The biggest obstacle to jumping in with both feet is preparing meals. I think it is a good idea to eat this way and I am eager to try it for several months as a test, but about 10% of what I currently know how to cook fits the MaxDiet. So I have a lot of work ahead of me.

I'll put forth the effort, but it will be gradual and I'm afraid many people would just rather not try. Rationalizing is always easier than doing the work. ;)

Hey chill, I'm convinced enough to cut out flour and sugars from my diet. The meats/fish/milk I'll look into progressively as I get adjusted. I've already added more veges and fruits into meals. When I'm back onshore I can get some nuts and beans.

I don't think the problem is necessarily that you didn't write convincingly enough. The problem is that 90% of the time people are told to change their diets, it's in a hostile nature. As such, people's natural first instinct is to get defensive of their own diets.

You know how vehemently omnivorous I am. I'm pretty compelled to come up with a hybrid Max/MeatDiet now. Not cut out meat completely, but definitely cut it down a sizable amount, and make sure I get very good quality meat.

Your arguments are there to see, it's just that most people don't want to open their eyes.

I read Make Her Chase You and then headed to this page a few days ago. After reading the compelling message in your blog and doing some research of my own I've decided to go 80% vegetarian!!! I no longer will buy non local meat. Period. If I simply must have meat one day, I will farmers market and get some fresh stream salmon from some local guys, or meat from deer or elk that was hunted. I basically want the ability to eat meat if need be instead of getting sick like when it happens such as with full on vegetarians. Seattle is a great place to be because we have the availability of such things. And a rather large vegan/vegetarian community. Thank you for helping to open my eyes!

I'm going to give this a shot. I'll probably continue to eat eggs and milk because they kick so much ass, but eliminating sugar, meat, and flour from my diet sounds like a great idea.

Tynan: Is there a compelling health reason not to eat things like eggs, sour cream, etc?

"Why no officer, just organic hemp ... for my diet ... yeah that's it. I just need more protein. No, I swear, I read about it on a blog ...

What do you mean, prison?"

Kidding aside, I read The China Study about a year ago, and have almost completely been eating in line with your diet since. I personally love quinoa as an easy to cook staple food. How hard is it to follow your own advice as you travel? Is it harder to eat well in America than other places? I can't just walk into a gas station here and find anything close to heathly.

Tynan,

Great series of posts, you have changed my life, though as the rest of the people here im a little reluctant to cut meat completely. I was wondering though why do you preach an entirely different diet in the skinny snob? isnt the skinny snob unhealthy now according to ur standards posted here?

I wonder how many deaths in the US are alcohol related, like liver problems, drunk driving 'accidents' and what not.

I totally buy into about 75% of your max diet, and that part is straight along what many of the Crossfit people do and recommend. AKA the zone/paleo diets. I've been doing that since December and had incredible results, lost weight, gained muscle (thx Xfit too), allergies/asthma almost entirely disappeared. Feel totally awesome all the time, better than ever before in my life.

I started eating meat again when I swapped into this diet. I used to be a semi-vegetarian (ate some fish and ocasional chicken).

The cutting refined grains, sugar, industrial food in general is spot on, don't get me wrong that in itself goes a long long way.

Where I disagree is the cut meat and replace with grains and beans. Believe me I did tons of reading into this myself because I wanted to decide for myself if I needed to swap back to meat. I found enough compelling evidence to convince me. Again read some of the Weston Price stuff, there's quite a lot free on their website.

To sum up: The protein available in beans and nuts is not as readily used by the body, and there are much smaller amounts of it than in meat. To get equal protein from beans/nuts, you have to consume vastly more calories of fat and carbs, which is unbalancing hormonaly. There are also things in meat you'll never get anywhere else. Most of the same research saying cut the refined grains and sugar also says any grains are nearly as bad. It all has to be processed a certain amount to be digestable, and most of human evolution didn't involve any.

Also yes industrial meat is disgusting, and almost all the evidence against meat, is based on it. Unhealthy animals with chemically unbalanced meat. I'd rather not eat meat at all than that.

Evidence from hunter-gatherer societies ans the few studies done with people on naturally raised meat shows vastly different results.

But, I discovered, you don't have to eat industrial meat to eat meat. There's a growing movement of local pastured farm animals available. It takes a willingness to research and get outside the supermarket, but it is there. For example this is what I finally found as the best answer for me in my area with my busy schedule at the moment: http://www.farmfreshdirect2u.com/.

It probably takes even more effort to procure it than what you've been discussing, but really isn't that hard once you know where to look. So don't finger point meat eaters as all taking the easy way.

Again don't take me wrong, I like where you start with your diet for the most part. I just disagree that cutting meat is as healthy or even sustainable as an ideal when you start looking at sustainable farming practices. Which, by the way, produce better vegetables as well due to having animal fertilizer instead of imported chemicals.

One of these days I'll get around to compiling what I've found in something easy to read, but again recommend starting with the Price foundation, or look into "paleo" diet and reading Pollan's books.

BTW having recently gone on the same sort of journey into learning about diet/food, totally appreciate what you're talking about and trying to write up to explain to people. It's like suddenly food becomes something wonderful and worth spending time and money on, and the western industrial diet that gets pushed everywhere is practically criminal when you start learning about it.

Just think you should take it one step further into the sustainably raised animals. Some other countries actualy have much better animal farming practices than the US. I think that'd be an interesting project to look into while travelling.

One of these days I think I'll start/buy a farm. After I do the Nomad thing for awhile though:)