My kitchen is stocked up with treats for Super Bowl Sunday.  But not with chips, brownies, cookies, or rice krispie treats.

Last night I shopped and came home with healthier fare.  Broccoli, brussels sprouts, and the ingredients for low carb chickpea tacos.

Why the heath kick?  Last week, I fasted for five days.  From Sunday morning until Friday morning, I consumed nothing but water and black coffee.  I lost 10 pounds and felt great when it was over. Leaner, lighter, and more mentally alert.

It was my second fast of the year. The first began on New Years Day and lasted three days. I’d planned to go five but started feeling dizzy and weak during a Saturday morning yoga glass. I succumbed to hunger and headed to the all-you-can-eat salad bar at Woody’s restaurant.

That time too, I lost 10 pounds, from an alarming post-holidays high.  But I squandered the improvements with a January return to less than optimal eating.

This time will be different.  Hence the red chickpea tacos.
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Let’s be honest.  Diet is one of the worst assaults on American health. Eating better is the best path to improving our health and our lives.

We are at war with Big Food. Walk through any grocery store. What stocks the shelves is 90 percent poison. Much of it is hyper-palatable. That is, genetically engineered to be tasty and appealing to the point of being addictive.

Think Oreo cookies.  Think about potato chip packages that say, betcha can’t eat just one.  It is not just an ad slogan.

Basic nutrients such as fiber have been stripped from the ultra-processed foods we eat.  Which makes them cheaper and less satiating so we’ll buy more.

I have been no better-behaved in my 68 years than the average American.  I’ve consumed fast food by the ton, literally I’m guessing.  I’ve been addicted to sugar since childhood.

Baby Boomers have faced a Perfect Storm of dietary health wreckers.  As kids we watched commercials for Trix and Cap’n Crunch, with cartoon characters that made toxic levels of sugar consumption look like fun.

Breakfast was the most important meal of the day, we were told.  Sure it was, to the food companies. The slogan was made up by a breakfast cereal executive.

Then came the low-fat craze in the 1980’s.  Fat was the enemy, we were told.  (It is not; it’s an essential macro-nutrient.)  All those awful fat-free snacks were loaded with sugar, which is the real enemy of good health.

Even the government was against us, with its ridiculous Food Pyramid. Retired in 2011, it recommended—get this—six to eleven servings of bread, cereal, rice, or pasta PER DAY.  It’s hard to even fathom.

Only in recent years have I personally taken steps toward healthier eating.  I would say the course correction is due to one thing above all others: The internet.

Zoomers may find it hard to comprehend.  There was a time when Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram didn’t exist. Just Saturday morning ads for Cocoa Puffs.

Much of what I now know about nutrition, I must admit, started with casual scrolling.  My awareness of fasting originated on Tiktok. I started following some authorities and reading their books.

I recommend “The Obesity Code,” by Dr. Jason Fung.  (Its title is a bit off the mark; it’s about fasting.)

The likely next leader of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  Say what you will about his controversial stances on Dr. Fauci and vaccines.  He is right about one thing:

“The American is diet is poison and in need of reform.  It has been hijacked by food producers driven more by profits than a proper regard for human health.”
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About fasting, my sentiments resemble what I tell people about practicing real estate for a living.  It has great rewards but it’s stressful and hard and definitely not for everyone.  I do not wholeheartedly recommend it.

If you’ re interested in fasting, start slowly. You can abstain overnight, from 6 pm to 12 noon the next day.  That was my first foray into fasting, simply skipping breakfast for 21 consecutive days. Now I skip it every day.

In the last quarter of 2023, I adopted a routine of eating only within a 12-hour window every two days.  Starting at 6 am on Monday, for example, I would eat until 6 pm.  Then I’d fast until 6 am Wednesday.  I found that too difficult to sustain.

Two tips:

• A key to success is not coddling yourself. That is, don’t adjust your schedule with a lighter workload (or workout) than normal.
• Hunger can often be overcome just by ignoring it.  Before long it dissipates and disappears, for several hours and sometimes into the next day.