Andrew Thomas McNichols

Diet

Experience

I am interested in being a healthy person. A healthy diet is a fundamental component of a healthy lifestyle. Since humans are so miraculously omnivorous, it can be hard to know of what a healthy diet consists. The mainstream view in modern western society of what comprises a healthy diet is still evolving, and has changed over the years. As have many other individuals this past decade, I became aware of the ketogenic diet while watching videos and reading on the web. There were some public sources of information that seemed reliable, such as Craig Clarke's ruled.me, Jason Fung's dietdoctor.com, Menno Henselmans's Bayesian Bodybuilding, Ned Kock's Healthcorrelator blog, and Paul Ingraham's painscience.com. Attempting to find verifiable evidence in support or refutation of the promising claims I was hearing about different approaches to following a healthy diet, I eventually consulted the scientific literature.

During my initial forays into eating mostly fat I did experience some subjective benefits, but was frustrated by inconsistency. These days I am reasonably convinced that the improvements in my health have had stronger negative correlation with meal frequency than positive correlation with the macronutritive contents of the foods I consume during feeding periods. My diet seems optimized when I enjoy a brief but nourishing surplus, then subsist on endogenous triglycerides until compelled to feed again. It still seems important how much I eat, train, and maintain my body's circulating supply of certain key nutrients, especially potassium, sodium, water, testosterone, seratonin, and cholecalciferol.

Research

Attempting to optimize my nutrition, I hunted for the orginal ketogenic diet protocol exactly as administered to epileptic children at Johns Hopkins in the early twentieth century. From this (and after reading the research that won the 2016 Nobel Prize in medicine) I realized that time restriction on feeding periods (fasting) is a fundamental component of the effective administration of any medical intervention. I began to search the literature for concrete data related to the practice of prolonged fasting. Since I enjoy leading an active lifestyle, I focused specifically on the impact of fasting to recovery from exertion. I have since learned more about organic chemistry, the processes of metabolism and various biochemical pathways, as well as exercise physiology and the potential benefits and limitations of different diets and exercise regimens. Exposure to this knowledge has had a measurable positive impact on my health, especially with respect to alertness, mood, and athletic performance.

Literature

Some resources I found especially helpful are aggregated here, in the hope that their assemblage may prove convenient to others. The format of these references attempts to follow standards defined by ANSI.

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Tl;dr: Reviewing these (and other) publications helped me learn how to better prioritize my basic biological needs. I try my best to restrict caloric intake by fasting often, drink water supplemented with potassium to stay hydrated, frequently exercise at moderately high intensity, get regular sleep, go outside in sunlight, eat sufficient cholestrol and protein, try to limit carbohydrate consumption to strategic periods of intervention, and cook my cruciferous vegetables.