The Purpose of Diet What is the Purpose of Diet? Being stoic, we will always return to first principles. What is the nature of a thing? How is this related to that? You may recall Hannibal Lechter quoting Marcus Aurellius Antoninus, or have read his Meditations after seeing Gladiator or hearing that it was Bill Clinton's favorite book. In athletics our first principle is, often unfortunately, to do whatever it takes to win. This is what leads to cheating, drug use, and the sexual realities of the old East German women's weightlifting team. In applied analysis, our first principles are to understand where we are, where we wish to be, and to develop a stepwise plan that gets us from here to there in as rapid a manner as possible. You do this every time you drive somewhere you've never been before - you must know where you are starting from, where you wish to go, how to read a map, and must translate all of that into turn-by-turn actions taken at the appropriate time. You may really enjoy turning left. Your mentor, guru, or other object of supplication may state that it's the only way to turn and that all other directions are base, false, and indicative of low moral fibre. He may conclusively prove this with an army of agreement, strident tones, and detailed studies. Nonetheless, you can't get to Peoria from here without turning right. What does this have to do with diet? Simple - just as there is no correct single exercise, bit of equipment, routine, or schedule to solve every training problem, there is no such thing as the perfect diet. You need to figure out where you are, where you are trying to get to, and consider all the possible maneuvers to make it happen. If you are young and weak and want to get strong, Doctor Bubba's Longevity Diet may not be the right choice. The following also needs to be said: Diet is nowhere near the top of your priority list in training for sport. Supplements are the last thing you should consider, and diet is second to last. Form, technique, training program, skill, strength, power, endurance, and a host of other factors should take priority over diet. They are, of course, related - if you are hungry and weak, it is not time to lift weights, its time to eat. The subject of eating can be first divided into irrational and rational goals. Rational objectives are those that can be measured – weight gain, fat loss, sport performance, etc. Irrational includes things that cannot be measured, but must be ‘felt’ – religious or philosophical issues. We’ll ignore the latter. If Shub-Niggurath told you not to eat frog’s legs or else you’d lose your status as his Chosen One, that’s between you and him. In the rational category, we are left with the following subcategories: Bodyweight manipulation Adipose loss Fueling training or day-to-day activities Promoting/supporting recovery from training activities Fueling athletic performance General health and well-being Many of these are mutually exclusive. Let’s take ‘general health and well-being’ as our example. We have been conditioned to accept the premise that an athlete or bodybuilder is the poster child for robust health. However, anyone who has ever been a serious athlete knows that the following is true – you are always nursing and training around some chronic injury or other. ‘Healthy’ and hurting all the time seem incongruous. Similarly, it is not possible to both gain weight and lose it at the same time. Hard dieting to maximize fat loss will not support hard training or recovery from it. You get the idea - one goal may require the support of a specific eating regimen in order to maximize progress, but that regimen may slow or reverse progress toward another goal. Looks like step one, as always, is to get your priorities in order. The only logical conclusion we can reach is that we will either have to select multiple objectives and make compromises or we will have to pick an extreme diet for our immediate goals. That’s perfectly fine, as long as you know the risks and approach them with your eyes open. I’ve been on extreme diets off and on for the 30 years since Junior High School wrestling – and every other athlete in weight-controlled sport has been, too. When Coach X was telling me not to eat, not to drink water, and to wear a rubber suit into the sauna while doing sit-ups for hours, that was an extreme diet but I did not have the benefit of enough knowledge to make the choice myself. However, I wanted to win and had to make weight to ensure my spot on the team – I would make the same choice now. The key mindset is to look at the various diets and dietary variables as tools in your kit. Do not get emotionally attached to any of them – when you need a screwdriver, your favorite hammer stays at home. There is no such thing as the One True Diet. Understand the principles of biology, biochemistry, thermodynamics, and sport science, recognize that each and every diet author and the supplement manufacturers behind them are lying to you, and liberate yourself from the scam machine. Take careful and honest stock of your current state, set an objective, break it down into small and achievable parts, and then select the correct tool for the first step. That’s called a plan, without which you have to be pretty damn lucky to succeed. ~ "Garm Olafson"