“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” Mae West

For me, great health is a function of four variables: exercise, sleep, stress and diet. Everyone needs to decide from themselves how to optimize exercise, maximize sleep and minimize stress; here, I am just going to focus on the hardest nut to crack: a dialed-in diet.

Diet

In 2020, I took both a gut panel and a micronutrient panel, which revealed a horrific microbiome and a broad set of nutritional deficiencies. 

That set me on a circuitous path to a golden destination: a carefully-engineered breakfast and lunch that never changes, never gets old, and has delivered a radically improved microbiome and perfect micronutrient results. 

I crave variety in all aspects of life: weather, entertainment, travel, hobbies. But for the last several years, I have never once craved anything for breakfast or lunch other than what’s on the permanent menu. Variety comes at dinner, which typically consists of a serious protein and lots of veggies. 

Final note: by knowing exactly what my breakfast and lunch will be and when I’ll eat it, I’ve found lots of CPU freed up in my brain, cravings are gone, I’m seldom if ever “hangry,” and energy levels are consistent throughout the day. 

Morning Supplements

Your suite of supplements will mostly be informed by your micronutrient panel. A gastrointestinal doctor friend told me that the only thing on this list he’d recommend is Vitamin D, but I take all of these supplements everyday and have repeatedly produced perfect micronutrient panels. 

Here’s what I’m taking right now:

Morning Smoothie

After going through many iterations of a delicious breakfast smoothie that fuels me all the way to lunchtime and that never gets old (at time of writing, I’ve had it over 500 mornings in a row), I’ve landed on this mix. Further, I’ve optimized production so that it takes me less than 90 seconds to make. I start by throwing the four bolded ingredients in bold into a Vitamix blender, and blend for 15 seconds. Then I crack open an 8oz jar that contains a pre-made mixture of all of the non-bolded items below, and drop it in, continue blending for another 10 seconds, and then it’s done. (Pro-tip: mix your smoothie additives in these 8oz jars every 12 days to streamline production.)

Lunch Buddha Bowl

Depending on how much exercise I’ve had in the last 12 hours, I start salivating at the thought of lunch between 11am-12:30pm. I’ve had the same lunch everyday for the last 500+ days; it takes about 3 minutes to prepare, and it always delivers.

Every week I pre-make a big load of buckwheat (aka kasha), an Eastern European superfood that is somewhat similar to brown rice in how it cooks, chews and stores, but is technically a seed packed with protein. I start the salad production by laying down a generous portion of buckwheat, without which the meal would not be sufficient to stave off hunger until dinnertime.

On top of the buckwheat, I lay a generous portion of salad greens that I usually get in a big tub from Whole Foods.

Next, I grab a big handful of pre-diced carrots (I dice them up at the beginning of the week and store them in Tupperware in the fridge) and drop them on top of the lettuce.

I slice up a small avocado and drop the slices in.

Then I take half of an 8oz filet of wild-caught smoked salmon tail that I get at the local farmers’ market, break it into bite-sized pieces, and drop it on.

Finally, I douse the salad with a homemade version of Sol Food lemon-garlic salad dressing (see below DIY instructions).

  • Buckwheat

  • Salad greens

  • 1 large carrot, diced

  • 1 small avocado, sliced

  • 4oz smoked salmon

  • Homemade dressing (olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt)

Sol Food Dressing DIY

First, take an absurd amount of garlic - like way more than you ever thought possible - which is easiest with several bags of pre-peeled cloves. Mince them up to 1/8” chunks or smaller (a garlic press is your friend here, and you can finish it off with a large knife on a cutting board). Then, sauté them in a big pan with the Bertolli Extra Light Taste olive oil until they just barely change color from white to off-white / light yellow (but NOT brown). 

Use a silicone funnel (chopping off the bottom piece of the nipple helps with faster throughput) to load garlic into each bottle about 1.5” up from the bottom. 

Then, squeeze fresh lemon juice (Meyer lemons work great), strain out the pulp, and use the same silicone funnel to pour in the lemon juice so that the lemon and garlic mixture goes about 1/3 of the way up the bottle from the bottom. 

Next, use the same silicone funnel to pour in olive oil almost all the way to the top (leaving about 1.5” of air space in the top of the bottle). 

Then grip the top of the bottle with your hand so that your index finger and thumb form a ring around the top, and pour in 4 teaspoons of salt, one teaspoon at a time. At this point, there should be about 1” of air left at the top of the bottle, which is important for shaking up the contents inside the bottle (in other words, don’t fill it entirely to the top!). 

Finally, put the lid on the bottle, wash off the exterior with soap and water in the sink (you very likely spilled oil and garlic goo on the outside of the bottle by this point), shake it up, and store it. It should last for many months without spoiling. 

Dinner

Dinner is where I get my variety, and since breakfast and lunch are always so healthy, I sometimes give myself a bit of latitude here.

Ideally, dinner is an alternating veggie-centric meal with a lean, organic meat-based protein. But sometimes, circumstances require it to be an entire pizza and three Henhouse IPAs.

I usually don’t eat dessert, but sometimes I have a huge one.