I am currently working on a series of articles on defending oneself from ClownWorld, but due to work and ministry considerations, this is taking quite a while.

In the mean time, I decided to share some experience and opinion on a subject that most men can benefit from – weight loss.

You don’t want to lose weight.

You might think this is the solution, but I can imagine that you really want to lose fat. Losing weight is simple: eat less, do more. Calories in, calories out. The problem with this is that many a man (myself included) did exactly such a thing with the dreadful “skinnyfat” aesthetic as a result. Eating the same thing, but just less of it, will make a smaller version of you, as you have not done anything to change how your body is composed. If you were 35% body fat before you started losing weight, but just ate less, chances are you will be a smaller 35% body-fatted individual.

Enter the fad diets. Keto. Vegan. Vegan and Keto at the same time. Paleo, Atkins, RawFood, intermittent fasting, starvation, just banana my life up fam, and on and on it goes. People keep trying them, with some finding success and a whole lot more failing miserably.

If I can offer any advice before discussing what I found works, it is this one simple rule:

If anyone virtue signals a diet, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Veganism can mess you up. So can Keto. So can any system that people brag about after they’ve lost some weight, but have not done for a long time. Dr. Atkins  died overweight and with heart problems. If it gets airtime and people use it to status/virtue signal, then be more careful. Now here’s what I did to get to the nice, flat-stomached and muscular physique I have today:

IAO and the Grandpa Diet

At the beginning of this year I decided to make all my eating fit into the “grandpa diet.” If Grandpa couldn’t have it, neither will I. That meant ceasing my supplements, kissing aspartame goodbye, throwing out my protein powder, and avoiding anything with soy, high fructose corn syrup, or chemicals I can’t pronounce. I maintain a ~2,000 kcal/day plan with “eat whatever” days on the weekends. This went….so-so at first. I tried to substitute my protein shakes with peanuts, found myself eating a lot of tuna, and a whole lot of peas went down my gullet, but I didn’t really lose that last inch of fat off my waist, just some weight.

Then I made some adjustments. Turns out my body thrives with a lot of fiber: I suppose fiber and carbs are conducive to the high-volume explosive routines I have with kettlebells. So I have milk with oatmeal or bran flakes for breakfast, hard-boiled eggs after workouts, a cup of beans (don’t worry, the anti-nutrients are removed) with a tortilla for lunch, and Meat+starch+vegetable for dinner. Yes, whenever my wife asks what I want for dinner, she gets “Meat+starch+vegetable” as an answer. Yes, it frustrates her. Yes, it’s hilarious.

Over the past four months of this adjustment, I lost that last inch of fat, my abs are getting more defined, and I am still maintaining muscle mass – with some decent, if slow, gains. At 6’3″, 209 lb, and most of that being dense muscle, I’m not doing bad. I am probably lacking in vitamins, but I am looking to add some fruits in to make up for it in the near future.

Now what makes this work?

How does any diet actually become effective, especially one as hare-brained and simple as mine? The first answer is just as simple and hare-brained. Improvise, Adapt, Overcome – IAO. You do not have to be an expert in nutrition. If you modify your nutrition plans, observe the effect they have on you, and make slow adjustments to solve problems as you see them, you will be on your way to success. People who claim expertise can show me their degrees in nutrition or medicine; if one is not supplied, I assume they are signalling. The second reason is common sense as well, but harder: listen to the critics, but only make changes when they are actually correct.

Your nutrition habits are a reflection of agency as applied to yourself. You have a mind, abilities, and some power to make changes. Does your bodybuilder friend insist you cut 500 kcals a day from your diet to get shredded? Okay, that might work for a while, why not read up on it and attempt a more modest (~250/day) change as incorporated into your established plan, and see what it does? The modest change with observation will allow you to see if cutting is a good idea; if not, you can honestly tell your friend that it is not the best for you. If it works, you have a good tool in your toolbox for the IAO process.

This process works well for the rest of the practical advice you find in the reactosphere. I like Ted Kaczinski’s work, but I do not ascribe to everything he said. Instead, after reading his work, I just went lower-tech than I was, and continue to look for ways to be a bit more free than the tech-world would like. Thus far it has been worth it. I dislike the SEEJgang’s insistence on their book of choice, but if I find anything good in it, I will incorporate some of Mason’s ideas without joining the Manson family. This will be next on my Dissident reading list for the same reason.

You do not have to be a blank slate that gets filled up by external influences and con artists. Nor do you have to be a curmudgeon, thinking you have it all figured out. Listening to others while maintaining your own ideas and being active will bear great fruit.

Hopefully not bananas though. Gosh, that’s a diet I’ll never try.