THE LAST SUPPER

Brett has done quite well for himself.  He is a global expert in his field and earns a lucrative income working for one of the world’s most recognizable tech firms.  At 47 years of age he has never married, and through wise investments has built a portfolio of real estate throughout Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore, where he splits his time. An ex-rugby player and boxer, Brett is a fitness freak.  When I first met him he walked around at 260 lbs and single digit body fat.  His forearms were so thick with veins that they looked like a relief map of the Andes.

Everything is dialed in with Brett.  His unique training is a combination of high-intensity short-duration workouts (the kind that leave you laying on the floor in a pool of your own sweat and possibly other fluids) and lots of boxing and kickboxing and grappling.  A few years ago he broke his shinbone in half when his opponent blocked a thai kick.  This was not in a pro fight.  In training.  Brett trains hard.

Brett’s diet is also dialed in.  He spent a few nights at my house once and I recall him making a protein shake each night before bed.  He would place the shake on his bedstand, set his alarm for 2am, and wake up to drink the shake and then go right back to sleep.  He explained this to me as insurance against going into a catabolic (the opposite of anabolic) state.  Got to get those refeeds in bros.

But you know what I love most about Brett?  He carries a backpack with him pretty much everywhere, and inside the backpack he keeps a couple of cans of cat food, and as he moves through his day in Asia, whenever he comes across a stray cat (there are a lot of stray cats in Asia) he opens up a can of food and gives the cat a meal.  Yes, basically Brett is the perfect human being.

I haven’t seen Brett in something like 3 or 4 years, and in a fortuitous coincidence our paths crossed in Singapore last week and we met for dinner. When I arrived at Moosehead Kitchen Brett had already started on a plate of bacon-wrapped chargrilled dates.  If you have never had a bacon-wrapped chargrilled date, I suggest a trip to Singapore.

But something was weird.  Brett looked jacked as always, but he was somewhat less huge.

“Did you lose weight, you look great?” I said as I sat down.

“Well these dates are the first thing I’ve eaten in 28 hours.”

This from the guy who wakes up at 2am to guzzle a protein shake?

“You haven’t eaten for 28 hours?  How does that feel?”  I was somewhat confused.  He didn’t look sick.  He looked abundantly healthy actually.

“Fine, I just worked out, I’m a little hungry now I guess,” he paused and ate another date thoughtfully.  “A little hungry, not really.”

Brett had dropped something like 40 lbs since I had seen him last.  He was in ridiculously good shape at 260 lbs, and now he was a svelte 220 lbs in even better shape by his own estimate.  

“I had hit a ceiling on my cardio capacity at 260 so I had to lose some weight to open up space for my cardio to improve,” he told me.  For Brett’s sports of boxing and martial arts, cardio is king.

“I haven’t been sick in 2 years” he said.  “I realize now how I bought in to the myths of the supplement and food companies and was somewhat insane.”

“The 2am protein shakes?” I asked him. He nodded his head sadly.  “The 2am protein shakes…”

Brett has taken a somewhat radical approach to weight loss, adopting a diet that is elegant in its simplicity.  I’m not even sure you could call it a diet.

He fasts.  24 hours, once a week. That’s it.  

He eats dinner on Saturday night finishing at 6pm or so, doesn’t eat again until 6pm on Sunday. He explained this to me as the human body being in either a fed or fasted state, and that mostly we are fed, still digesting the last meal even as we eat another one.  We eat too much, we all know this, but did we think about how insidious the myths of the diet industry are?

How about:  It’s important to eat breakfast to get your metabolism going which will help you lose weight. How could taking in MORE calories help you lose weight?  The thermogenic bump to your metabolism you get from eating breakfast is the equivalent of something like 10 calories. Presumably that breakfast you didn’t skip was more than 10 calories.

How about: It’s better to eat 6 small meals a day instead of 3 big ones. What?  Eat more times each day so that I can lose weight?  Really? Presumably this is meant to keep you from overeating.  So instead of eating too much at one sitting, you up the frequency and eat a little several more times a day.  There may be some serious dieters out there who can do this effectively, but switching from 3 meals to 6 doesn’t strike me as the most effective diet play for the layman.

“Intermittent fasting” is the term popularized by author Brad Pilon and is described in his “anti-diet” diet book Eat. Stop. Eat.  The diet benefits of fasting are undeniable.  Cutting one’s total caloric intake over a week by 1/7 (around 15%) will result in weight loss.

There’s more to be said for fasting.  Just as we take holidays from work, there is a case to be made for giving your internal digestive system a day of rest.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that if your digestive system is chronically digesting food, you may be adversely impacting your longevity. Digestion takes a significant amount of energy that may be used otherwise to heal your body, or deal with toxins.  Those of you with dogs, cats, or other mammals as pets, may have noticed that all mammals except humans stop eating when they are sick. Many of the world’s wisdom traditions advocate fasting.  The Eastern traditions of course, and even the more modern American traditions have fasting practices.  It’s perhaps little known that Mormons fast, and have a “Fast Sunday” once a month when they also abstain from drinking water.

Brett didn’t gorge on dinner, he ate about the same as me. We picked at a few plates of tapas.  He says his days fasted are when he’s most mentally focused, and also performs the best in the gym.  He eats normally the rest of the week and doesn’t watch his diet closely.  He doesn’t drink protein any more, and says he feels the healthiest and fittest he’s ever been. 

Questions for self-reflection: 

What is my basis for deciding the first food or drink that I put in my mouth after waking in the morning?

How much time in my day is allocated towards food choices and eating?

At what times do I take the most pleasure in my food?  The least?