There are 2 funny things about the Perfect Diet:
1. Nobody knows what their Perfect Diet is. Seriously, nobody. It's a platonic ideal. Nobody knows down to the gram the absolute best meal plan for their goals every day; there simply is no way to gather that kind of information. [Note: I'm not denying that lots of people know a Really Great Diet for themselves, just that they don't know the Perfect Diet, at least not perfectly.]
2. Despite #1, many (or most) people who are at all health conscious have a pretty good idea in what direction their Perfect Diet lies. For an easy example, most of us know we should be eating less sugar, less artificial sweeteners, and more green vegetables, almost no matter what our goals are. Some people might already be eating what is the absolute best diet (the diet closest to their Perfect Diet) to their knowledge, but in my experience those people are rare.
So why don't (most of us) eat in a way that is closest to supporting our goals? {Note that the question is NOT why don't we eat our Perfect Diet - we literally can't - but why we don't at least do better]
There are many answers to this question. Sometimes we are paralyzed by knowledge - we know that to eat the best diet we know of we'd have to dramatically change our entire lifestyle. Maybe we don't love the foods that we'd have to eat, or we do love the foods we'd have to eliminate.
I am, of course, no exception to these generalizations. I know a lot about what I should be eating, Yet I do not (and never have been able to) consistently eat that way.
My son recently challenged me to get a six pack (he actually said, "Dad, I wish you had a six pack like those guys in the UFC." He's seven, I'll cut him some slack). So I redoubled my lifelong efforts to get lean, fueled as much by my own vanity as by my son's disdain for my flabby belly.
Back in serious martial arts training, I know I can't afford to just restrict calories willy nilly and maintain my performance. I also know from experience that I can't do karate well (I mean well by my standards, I never do it REALLY well) on a very low carb diet.
So I need carbs. And by carbs I mean starch: actual glucose polymers, not lots of fructose or sucrose (I can go into the chemistry of that some other time). And I can't tolerate gluten, so the easiest starch sources (bread! crackers!) are all out.
I may not know the Perfect way to get my carbs, but I do know some Pretty Damn Good ways to get them. I could eat some steamed or baked potatoes, white or sweet, each day. Bake them the day before, then cool them, then reheat and eat. Or cook up some rice in a little oil, let it rest in the frig overnight, and reheat the next day (cooked then cooled white potatoes and rice have lots of resistant starch, which is good for you... another topic for another post).
There's just one problem: I can never seem to motivate myself to stick to this process. I tried, and I kept finding myself hungry in the middle of the day, needing some carbs, with a full email box of work to do, with an empty refrigerator and no time to cook anything.
At this point, there are two ways to go: give up completely or acknowledge that you can't manage the Perfect Diet, and you also can't manage the Pretty Damn Good diet but maybe you can settle for the Fair But Not Great diet That's Still Better Than What You Were Doing. And yes, I am totally going to make a book out of that and sell the hell out of it.
My 'solution': Rice Chex. I needed some source of starch that required absolutely no preparation time, with a long shelf life (I can't be bothered to shop every 3 days) and portability (I travel a lot). And gluten free.
Rice Chex fill all those criteria. Very little sugar, not too expensive, and the best part? They're good, but not THAT good. I need my carbs to be palatable, but if they're really tasty, I know I'll eat more than I should, and then my son can forget the six pack. But Rice Chex are right between 'meh' and 'not bad,' so I can eat them all the time but I never greedily reach for a second bowl (nor do I shudder in disgust at the first bowl).
It's pretty clear Rice Chex are not part of anybody's Perfect Diet. For one thing, they have a pretty high glycemic index. They also do not have much in the way of additional nutrition - no healthy fats, no interesting phytochemicals, no protein to speak of. But they are a cheap and easy way I can get my starch in, with 0 prep time, and support as much hard training as I want.
[In full disclosure, General Mills is not paying me a penny to endorse their cereal, nor do they even know I exist, though I'd be happy to sell out if they made me an offer.]
My point here is not that YOU should be eating Rice Chex (though they're worth considering if you're facing the same issues I am). My point is that while there is one Perfect Diet for you from a physiological sense, the Best Diet you should be on is the one you'll actually stick to. I can stick to the Rice Chex diet, whereas the Sweet Potato diet might be physiologically/chemically better for me, but I can't be bothered to actually eat that way.
Find your Best Diet You'll Actually Do. In the end, that really is your own Perfect Diet.
