Superman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Experience)

Last week, I wrote about the surprisingly pleasant results of a few months of self-experimentation. So, what exactly have I been doing these past few months?

Just two things: diet and exercise. But what a difference. Everything else follows. Having said that, all exercise and diet are not the same. The devil is in the details.

At the heart of the De Vany diet is the question, “Did we always live like this?” Why are we so rich yet so poor? What are the causes of our maladies (e.g. cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s)? Did we always feed our babies formula milk laden with sugar (and who knows what else)? When did hamburgers, sandwiches, fries, pizza and soda become a staple diet? Did our grandmothers eat cereal and drink orange juice for breakfast?

There is wisdom in the ancient, and the De Vany diet goes far beyond what your grandmother used to do. It is a return to an earlier time, when our esteemed ancestors were hunter-gatherers instead of farmers. It may be an evolutionary just-so story (though I doubt it), but it works and that’s what matters. De Vany seems to have found the diet with a lot of autodidactism and trial-and-error via self-experimentation. The diet is similar but not identical to the Paleo diet. We have to live in the real world, and I find the diet to be very practical (e.g. sausages, bacon and even tacos are allowed sometimes). I switched to the diet cold-turkey, and felt a difference almost immediately in the first week. I have not gone back since then, and hope to continue this for the rest of my life. I look and feel better, and have received many compliments about it. I am much more energetic — to the point where sometimes I just don’t know what to do. My back pain has gone away, I am much less easily stressed, I feel more confident, et cetera…

The diet can be summarized with the De Vany food pyramid: mostly vegetables, some meat, pieces of fruits, a handful of nuts.

The term “diet” is sometimes misunderstood. What you eat and do not eat is much more important than how much you eat. No simple carbohydrates (e.g. rice, bread, pasta, spaghetti, bagels, croissants, including whole wheat varieties). No sugar (neither raw nor processed; e.g. soda, desserts). No salt (there is enough in what you eat). No milk (including almond or soy “milk”; you are not a baby cow). No soy (phytoestrogens). No legumes (e.g. peanuts, any sort of bean). No processed food (e.g. biscuits, cereal). Basically, eat like a hunter-gatherer, not a farmer. Stick to the periphery of the supermarket, because everything dangerous is in the center where they want you to find it. Real food only, please: that means anything that does not need a nutrition label. Not even washed vegetables in plastic containers. If you can afford it, go organic. No beer (“liquid bread”), but maybe have a little red wine every now and then. Alcohol (phytoestrogens) was the hardest thing for me to give up. Fortunately, knowledge rapidly slew ignorance here. The liver is a terribly important organ, and we have only one of it: for one thing, it is replete with glutathione, a master antioxidant. I find that “abstinence is easier than moderation”.

Lose the salad dressing. Add the following instead. Spices. Vinegar (balsamic, red wine). A little cheese (feta). Kalimata olives. Olive or flaxseed oil (omega-3). Marinate your meat with pepper and olive oil. When frying with olive oil, apply just enough heat without smoking. Stream, fry, grill, or eat raw when you can and feel like it.

Contrary to what some think, I eat like a king (but work out like a slave; more on that later). However, dose matters. Too much food is like poison and ages you (although what you eat may also be a factor). As Salway says, some people think that you can eat as much protein as you like and yet not gain fat, without realizing that too much protein will be turned to fat. However, counting calories is silly. A calorie of fat is not the same as a calorie of sugar is not the same as a calorie of vegetable. Glucose, ethanol and fructose are metabolized differently by your body (see Lustig). So stop worrying about meaningless, abstract calories. Your body does not count man-made calories. Just eat real food, and till you are satiated. Also, add some variety to your life. Often I have no idea what or when I’m going to eat. I eat 1–3 times a day, depending on my mood and what I do. Sometimes keep the yolk, sometimes else throw it out. Maybe turkey in the morning, steak for lunch, and chicken for dinner. Variety keeps life exciting. Eat and argue with friends or family when you can.

To help you stick to the diet, you may find psychological tricks (“wax in your ears”) helpful. One trick I use is to imagine just how bland and unpalatable simple carbohydrates such as white rice or bread would be if I had to eat them just by themselves. Another trick is to cheat every now and then, but I try my best to minimize this. I do this mostly to gain from what Taleb calls the antifragile diet. Everything edible has different benefits and risks, so variety comes again to the rescue. Think of it as diversifying your diet portfolio with the barbell strategy. By drinking red wine every now and then, you may benefit from resveratrol. By savoring an affogato, you may not benefit from anything except the simple pleasure of gelato in espresso, but that is good enough. Even De Vany has something like a slice of cheesecake, say, every month. Life is short enough; no reason not to enjoy the little upsides of civilization (though simultaneously severely limiting its some of its huge downsides). Eat mostly lean meat, but sometimes go for the red or fat. When you cheat, remember to control the intensity; too much is poison.

And now we come to another important theme: intermittency. You should fast every once in a while. As De Vany says, every animal that ever lived has had to go hungry every now and then. According to De Vany and Salway, our ancestors were intermittent eaters. They did not have refrigerators back then. When they found meat, everyone would eat everything and as much as they could. There are opaque benefits to fasting that science is only now discovering. (See, e.g., Longo et. al.) Many religions have long advocated fasting for various reasons. If you are not religious, then pretend to be. Begin by skipping a meal when you are busy. Graduate to fasting for a day, maybe two. (Taleb has some interesting stochastic models of intermittent fasting.) Time-restricted feeding and caloric restriction are some similar but not identical alternatives that may serve the same purpose.

Sometimes you have to eat out. That is all right, so long as you choose something compatible enough with the diet. If string beans come with your steak, don’t sweat it. (Remember variety.) But lose the fries and send back the bread. If friends ask questions, say that you are under strict orders from the doctor. (If the doctor asks, say that you are under strict orders from your religion.)

What about supplements? Lustig thinks you can get everything you need from real food. I choose to take three supplements, all recommended by De Vany. First, I take fish oil for the omega-3. Apply via negativa (subtraction, not addition) to keep only what is essential at the right dose and frequency. For example, try minimizing perfume, toothpaste, soap and shampoo. Control or eliminate stress at work. The more stressed you are, the worse you eat.

As my friend put it so deliciously, I have given up on “mindless, hamster exercises”. One of them is jogging, which has been popular since at least the 80s and still remains so. I used to jog slowly on the treadmill or around Roosevelt Island for half an hour, all the while sweating and puffing, setting myself up for disappointment while thinner people around me jogged and jogged forever. But as De Vany asks: do joggers have enviable bodies? Jogging is also dangerous: quite a few have died from running, not to mention the repetitive stress injury and the unbearable dullness of doing the same thing over and over again. Jogging is the ultimate illusion of work. It is average effort stretched to the point of diminishing returns. Not at all the same as power-law kind of work. (Which is better: working hard for a yearly salary of $50K for 20 years, or to win $1M in one move?) So no “cardio”, please. No need for a trainer. What I do is a mix of what De Vany as well as McGuff and Little do.

Begin with six minutes of variable-intensity bike sprint: first minute at level 1 (min), second minute at level 25 (max), then repeat two more times. Literally cycling between heaven and hell. This used to be insanely difficult to do: my thighs would burn from lactic acid after a sprint. Not anymore: now I can sprint much faster in the first “uphill climb”. The payoff is beginning to show. I now sprint up (two steps at once) the staircases in subway stations (even the Roosevelt Island one) whenever I feel like it. I plan to sprint around a park when spring finally gets around.

Next up, the leg press, one of my favourite compound exercises. Use a power-law kind of volume and intensity: first lift X lbs 15–16x, then Y lbs 8x, finally Z lbs 4x, where X is enough to get you feeling the burn, Y is maybe 1.1X, and Z is the maximum you can do now. Since bringing down the weight is easier (thanks to gravity), you should try using one leg to bring it down slowly. McGuff and Little recommend lifting and resisting as slowly as you can to derive maximum benefit. I can presently resist 450 lbs, more than twice my current body weight, with just one leg. The payoff: my ankle bone density t-score is +0.6. Careful when you do this exercise: your heart rate and blood pressure will go up. Take some time for your heart to calm down before you increase the weight.

As for other compound exercises, you should do the shoulder press (try negative movement here by resisting with one hand), chest press, pulldown, seated or cable row, and abdominal curls. Use the power-law volume and intensity. Maintain good form. Increase the weights when what you are lifting is too easy. What else should you do at the gym? As De Vany says, use your imagination; we are all adults here. Take up a sport. De Vany recommends sports that demand sudden, random movements such as basketball or tennis. I’m a not a fan of either one of them, but I will be playing soccer with friends later this week.

The key idea is to benefit from acute, not chronic stress. Go through a brief period of high-intensity (but not to the breaking point) work, followed by a long period of recovery. These exercises will cause micro-tears in your muscles, so that they rebuild to become stronger before facing the same adversity or worse next time. Go to the gym 1–5x a week, as you like. Not more than 30–60 minutes. Life happens outside the gym.

Most of the time I eat nothing before I hit the gym in the evening. No need for “carb-loading”: I have lifted weights despite two days of fasting. It really isn’t so bad. No need to drink water while exercising (unless you are dying of thirst, but I have never had to do this). I finish with a cold shower for up to ten seconds. (Sometimes I walk around in the winter without a jacket.) Wait an hour after exercise to eat, just so your body has a chance to burn energy reserves.

So those are the basic ideas: via negativa, power laws (intensity vs frequency), variety, intermittency, recovery. The De Vany diet and exercise use what your body already knows through billions of years of evolution to make you as physically antifragile as you can be in this life.

You would be surprised at how much weight you could lose with this diet, though that is not its only aim. Would it work for you too? I don’t know, but the only way to find out is to try. Remember to measure some important things (e.g. lipid, glucose profiles) about yourself before and after the diet. If you are worried, talk to your doctor before you start.

Perhaps the only major downside of the diet is that it is relatively expensive. Lustig laments that the Paleo diet is not affordable by people in inner cities. Yes, real food is expensive, especially when you buy organic. (But real food is expensive only because the food industry has made processed — fake — food so cheap.) Yes, it’s sad that poor people cannot afford real food. Yes, we should do something about it. Nevertheless, despite being a graduate student, I am not financially bankrupt; indeed, I am physically wealthy. Isn’t that worth something, especially in the long run? Should I be penny wise now but pound foolish later?

It goes without saying that I have left out much here that De Vany and others explain better than I can now. If you want to know why the diet and exercise works at all, I recommend reading the following books: The New Evolution Diet by Arthur De Vany; The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain; Body by Science by Doug McGuff and John Little; Fat Chance by Robert Lustig; Metabolism at a Glance by J.G. Salway; The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. Supplementary material: Arthur De Vany’s Evolutionary Fitness slides; Arthur De Vany’s Videos; The Beginner’s Guide to Evolutionary Fitness.

That is all for now. I will update this page later with more details as seen fit.