Which levers are you pulling?

If I told you I was starting a new diet, what’s the first thing you think about?  Is he giving up on low carb/high fat?  Paleo?  Going full Keto?  Maybe vegan this time??? 

When we think about diet and nutrition, we typically focus on what we eat.  Bookstores are filled with volumes on each and every one of these dietary strategies, and the internet is aflame with arguments (often as biting as the worst arguments over politics and religion) for or against each of these.  
Although we clearly have a stance on diet at OurHealthHabit (low carb–and more pointedly–low sugar, unprocessed foods) and have written extensively about it here, its important to stop and consider the other aspects of nutrition/diet beyond the what–particularly the When and How.

In a recent video post, Peter Attia explained how he thinks about nutrition with a simple, yet elegant example.  To paraphrase: imagine that the controls to human nutrition were as simple as driving a vehicle with 3 levers.  They are labelled Dietary Restriction (DR), Caloric Restriction (CR), and Time restriction (TR).  To glide this complex machine called the human body to optimal health through nutrition is as simple as toggling these 3 levers correctly.  

As I alluded to above, most of use spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the what component–the DR lever.  We could argue all day about how you toggle this lever with different dietary strategies.  But what if DR didn’t matter, or at least it wasn’t the only thing that matters?  As it turns out, that’s almost certainly the case.  It doesn’t take a leap of logic to realize that restricting how much you eat (CR) and when/how often you eat (TR) are just as meaningful–or perhaps even more meaningful. 

If you haven’t started to think about how much you’re pulling the CR and TR levers, now is the time.  The good news is that strategies involving these levers are more straightforward (stop eating at 7pm, don’t eat until 10am or later), less controversial (Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed all fasted), and backed by even more rigorous scientific data (check out Sachin Panda’s work).  

If you have a chance, watch Attia’s video.  But at the very least, follow his simple advice: “Always pull one lever (doesn’t matter which one), try often to pull two levers, and occassionally pull all three.”  Finally, a topic in nutrition we can all agree on.  Now if only Washington DC could find a way…