the world’s top chefs. We want to learn how to inject flavor, variety, and imaginative flair into our daily food preparation.
Eating for performance is a primitive phrase with purpose and could be called “beyond diet”. Diet is all about calories: performance eating is all about nutrients. Calories are certainly a part of the PE equation, but nutrient manipulation is in sync with cycled weight training and cycled cardio. Get all three elements of the PP fitness triad aligned and moving in the same direction and achieve optimal physical results in a minimum amount of time.
We have to do our own food preparation. Depending on mom or wife or girlfriend to make our meals is a huge imposition and the element of control is lost. You become dependent on another for results. Also, we’re not talking about rocket science. Assuming you have a propane grill, a Weber grill, a stove and a frying pan, how easy is it to grill a perfect steak, sauté a perfect rainbow trout steak, steam shrimp in beer, hickory smoke a couple of chickens” in can of beer” at the Weber Grill? They’re easy to make and they’re all diet foods, people! So easy to prepare it’s ridiculous – we all need to become miniature Iron Chefs.
Culinary competition made easy! As any celebrity chef worth their salt will tell you, what makes a dish taste great is fresh ingredients. Prepare them minimally. When an ingredient is freshly harvested (animal, fish, poultry, fruit or vegetable), the unique flavor of that ingredient is fresher and more vibrant. A top chef knows that he must not stifle, muffle or dilute that unique vibrancy of flavor: simply prepare it in such a source that the natural flavors present themselves with minimal interference. Stand back and let that amazing flavor shine!
Do you know how to make a perfect steak? Buy the best meat. Find a butcher shop and get the good stuff. Some experts will coat the meat with a light coating of olive oil; most don’t cover the meat with anything. Let the meat rest on the kitchen counter for three hours before grilling to allow the intracellular fat to soften. Salt and pepper on both sides. Place the steak on a very hot grill and let it rest and brown on one side. After a minute or two, flip the steak and brown the other side, not as long…this seals in all the good stuff. Place the seared steak on a cool part of the grill away from the flames and let it grill until the meat reaches an internal temperature of 140 degrees so it’s medium rare. How hard is that?
Do you want to roast a perfect chicken? Brush with olive or safflower oil, season, and bake for 45 minutes at 350. Fish fillets? Easy. Vegetables? Easy. The key is to source fresh ingredients and have the tools and arsenal of minimalist recipes ready to go… easy to make and ready to eat in 15 minutes. Buy quality lean cuts of beef, seek out the freshest seafood, poultry can be prepared in many ways, each more flavorful than its predecessor and all within acceptable yield consumption limitations.
Fresh vegetables can be prepared in countless delicious ways. Sauté thinly sliced vegetables in olive oil or safflower oil, bake yams and yams, basmati rice is exotic, palatable and delicious… over and over again. You can eat so many varieties of acceptable diet foods that it boggles the mind.
There is plenty of room for variety and imagination when it comes to imaginative preparation of what we can and should eat. One night grilled beef fillet medallions…then the next pan-fried salmon with baby onions and red peppers from the garden…scallops in extra virgin olive oil…beer can roasted chicken…smoked turkey with hickory…same goes for vegetables…broiled, grilled, baked, sautéed, steamed or fried…I would rather have a chef as my dietary guru than a clinical scientist, dietician, nurse registered or a doctor; Scientists too often reduce diet strategy to numbers (calories) and neglect any and all reference to the psychological aspects of food control.
The single most important factor in dealing successfully with the nutritional part of the Primitive on Purpose philosophy is psychological: you have to maneuver your psyche into a new perspective: taste can be built into “diet foods” and therefore not there is reason to eat forbidden foods. . Some foods are easily converted to body fat: candy, saturated fat, alcohol, and man-made things…pasta, cakes, cookies, chips, etc. Some foods are virtually impossible for the body to transform into body fat: proteins devoid of saturated fat, fibrous carbohydrates. We bias our food selections toward foods that are difficult to break down into fat and away from foods that easily find their way into fat storage depots.
We eat often. We eat those foods that will be used for energy, used to build muscle, or excreted. By eating a smaller amount more often, you will never feel hungry and 80% of binge eating occurs when a person is hungry. Since we know exactly which ingredients are on and off limits, we know which types of foods to avoid. We don’t need a scientist or dietitian to tell us what to eat, how much to eat, or when to eat it. We already know that. What we really need is someone like Mario or Bobby Flay or Anthony Bourdian to show us a dozen ways to prepare a chicken breast, or the best way to prepare a piece of fish and make these dishes so delicious that we completely ignore the fact that they are diet foods. I’ve eaten diet foods so delicious you’re thinking of a second helping within the first two bites.
It tastes so good that you instinctively look to the bowl or pan to see if there are any more left. If there is, you devour the piece on your plate. If there’s nothing else, slow down to a crawl and savor every bite… Top culinary experts can show us how to best assemble approved ingredients. I’d rather eat 500 calories of an exceptional dish than 500 calories of bland prison porridge. If my divine portion is a bit smaller than his bland-0 opponent, I prefer quality over quantity every time.
