Notes

Never Let Go: A Philosophy of Lifting, Living and Learning (Dan John)

my wife, Tiffini, and I began following the instructions of Ellington Darden. We did the whole Super Slow training, Slim Fast for breakfast, lots of water, sixty percent of the diet was carbohydrates, and microwave meals. Within two tough weeks, we lost a little bit off the various measurements. Let me tell you, those were wicked weeks, hungry all day, usually grumpy. But the research said it would work. Why then, a few weeks later, were all the losses gains? Tiffini began talking to friends about her struggles; even a doctor kicked in with his opinion. All her friends, as well as the doctor, recommended high-protein diets.
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Once Tiff and I committed to eating high-protein, life became very simple. Almost overnight we both needed new wardrobes. I had to purchase new belts four times in a year. Tiff went through two wardrobes. She started in a size twelve; soon she could fit in sixes.
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The ironic part of this discovery was I used to eat this way; back in the 1970s, I ate a high-protein diet to get bigger and stronger. As a senior at Utah State, I weighed 218 pounds with eight-percent body fat, and threw the discus over 190 feet. Then I got some advice from the people at the Olympic Training Center. I needed carbs, they advised, and lots of them. They pointed to the studies done on the American distance runners. I should have followed the logic: When is the last time an American distance runner dominated the world scene or even placed in a big meet? Take a moment to look at the high school men’s running records — shouldn’t it have bothered me that some of these records were older than the coaches? Being an idiot, I took the advice to eat like emaciated, overtrained sub-performers. It took years of high-carbohydrate grazing to learn the evils of this advice. After the switch back to high protein, the hardest thing to get used to, besides buying new clothes and only having one chin, was how easy eating became. Meals were done in minutes; in fact, we often forgot to eat because we were still full from the last meal.
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(After a couple of years)
Eat more protein. Eat more fiber. I know you think you do, but you don’t. Not long ago, I experimented with adding two additional daily low-carb protein shakes to my diet and, besides the fact my belt got too loose in a week, my energy and general level of happiness soared.