“If I had only known that information 15 years ago, I would be in a much better place now.”
Do you ever have these thoughts too?
It got me thinking about all the different diets and approaches I’ve tried over the last 15+ years and how if I had the knowledge I have now, perhaps I would have gotten further into my health and fitness journey a lot faster.
Maybe I wouldn’t have struggled so much or wasted so much time doing the “wrong” things.
Let’s rewind back to 2007. At that time when you looked up diets, it was to eat as little fat as possible and keep your calories very low. I had lots of calorie tracking charts back then (no apps!) to make sure I kept under a certain number. I remember I could only do this for like 2-3 days at a time because it was very tedious and annoying. I was still very clueless on what “healthy food” really looked like. Obviously, this approach was a big failure for me. I hated tracking calories and I was always hungry!
Then around 2010, I went vegetarian with a slight lean towards veganism. This was when I got really into studying healthy eating and healthy living. It seemed like everywhere I went, people were avoiding meat and veganism was the way to go. I read the China Diet and lots of other vegan-focused books. Raw veganism was also popular at this time and fat was still the enemy. Also, it seemed like everyone was running.
I did feel pretty good doing this for a while. Reflecting back, I think it was because I was eating more veggies and fruits. My cooking as a result got a lot more adventurous (it had to, I wasn’t eating meat!). I remember always feeling really accomplished every time I converted a meal to 100% vegan. This is when my love for things like smoothies, fried tofu, and chia puddings started (which I still love to make!!).
I was also jogging a lot, which was very much a love/hate relationship. Yes, that “runner’s high” felt good, but my ankles and hips were always in pain. I never did any weight or resistance workouts back then. I had no clue about the importance of building muscle. No one was really talking about it.
Then a few years doing this, I started to suspect my hormones were out of whack and my fertility was being affected. My face was covered in hormonal cystic acne. and even though I was off birth control, it would be a while before I got pregnant with my first.
In 2015, I learned about this new upcoming diet trend called “keto” and I was fascinated by the prospect that eating more fat could be healthy! (Say what now?) The science made sense, so I starting buying butter (lots!) and bacon (real bacon, not the fake stuff!) and started to eat lots of avocados, coconuts, ghee, all the fat!! This was my favorite yet. (Fatty things taste good for a reason!).
Eating more fat did fix my hormones and I felt my best yet. I had the most energy. This is also when I found and fell in love with HIIT style workouts. So even though my focus was not yet on building muscle per say, I did appreciate how quick and effective those workouts were. I finally started to see real progress in my personal fitness that I never saw after years of going to gym classes and running.
Then in 2022: My body was not responding to the high fat-style of eating the same way. I am not sure if it was just being pregnant a second time or my age or both, but I was craving more carby stuff, like rice. So, I started to eat more carbs, which was hard after years of being “anti-carb.” However, I was also still eating high fat too, which of course meant that I started to gain weight. This affected my energy, and not to mention took a hit to my self-esteem (having a entire closet of clothes that either don’t fit you or you don’t feel good in will do that).
Last year (2023), I had a massive reevaluation. “Why was I trying to reinvent the wheel here? I teach this stuff for a living.” So, I went through everything I teach and really started to study how and what foods directly affect metabolism.
For the last 8 months, I have been mostly high protein, moderate fat and carbs, little bouts of cardio only, but mostly lots of resistance training (100% focus now is on building muscle), which seems to be the best yet.
I say all of this even though I wish I knew 15 years ago that I should have prioritized eating protein more (instead of focusing so much on carbs and fat), and should have been focusing workouts that built muscle, but I realized that the reason why I didn’t was because I DID NOT KNOW.
People weren’t talking about the importance of eating protein back then. I wasn’t even teaching it as the “king macronutrient” when I taught nutrition. I thought that as long as you eat food, you eat enough protein (now I know better and have adjusted my teachings).
Only people in bodybuilding circles were discussing this, not the “everyday” nutrition circles. I didn’t know that increased muscle mass was the missing link to fixing my metabolism. Just like I didn’t know that I needed more healthy fats in my diet to fix my hormones.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
The diet I was doing was the one that seemed “the best” at that time. I only used the information that I had available to me. And who knows, in a couple years things will most likely change again. Because that is how it goes. The ever evolving nutrition space.
Its also why I try really hard to keep my teachings and coaching as current as possible. The more we understand nutrition and how our bodies work and the role food plays every day, the better results we get.
What there something you wished you knew earlier? Or do you think that you always just did the best you could with what you had?