Week One Update

After one week on Engine 2, I went from weighing 204.6 to 199.4, a total loss of 5.2 pounds. I also worked for essentially 15 straight hours yesterday, sans my usual 5 o'clock headache and less the post-meal crash that transitions me from insatiable academic to couch-hungry loaf. I have also gone from taking one Prilosec OTC pill a day to taking one Prilosec OTC pill a week -- and this development while still eating acidic fruits and plants like oranges, strawberries, hot peppers, and tomatoes.

And I'm not really one for discussing regularity in public, but I've noticed this is something people over 50 (and Meghan and Benjamin, apparently) are fascinating with, so I'll address it with a brief Q and A.

Q: Are you more regular?
A: Yes.

The primary reaction I've gotten from most people is, "So, how are you holding up not eating meat?" Well, hate to say it for all those red-state Americans out there who hate their bodies and work daily to undermine their health, but meat isn't that hard to do without. Sure, there have been moments of weakness where I was tempted to scarf down a two-inch-thick, medium-rare hamburger patty that was screaming my name (a desire left over from my ignorant, uninformed days), but I persevered. And there was a time yesterday when my roommate was eating slices of pepperoni pizza where the old Kevin wanted to jump in and say, "Hey let me have some of that fake combination meat" -- because who doesn't love fake combination meat that combines the byproducts and wastes of two or more animals? But I didn't, I held strong. Plant-strong.

So while it's been pretty liberating to toss meat out, the truly difficult part (as a fellow Engine 2 dieter and I have discussed) has been the separation from added salts and sugars. Oils I can do without. Salts and sugars are proving more trying.

I would put this test to you: keep track of your sodium intake for a day. You need about 500 mg of sodium per day in your diet. I would bet that if you're able to get an accurate headcount on how much sodium you actually consume (which could be tricky, particularly if you eat out frequently) and don't switch up your daily routine for this experiment, you're consuming between five and ten times that much.

In fact, the average seasoned-to-taste American diet can contain 5000 mg or more of sodium per day (source: Wikipedia). Hey, whatever, it's probably true. Let's face it: the average American diet is extremely unhealthy. So any example drawn from the typical American diet is probably out of proportion with that which is healthy. For example, before 1900, heart disease was not among the top 10 killers in the United States. Today it is #1. Let's think about what's happened since 1900: the massive industrialization of American society, the advent of the freezer, refrigerator, and packaged, overly processed foods, and the dearth of all self-control or concern with anything other than indulging the whims and desires of the overweight, self-absorbed individual.

But sodium also provides a good example of how food labeling grossly misleads the American public. Grab something with a nutrition label. (Or don't! Just sit there on your chair, couch, or recliner while the plaque from the food you eat attaches itself to the walls of your blood vessels.) That nutrition label suggests you should consume about 2500 mg of sodium per day on a 2,000 calorie diet. Physiologically, we only need 500 mg of sodium a day, yet our FDA-approved labeling states otherwise. Why is this so? To head down the path of understanding and enlightenment, you can read my published article in the Administrative Law Review, Thank You for Regulating: Why Philip Morris's Embrace of FDA Regulation Helps the Company but Harms the Agency, 61 Admin. L. Rev. 197 (2009), which in part exposes the extent to which FDA is "captured" by the very industries it regulates (thus the agency promotes the interests of regulated industries, not those of the public), and which has received critical praise from Dr. Michael Siegel, a long-time tobacco expert and professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. And that's pretty much it. The government agencies we trust to regulate our products and ensure that accurate information is conveyed to the American public are subject to the political demands of Congress and the President, who set the statutory bounds of an agency's ability to govern and dictate regulatory priorities, respectively.

But I digress. Salt and sugars have been the most difficult to give up. As I ate a bowl of Jocelyn-made vegan chili yesterday, while it was extremely, extremely good and I would not have wanted for a single thing to be changed, if there was something to be changed, it would have been tossing in a scoop of table salt. The same is true with my morning bowl of cereal. In preparation for this diet, I began drinking soy milk a week before the February 1 start date. This was sweetened soy milk. I thought, wow, this isn't going to be so bad. This is every bit as good as my regular morning bowl of cereal. Upon starting the diet, I took Engine 2's advice and purchased unsweetened soy milk. Big change. Those 20 grams of added sugar per serving make all the difference. My morning cereal is no longer as enjoyable and just to make the whole-grain shredded wheat drowning in a bland, Maalox-style liquid palatable, I have to add bananas and blueberries. Otherwise it very nearly resembles cardboard.

But this is when phase 2 of the Engine 2 revolution should kick in: your palate can be changed. Over time, eating a no-salt-added, no-sugar-splashed diet becomes the norm. As a federal judge in Louisiana remarked after going on a raw food diet, "You feed your dog Alpo every day, and what does it want? It wants Alpo." Your body will desire what you give it. You will not notice the "tastelessness" of your healthy, life-giving food and the overly salted, overly sugared "foods" of others will become repulsive.

Let the condescension begin anew.