Eating Nutrients and Other Stuff

From Tom:  I’ve been eating regularly since I was a little kid—maybe even since I was an infant, although I don’t remember. It turns out, though, that I’ve had no idea what I have been doing.

Before starting the Fittest Loser Contest, I thought that the focus would be on building muscle and losing fat by increasing exercise and decreasing the quantity and frequency of stuffing my face. Not quite. I’m actually eating more, and more often. We also are learning lots about right and wrong eating.

Before our first tor . . . ah, exercise session, the trainers gathered us together in a lunch room lined with vending machines that were filled with all manner of sodas, pastries, snack items and candy. (I think it was a test to see what we would do.) The first person to speak to us was Kim, a nutrition expert from Jewel Food Stores. She obviously knew what she was talking about because she looked very healthy and fit. She definitely walked the talk. From what I understood, she is responsible for making sure that at least some of the food in all the Jewel Food Stores in the Midwest has nutrients, unlike the stuff in the vending machines that surrounded us. In fact, from what I understood her to say, vending machines rarely contain food. They mostly are filled with other stuff, like sugar, salt, gluten, and chemicals. Eating too much of this “other stuff” and not enough nutrients is why we are fat.

The more of the other stuff we eat, the less we like the taste of nutrients. For example, Kim said that unsweetened Greek Yogurt is very healthy for you, has lots of nutrients, protein, good bacteria, and no bad fat. I can assure you that unsweetened Greek Yogurt does not taste at all good, at least not to me. Although it has a pleasantly creamy texture, it has a flavor shockingly close to SOUR STOMACH ACID. I didn’t quite catch how long it would take for me to restore my taste for healthy, nutritious food, or when in the future I would prefer the flavor of Greek Yogurt over strawberry shortcake. When I asked about this, one of our drill instruct . . . trainers, snarled you eat for FUEL NOT FLAVOR.

Another reason we are fat, according to Kim, is that we eat too much bad fat and not enough good fat. I got very confused at this point of her talk as she suddenly stopped speaking English. She started to tell us how to identify which fat is good and which is bad. I have no idea which is which, but I think the bad fat is Polyunhydrogenated Trans Siberian Fat. Or something like that. Fortunately she later repeated some of what she said in English. Bad fat includes animal lard, corn oil, and I forget what else. Good fat are things like almond butter (I didn’t even know there was such a thing), coconut oil (this used to be a bad fat but somehow has repented and switched sides), and extra virgin olive oil (this is a special kind of olive oil that has not been used by anyone else).

Fortunately, as it turns out I do not have to remember all of the details. As part of the program we were given a booklet that tells us what we can eat and how much we can eat of each item, and when to eat. If it’s not on the list, we can’t eat it. For a little over three weeks now I’ve followed the program to the letter. I have to eat 5 times a day and exercise 7 days a week. Never in my life have I eaten so much and so often, or exercised so frequently. Sugar and bread are not in the diet, but I don’t miss them. To top it off, I feel great. I’m not hungry. And I’m losing weight.