“Diet is more important than exercise”
Is one fitness rule I have consistently ignored for going on fifteen years.
I am not for a moment suggesting this is rule is wrong, all I am saying is that I have paid very little attention to my diet beyond the following:
* Eat the things I know I ought to be eating,
* Mostly avoid the things I know I ought not to be eating.
And doing this has allowed me to remain relatively trim year-round without much thinking about food, let alone engaging in behaviours consistent with an eating disorder such as weighing every morsel that passes my lips and logging everything in an app.
Would I be leaner if I did do those things?
Absolutely.
I’d even go so far as to say that I wouldn’t accumulate as much unsightly body fat as I do at times of stress (as happened a few years back when certain work and family pressures conspired to make life particularly difficult). However, I’d always take a little extra pudge around the middle that is easily shifted when things calm down over being a slave to my diet.
I don’t say this as some sort of cope, either.
I’ve seen the “other side”. Most notably in the runup to my wedding when I followed a pants-on-head stupid approach that got me Very Lean at the expense of months of misery.
A classic example of the aforementioned misery was when Jess and I took a trip to Thorpe Park about twelve weeks after we both started this diet. On that day, not only could we not enjoy any “off plan” delights whatsoever, meaning we were tortured by the delicious scents emanating from the various restaurants scattered about the park.
We also had to cut our trip short because Yours Baldly vomited into a bush after a go on Mr Monkey’s Banana Ride.
Not an experience I want to repeat.
Nor the sort of restrictions any serious person would want to place on a fun day out with the family.
Oh, sure, I am aware there are plenty out there who get a lot of satisfaction out of punishing themselves in this way because it makes them feel “hardcore” or whatever. But I can’t help people who want that (beyond signposting them to an appropriately qualified medical professional to work on their obvious psychological problems).
What point am I trying to make?
I believe it is training, not diet that truly moves the needle.
Why?
Training with discipline and intent naturally begets a desire to eat better. Combined, the result is that a powerful physique will slowly but surely emerge.
As I have already said, there are obviously faster ways to go about it.
Although I don’t think you will find a more sustainable way than mine.
To learn more, my biased recommendation is that you read the book I send all new Phil Tyreman Letter subscribers because it is predicated on my “training first” approach.
Diet is covered in the form of three short essays which contain a framework basically anyone can use to get to the point where they don’t worry about their diet because they’ll default to eating good, wholesome stuff.
But the real meat is in the training, and there are two caveman-simple systems for getting stronger and more in shape (one for those who are brand new and returning, another for those who are longer in tooth) requiring the bare minimum of bookkeeping. (The second programme can also be run indefinitely, due to its supreme flexibility.)
The only catch is you have to subscribe to the Phil Tyreman Letter to get the book for reasons explained on the below page:
https://philtyreman.co.uk/information/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman