After many years and hundreds if not thousands of diet plans, I decided to pay respect to my body and listen to it.
Regardless the level of yours and mine modesty, we are in some measurable way superficial in nature – we have the desire to express our physical beauty to the world and in return, experience the physical beauty from others.
Taking the superficial nature to the extreme in Japan – taijin kyofusho is welled documented social phobia anxiety disorder – an intense fearful of body’s appearance or functioning is offensive or displeasing to others.
Below is a visual metric for physical beauty with body fat percentage as the underlying fundamental component.
For the last 27 years of our marriage, my body fat percentage has ranged from 10 to 25 percents. Visually, I enjoyed the 10% look resulted with the 10% body fat composition.
However in general, the shredded and lean cut does not give me the level of joy and happiness I would like to have in the everyday living.
My wife and I shared the love of foods. Of the three tops pleasures in our lives food is third – family is first and sex is second. As we get older, food is slowly displacing sex.
On the high end of the spectrum with 25% body fat, food consumption is not an issue – I felt lethargic most of the time, but most importantly confidence became the limited commodity.
The strike in balance is the in the range of 14 to 18 percents body fat – as depicted in the above illustration. As for my wife, the optimal body fat is ranged from 24 to 29 percents.
Now that I have discussed the optimal body structure that is best fit my lifestyle – let’s move on to the diet that builds and maintains it throughout the year.
I have never been able to track the calories as part of the diet plans. Not because I don’t have the skill or the meticulous personality trait to get the job done – the process will ruin my marriage.
You read it right – counting calories of the foods we consumed on the daily basis will put so much stress on my wife that the resulted anxiety will outweigh the health benefit and the overall joy in the everyday living.
By listen to my body, I keep my diet simple with the following groupings – proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vegetables and fruits.
First and foremost, let’s make sure we have common sense about foods. In absence of any level of activities, your body will take in all foods, good or bad, and do its best to convert the optimal ratio of muscles and fats storage in accordance to your genetic makeup.
Hence your muscular genetic endowed friend will be more muscular than you for the same exact diet down to the molecular level – fair or not this is how the cards are dealt from the genetic deck.
Let’s educate ourselves on the key benefits of the food groups to our physical structure.
Protein – Working-out puts tremendous wears and tears on your body, protein is used to repair and build muscle tissues. Moreover, protein is a critical building block for healthy bones – the scaffold for muscles.
Carbohydrate – Working-out required energy and carbohydrate is the source. Carbohydrate provides energy (ATP) and regulation of blood glucose (sugar). ATP, Adenosine Triphosphate, is the molecular fuel source for muscle. Your body breaks down glucose from the carbohydrate foods group to make ATP.
Fat – Fats are stored energy source and served as insulation to protect our internal organs. Triglycerides, cholesterol and other essential fatty acids must be consumed from the external environment because our body does not make them.
Vegetable & Fruit – Vegetables and fruits provide fiber, essential vitamins, minerals and trace elements.
Unless, you are an athlete and your financial livelihood depends on the high performance or you have a health limitation that requires a particular diet – the keep it simple diet in understanding will be more than sufficient in meeting most situations.
My Keep It Simple Diet list to maintain the BMI in the range of 23.6 to 24.9, along with the body fat percentage fluctuates from 14 to 18 throughout the year.
Fish, oat, avocados, broccoli and banana are grouped as my Keep It Simple Diet base. Substitutions are made as needed for varieties or when the body gives a reasonable craving.
As I said in the beginning of the article, I respect my body by listen to it. With the cold front is coming, my body seemed to carve for more fats – currently, I am at 14 percents body fat with 20-50-5-15-10 (protein, carbohydrate, fat, vegetable and fruit) ratio.
Typically from November to early March of each year, my body fat percentage will climb back up to 18 with more fat in the diet (20-40-15-15-10).
In addition to working out five days per week, each year, my wife and I go to our family physician and get our blood tested for comparison to the prior year.
Once the test results are back, we will adjust the Keep It Simple Diet along with Keep It Simple Workout for the next year desire outcome.
Lastly, sleep is utmost essential to any workout endeavor. In addition to mental health, sleep helps with the repair of muscle tissues and facilitates in the recovery of muscle strength – a solid 90 minutes to 2 hours of workout will require 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night.
Let’s play the game of life!
