The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [214]
THE MEATLESS MACHINE I
Reasons to Try a Plant-Based Diet for Two Weeks
Bacon: the gateway meat.
—Pin on messenger bag in San Francisco
The Power of Positive Constraints
Limiting options is usually thought of as a bad thing.
But how would your speaking improve if you couldn’t use the adjective “interesting” and had to be more precise?
How would your planning skills improve if you had to go without a cell phone for two weeks?
In reality, there are both negative and positive constraints. The latter are often used in business to improve innovation and results in a specific area. The famous “lean manufacturing” at Toyota was a result of applying positive constraints to wasteful processes.
How do you apply this to diet? Simple: by eliminating certain foods for a limited period of time. For most omnivores, removing meat is the hardest, and—therefore—the most valuable. To quote Dr. John Berardi (a meat-eater, like me), whom we’ll meet later: “In our quest for filling one-third of our plate with animal flesh, sometimes we forget to think about what the other two-thirds should be filled with.”
The constraints of testing a primarily plant-based diet (what I’ll refer to as “PPBD”), whether pescatarian, vegan, or elsewhere on the spectrum, demands a knowledge of food that transcends whatever you’re eliminating. Even a two-week experiment produces huge permanent benefits.
For example: if you know you might become deficient in B-12 on a PPBD, you learn about B-12, you learn about B vitamins, and you learn about vitamins in general, which might then branch your interest out to desiccated liver (a good source), which leads you to eat grass-fed local beef once a week on Saturdays instead of choosing to be vegan.
It’s about finding what’s best for you.
I suggest a two-week PPBD test after 3–4 months on the Slow-Carb Diet. No matter where you end up afterward, the awareness will lead to better decisions that benefit appearance, performance, and the planet as a whole.
Moving From Ideal to Practical: Five Steps
A few definitions are in order before we get started:
1. The term “vegetarian” is so overused as to be meaningless. I define it here as someone whose food volume is at least 70% plant-based by volume. This is the aforementioned primarily plant-based diet (PPBD), and this is the term I’ll use in place of “vegetarian.” On the Slow-Carb Diet, I consume a 60% minimum PPBD, meaning that most meals are 60%+ plant-based; 6/10ths of each plate is covered in veggies of some sort.
2. I define “vegan” here as someone who consumes no animal products except insect-produced goods such as honey. The latter is controversial for some vegans, but that is an argument for another book.
If you are considering test-driving a PPBD, which I hope you will, I suggest that you make the transition from an animal-based diet gradual.
It’s better for the environment if you locally source a 70% PPBD12 indefinitely, rather than eat 100% vegan for two months and quit because you find it unsustainable. Some vegans, lost in ideological warfare, also lose sight of cumulative effects: getting 20% of the population to take a few steps in the right direction will have an infinitely greater positive impact on the world than having 2% of the population following a 100% plant-based diet. To both uninformed meat-eaters and vegetarians—stop ad hominem attacks and focus on the big picture.
Of course, there are many vegetarians and vegans who object to any consumption of animal products as immoral, even if the animals are raised in humane and sustainable conditions. I won’t address that here, as too many subjective definitions are involved. Instead, I will focus on the nutritional and logistical implications of following a PPBD.
The following five-step sequence is simple to implement. Each step will make you a more conscious eater and serve to lessen your environmental impact:
Step 1. Remove starches (rice, bread, grains) and add legumes. Dense