Fuel and feast - putting your diet on autopilot

By being intentional with what you're focusing on, you can have the best of both worlds when it comes to diet and nutrition.

I believe nutrition is super fucking easy. We do a lot of dumb stuff on autopilot and by bringing awareness, we can hit our health goals without compromising lifestyle or enjoyment.

Food can be either functional and aligned with your goals (fuel food) or enjoyable (feast food). The problem is that we often eat non-functional food that we don't enjoy. This serves no purpose and is usually down to a lack of awareness and intentionality.

Food can of course be both functional and enjoyable but as the Chinese proverb goes, when you chase two rabbits, you catch neither. I recommend that we classify food as one or the other. If it ends up straddling both then that is a bonus.

If we can identify the mindless shit that makes no positive impact on our lives (i.e. food that is neither functional nor enjoyable) and then remove it or replace it we can reach our health goals AND increase our enjoyment/experience of life.

Then through systems and curation of the environment, this can become nearly effortless, replacing the mindless autopilot with automatic movement in a positive direction.

We are products of our environment so the goal is to create an environment that makes health inevitable.

Dumb shit on autopilot

A lot of what we do in life is mindless. We never stop and think about what we do and why we do it.

Part of the reason for this is societal influence - we were born into a certain culture to certain parents and we largely do things as they've always been done.

We eat a sandwich and a bag of chips for lunch because we always have. We never think about it and we don't question it. We just do it. Our parents made sandwiches for us, and people on the TV eat sandwiches for lunch. It just is.

Is this aligned with our goals? Not really. Is it particularly tasty? Probably not.

So why do we eat it? Because we just do and we don't question it.

The thought of change may have crossed our minds in the past but either the imagined effort has stopped us from taking action OR we did try something extreme which lasted 2 days and then we went back to baseline.

Neither is ideal.

We are the products of an environment that we took no active part in creating.

This article serves as a pattern interrupt. It will prompt you to ask questions and then make intentional changes, shifting your health trajectory once and for all.

Fuel vs. feast meals

My approach to combat mindlessness is to intentionally classify food as fuel food or feast food. From here you can optimize each for their desired purpose. This requires upfront effort but once it's implemented it should be effortless.

Fuel Food is functional. It serves a purpose. It fuels your lifestyle and is aligned with your goals. In practical terms, it either provides protein or micronutrients or fuels something (e.g. a training session). It can be enjoyable but that is not its prime purpose. Most of your food each week is fuel food. You're busy, running through life, you are distracted while you're eating and you don't want to waste a huge amount of time thinking about, preparing, or eating fuel food.

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For me, fuel food is usually protein shakes and then I use greens powders or frozen berries blended into shakes for micronutrients and fiber. These allow me to be highly focused throughout the day (carbs make me sleepy). Shakes also take mere minutes to prepare and this works even when I am on the road. I waste minimal time thinking about, eating, or organizing food. I'm not saying eat like a monk but when I am flowing with work or life, this checks all the boxes.

If I am eating out for convenience, then it is a fuel meal and I think of it as such. I will order lean protein and vegetables. This could be a Subway salad, ceviche, or a lean steak. I am prioritizing the function of the meal.

A mistake people make is thinking that whenever they eat out they need to go in hard but if you're eating out every day, doing it for convenience or it's serving a function (ex. a business lunch) then treating it as fuel makes more sense.

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Feast food is to be enjoyed. Don't worry about calories or protein. Focus on utmost enjoyment. Savour every bite. Take a moment to appreciate the smell. Revel in the texture and appreciate the environment and company.

Most people think they are enjoying food but often eat while distracted or wolf it down. If you stop and think about it, did you actually enjoy the food? Did you even notice you were eating it? Can you account for every bite and score it out of 10?

This is a tough skill to master but this is how you can 'not worry about calories'. If you have intentionally decided to enjoy something and are savoring every bite then by definition you'll eat more slowly. You'll also naturally stop once the enjoyment tapers off.

Additionally, we often confuse overeating with enjoyment. This is either a conditioned response or a manifestation of the scarcity mindset - it's not inherently enjoyable. If you are present then you'll notice that the flavor of food goes from a 10 out of 10 to 6 after just a few bites. If the goal is to optimize for enjoyment then why are we accepting 6/10? Isn't it better to stop at this point and enjoy it the next day when the experience becomes a 10/10 again?

Implementing the Fuel vs. Feast Concept