What's so incredible? Why is she so awesome? How does she do it?

One explanation for the Japanese proclivity towards long lives and outlying health is the quantity of calories they consume. True, the Japanese eat a third fewer calories as Americans on average, but that’s only an explanation if you believe the Calories In:Calories Out balance is to blame for weight gain and loss.

I don’t. The science is far from compelling; in practice creating caloric deficits does nothing for weight loss in trial patients or for their well-being, even if it does extend the life of lab rats. The logic isn’t sound either, since the imbalance could easily be a symptom of an underlying cause, not the cause itself. It seems nice and tidy at first, and how convenient it is to blame the overweight for their behavioural choices. Americans, the argument goes, are fat because we eat too much and exercise too little. The Japanese ostensibly are not because they eat less and exercise more. Except that’s not how it works. It isn’t how it works for malnourished populations who don’t eat as many calories but still have high rates of obesity. It isn’t how it works for middle-class marathon runners either and it certainly isn’t how it works for me. I have a particularly memorable experience with the relationship between exercise and appetite debunking the theory that began with a 5am bus ride.

There was only one bus to the boathouse a day, and only one from it, and the former left at the butt crack of dawn. Most of the girls on the rowing crew with cars got to sleep an extra half hour or so. Those of us enslaved to the LA local bus system had to hoof it across an ominous campus every morning fifteen minutes before sunrise, in case the captain did a head count and forgot to include the novice team, as often was the case. The ride to the boathouse was a form of team bonding in itself, and while I may have enjoyed practice, I blew hot and cold with regards to the sport. Of course, it didn’t help I was the 9th shy of an 8-man boat, essentially a late-season understudy whose chances of seeing water at a meet were slim to none given my teammates’ dedication. They were pictures of discipline. I wilted in their shadow.

I also had other things on my mind. Crew was a sporting hobby for me, not the sole reason I went to university. The distinction all but extinguished the fire under my harbour-soaked bum. You’ve got to give the other girls credit: fear of losing your scholarship and being sent home to whatever fate lies on your family’s yam farm in back home in Eastern Europe is a powerful motivator, thus I appeared to be the only teammate to struggle with coach’s personalised diet plan. Of course, the other girls had calorie-restricted diets. I, as the only 100pounder fool enough to be a rower, was given a 5,000 calorie diet.

I’m sure many women dream of this very situation. Thanks to 1900 calorie burning, 4 hour long, daily erg sessions, our division one trainer mandated a midnight milkshake regimen. I was encouraged to frequent all-you-can-eat joints in between my four daily meals at the athletic dining hall in the hopes that I wouldn’t waste away. It sounds awesome and the sight of a girl barely past five feet shoveling down three puddings while my muay thai mate looked on enviously was admittedly one of my finer moments. Every other moment, however, wasn’t awesome at all. It was freaking work.

The reality of a 5kCal diet is much less glamourous than you’re imagining. Have you ever tried to eat triple your government suggested caloric intake? I promise it entails significantly more work than play, mostly in the form of not undoing all your good work as you walk home or finding the will to shove fully loaded bagels down your gullet whilst in the middle of rowing a 10k scrimmage. In fact, staring down a deep dish veggie pizza, I was about to swear off food entirely if it weren’t for my then boyfriend’s gentle coaxing. While he was faithfully accompanying me to the ‘cross campus Denny’s so I could make my daily calorie quota, he gained two stone. I, on the other hand, managed a measly two pounds. I got increasingly desperate. The other girls would tempt me by promising to vow in front of the coach I finished that box of Lucky Charms all by my lonesome if only I would let them have a few handfuls off the books? We won’t tell if you don’t. My lab partner in game design class, conveniently also the hardest worker on the team, would help me whittle down piles of gummy bears as we worked out code. In the end, I had to quit the team for losing too much weight.

The maths didn’t make sense then any more than they do now. The team medic was just as baffled. How does a squirt of a girl who only burns 3,400 calories a day, 4,000 calories at most, eat an extra 1,200 calories of pure rubbish and not gain weight? Am I just metabolically blessed? Maybe. But if I couldn’t gain body mass then, I can’t lose it now. If creating a positive or negative calorie imbalance truly impacted the way we store fat and burn energy, why didn’t creating an extreme imbalance during my tenure on the crew team do squat? For me at least, it’s obviously more complicated.

Part of the problem is in the name itself. We call them lifestyle diseases because they’re new and they’re only popping up in certain countries as products of industrialised life. Any populations studies — the China Study, the Seven Countries studies, even the Okinawan institute’s treatise on aging — are at best observational studies, at worst propaganda. A population produces statistics based on a combination of genetics, cultural choices in lifestyle, and diet. You can’t isolate the variables easily and even when you can, the difference between the content of a culture’s food and it’s context is multifaceted. So far no one’s bothered to prove any causal relationships between, say, rice and longevity. Japan is obviously afflicted by fewer lifestyle diseases. Whether obesity and cancer are caused by the same thing is unclear. Even if they are, pinpointing what exactly prevents the Japanese from becoming obese or cancerous is infinitely trickier. To claim it’s a lack of saturated fat is shockingly enough, just as unsubstantiated as saying it’s because they eat fewer calories or because they have black hair.

Maybe that’s why there was only one book on the subject at the bookstore.

In the last week alone I’ve been schooled by the entire US Women’s soccer team, by children’s author Norton Juster, and by chef David Chang. I like to think the major principles of life are universal, and as if to prove the goods need to no translation, here comes Japan to teach me a thing or two, namely how to stay far, far away from graves and hospitals alike.

Of course, we already knew French women don’t get fat, but Naomi Moriyama thinks Japanese women don’t get fat or old. I smirked skeptically, like any good American, since the US does pretty darn well on the quality of life and quality of medical care indices. Finding a population better taken care of is objectively difficult, hence the smirk. Except Moriyama is right. Japanese women don’t get fat or old. That’s not all. They also live higher quality lives.

My smirk was fighting for its life at this point. What about all those other miracle diets, they must be just as great, right? There’s France, with her strong national currency and quizzically low rates of lifestyle disease despite a diet rich in saturated fat. Perhaps somewhere in the Mediterranean would be idyllic, where fresh air and antioxidants are both overstocked. Norway might be the ticket, with rapidly rising civil rights due to government-mandated workweeks that are incite cursing they are so generous. Nope. My independently conducted googling agrees Japan blows Europe out of the water when it comes to getting old, fat, and sick.

According to the UN 2005-2010 period rankings and the World Health Organisation, Japan has the highest life expectancy and the lowest incidence of all disease. Of anybody. Japanese adults can expect to reach over 82 years of age and will likely remain active and functioning, 10 times more likely, to be exact, when compared with the US’s incidence of dementia including Alzheimer’s. Medical care during your lengthy life is also pretty good, as indicated by Japan’s infant mortality rate, which is the 3rd lowest in the world (the US fell at 34th of 197 countries ranked). The leading cause of death in the US and worldwide is Ischemic heart disease, but you’re more likely to die of a stroke in Japan, since the nation has the lowest incidence of heart disease of any country. Like cerebrovascular disease, cancer is still a risk; in fact the US and Japan share similar incident rates of cancer (9th and 7th of 59 countries ranked, respectively), which is downright shocking when you find out Japan is the 10th largest consumer of cigarettes worldwide (US is 39th of 121 ranked). I did a double take when I confirmed those statistics, but it gets even more logic-defying yet. The Japanese don’t even rank in the top 20 countries for lung cancer prevalence, despite those 216 billion tobacco products they consume yearly.

Say what? And I’m just getting started. Firsthand experience makes me even more startled, since Japanese men routinely pass out in gutters and no one thinks twice. Japanese women are completely mad for cake, eat out all the time (over 50% of citizens eat at least one meal out per day and Japan has more Michelin star restaurants than France or, you know, more restaurants than any other country), and both men and women regularly stuff their faces with deep fried pork, a national dish that, like ramen and curry, is anything but part of the traditional diet. The mere size of the smallest ramen bowl left even my insatiable stomach whimpering in pain, and for a cuisine supposedly big on the vegetables, I was surprised I never contracted scurvy while living there. Produce is about four times the price in Japan as it is in America except for, somewhat ironically, the kiwi, which is imported the same distance from New Zealand as Avocados are from Mexico. Some prefectures are known for their mountain vegetables, but most prefectures are famous for their regional fish and noodle dishes or the quality of their rice. In my opinion, the myth that they eat more vegetables or less calories or never eat sweets is just that: a myth.

It’s not like life in Japan is all that different from life in America, once you get past the language. Physical health seems superior, as does quality of life (Japan is ranked 10th, US is 13th), but surprisingly few other demographics differ between the two countries. The Japanese, like the Americans, mostly live in large cities, many of which are similar in size: their two biggest cities — Tokyo and New York City — differ by only 500,000 in population, while their next largest — Kyoto-Osaka and LA — differ by a mere 50,000. Both countries are highly developed and industrialised, and whether you’re stateside or in the land of the rising sun, you can find good ramen, pizza, sushi, and burgers in either. Americans drink just as much as the Japanese do, and like them, mostly lighter, domestic beer. So what’s the catch?

At what price do the Japanese get their outlying longevity and good health? The GDP per household is similar, the class structure is similar, the industrial sectors are similar. In fact, the only difference is in the workweek itself. While minimum wages are almost identical, professionals in the US make a third more money than Japanese professionals do per hour, and despite new regulations governing the Japanese work week, work 25% fewer hours. Suicide rates suggest mental health care might be superior in America too, since Japan has the 5th highest suicide rate at 24.4 per 100,000 people, whereas the US is ranked 39th of 106 countries polled. Many have suggested the two statistics are related. There are other cultural differences, but when you look at the common curriculum there’s really no comparison. Japanese people live longer, enjoy a slightly better quality of life, and love cake just as much as we do. Sure they work harder, but they also live a decade longer than us. Longer than anyone, remember. I’m not saying Japan doesn’t have its problems, but come on. Aren’t you just as curious as to why their life expectancy and quality of life is so much higher than the rest of the world? Why is there only one book in the bookstore about this?

Okay Moriyama, I’m all ears. Tell me those secrets from your mother’s Tokyo kitchen.

and while Norton Juster’s Princess of Sweet Rhyme seems convinced I’ll reach them all eventually, I eye maps with itchy fingers and hungry eyes. I obsess over how to get there. I read endless Jules Verne hoping to accidentally fall through an Icelandic volcano and stumble upon an adventure waiting to happen.

Of course, I’ve never been to Iceland (or the centre of the earth for that matter), but I have been reading non-fiction tales of adventure, most recently The Lost Art of Walking. While I’ve always loved the Barclay famous footrace stories, I assumed he was a one-off. I had no idea pedestrianism was such a badass sport. History seems to be filled with hundreds of hopefuls walking in all manners: one mile at a time, two steps forward and one back, in complete silence, even stopping every stride to perform a full prostration. I thought circumnavigation by bicycle was hard enough; it turns out George Shilling* isn’t the only bloke to attempt it by foot. Even more amazing are those who travelled much less but made more of it. Reading the Sinclairs and De Quinceys of the world makes you feel that while you’ve been sitting around at home, hundreds of dusty, poetic corners of your city, corners which have been whispering your name, are busy being discovered by someone else first. Chatwin especially leaves me with the urge to don some sturdy shoes and head to the nearest train station without a word to anyone.

That is the indie movie version of my life. The real version of my footfall explorations looks more like quiet ambles around the local nature trails. Maybe I’ll take an extended stroll along the George Washington Parkway, just to feel I’ve covered decent distance. My attempts at “heel toe” racewalking, as the standard Victorian definition holds, are decidedly, well, pedestrian. Now more than ever I feel we walkers have big shoes to fill. On hot summer days like today, it’s far easier to bask in the shadow cast by someone like William Blake than it is to venture through the sticky heat of exploration on your own. Is walking just a transport of the past or is there a real place for it in the present?

“You know,” Juster’s imaginary reading voice echoes between my ears, “the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what’s in between.” Milo didn’t know it at the start of his journey, but like him, you and I learned satisfaction is independent of volume. Pace, distance, even conditions of your journey are unimportant. The spirit of adventure is the only requisite. With adventure though comes the urge to prepare, usually by carting along any number of useless items including a torch, heavy litres of water, a slicker, a jumper, medications, and all other manner of excitement-squashing baggage. Walking with a small posse of emergency equipment in tow kind of tarnishes the appeal, you know?

I’m not advocating danger, but it’s worth asking what the conditions for adventure are. I firmly fall under the heading of Adventure-Seeker, and I suspect the conditions for adventure might look quite similar to the conditions for satisfaction, the conditions for success, and indeed, the conditions for happiness. Are my spiderwebbing walks along the Potomac adventures? I am tempted to say no, but when I remember the majority of Captain Barlcay’s expeditions involved sitting around for hours at a stretch, waiting to walk the next segment of the Newmarket wager, I think maybe they could be.

“You see,” Alec Bings tells Milo in Chapter 9 of The Phantom Tollbooth, “the way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from.”

*Technically, no one verified Shilling successfully went ’round the globe on foot. David Kunst was the first verified case, finishing in 1974. Of course, some consider Colin Angus as the true first, since he was determined to cross oceans by paddleboat. But unless you’re Dimitri Kieffer, who is still convinced it hasn’t been done alone by one man, Shilling is conventionally credited as the first.

It’s no secret why. Noodles, for starters, and since I’m as big a ramen aficionado as anyone, it was only a matter of time before I heard whispers of Momofuku’s claim to fame. Of course, it helps that my work spouse likes to chase James Beard winners across the country and gags at the mere thought of takeaway pizza. Bless her.

I was thrilled to be moving to Washington DC because serious faced ramen was now only a bus ride away. East coast snow is worth the proximity to New York City for a foodie like me, and sure enough I found myself Manhattan-bound on a shoot shortly after unpacking. Per diem be damned, to the ramen circuit I went. Ippudo, Minca Factory, I’ll even count Menchanko-Tel in the mix.

That trip had me sitting in the hot seat, chatting with the guys behind the open kitchen as I nibbled my first taste of Momofuku, and even though I thought the noodles were all wrong for the broth and the pork was anticlimactic and why is there so much salt in the tare? there was something about the soul of the place that stuck with me. Not the best bowl of ramen, but even that disastrous apple soup with hake didn’t stop them. Those guys whipped up the best pork buns I’ve ever eaten and took ddokbokke to a new level entirely.

Okay, so his sauces might need firmer parental guidance, but I still think Chang is the accidental sort of genius. My college flatmate gave me his cookbook for my birthday and now that I’ve just about cooked my way through it a year later, the stories and the spirit contained within have only engendered more respect for the team behind the empire. I adore them.

It’s interesting, since I don’t fancy Dave or Pete for their tastes or their vision; most of the the time Chang didn’t have a clue what he was doing and tended to alienate the staff trying to figure it out. Oh, but how I love his attitude. Reading his travel memoirs in newly published Lucky Peach is like frolicking about Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Every article is part ill-advised tomfoolery and premeditated study, hinting that none of it would work should they stop cocking about with meat glue like boy scouts playing with fire. The whole story of Chang’s rise to fame leaves the observer confused but entranced, probably because his endless diatribes about tsukemen are fueled by pig fat as much as pure intuition. His approach seems so thick-headedly masculine, but underneath the temper Chang’s touch with food is a counter-balancing delicate one, reverent at times, highlighting moments of insightful contemplation until he regales the various upchucks that come with his insatiable appetite for ramen.

It’s hard to explain my curious fascination. In doing so, I sound as nutty as they do. You have to be nuts to be a Korean from Virginia obsessed with Japanese food winning a French Award. You have to be nuts to pickle your own kimchi with as much sugar as he does. Momofuku was not a fluke. Ssam, Ko, Milk, even Lucky Peach all suggest Chang’s success is no happy coincidence. He and his partners in crime did not have a vision. There was an expansive plan, but it failed. Plans B, C, and D ate it just as hard. Their big wins came from the unplanned bits.

I suspect this is why I am so enchanted by a Chef whose food could just as easily offend me. This is also what David Chang has to teach me about success. Sure the guys can cook, and yes, luck was undoubtedly involved, but their guts and their willingness to plow through uncharted territory is the driving force behind their brilliance. Every time they caught each others’ eyes and said “fuck it,” they found their stride.

A plan is an okay thing to have, but a vision is hardly requisite for success. You’ve got to follow your gut, even when your mentors stonewall you because they think you’re insane or you get fired because you love ramen more than soba. Somewhere in there is the grit to make it happen, especially when you have no idea how the happening is supposed to look. Futzing around with jury-rigged sous vide setups and experimenting with 1º temperature variations in cooking soft boiled eggs is not holding you back, it’s thrusting you forward. Testing and trying and fiddling and playing around until you find your stride is success. It just takes a while for everyone else to see it.

It was a brilliant game. Japan and the US fighting tooth and nail for each and every goal. Plenty of action in the first half, but no scoring until the 1-1 tie up at the 90′. US pops one in with some difficulty in extra time, but Japan manages an equaliser before the buzzer. 2-2 is a bit of a curse. The players are exhausted after two full hours of aggressive play; you can read it on their faces. Tensions rise on the heels of the all too recent PK shoot out against Brazil, while Hope Solo’s injured knee adds to an already high stakes face off. Could’ve gone either way until the last. Japan deserved to win on Kaihori’s goal tending alone, and that’s saying something since Solo is a superstar herself. What great football.

I spent the better part of the day feeling warm fuzzies towards the sport before I remembered most professional female soccer players* make less than elementary school teachers do, just under $30,000 per year on average. Then I felt awe. Clearly they don’t do it for the glory, they do it for the game.

The game is not about winning, it’s about playing. Running is about playing longer. Agility is about playing better. Strength is for playing harder. People like Laurel know this and they play as many games as they possibly can. People like me lose our concentration in a shootout because we’re all wrapped up looking at the scoreboard.

It sounds so backwards, but you have to play like it doesn’t mean anything to really make it count. You have to make the move about the move, the skill about the skill. Babies don’t learn to walk to please their parents, and neither should you. The moment I started lifting to get better arm definition is the moment I started sucking. Unfair, maybe, but true.

Form over function, always. This quest for fitness is about looking hot, yes, except it’s not about that at all. It’s about improving my life by becoming a contender. It’s about realising more of my potential. Unfortunately I’ve been a little too caught up in the glory and forgotten it’s supposed to be a game. Since I started whining about lunch and upper arm strength, I’ve taken something insultingly simple and turned it into a minefield. The solution is to re-simplify.

Make the move about the move. Don’t confuse the metric with the goal. So, going forward, here’s the modified method to get me looking hot naked, becoming healthier, and playing the game better.

1. The only required exercises are progressions of the muscle up and the pistol (one-legged squat). Frequency, volume of repetitions, recovery time, none of this really matters. Just do the movements.
2. Eat mostly plants. Mostly should be obviously mostly; if you have to break out the calculator you aren’t eating enough plants. Again, frequency, volume, variety, etc. are irrelevant.

That’s it. No Epic Day of Gluttony. No forced luncheon menus or off-limits foods. No timetables. No daily mandates. Work on muscle ups and eat plants. How hard can it be?

*Beckham made roughly 40 million USD in 2009, and according to Forbes he’s still the highest paid footballer, even though he officially plays for the MLS now. Compare MLS’s biggest ever star to WUSA’s (now WPS): back during Mia Hamm’s heyday, she never broke six figures. The popularities of the leagues are different, but it helps to know the scale.

A few days of mindless eating, paying little attention to what goes in your mouth, greases the slope some. You’re eating rubbish, so you start to feel rubbish. You despair a bit. You wonder if you were mistaken or if you’re just doomed. That’s the rubbish talking.

When I discard all the mental thoughts that weren’t authored by the rubbish, I’m left with just one: this method is not sustainable. There’s no way around it: this isn’t going to work in a bubble of my own happy kitchen, and it’s certainly not going to work gathered around the dinner table.

I am all about defying convention, believe you me, but ignoring it outright is folly. I live in America. I have American friends. I work with American clients. As such, I will be required to eat birthday cake on occasion. I will be expected to clear my plate when someone cooks me a meal. I will attend long weekend escapes and company retreats. How I’m going about fitness now does not allow for any of this. Therefore, it isn’t going to work long term.

This right here is the difference between project and lifestyle. I’m after a lifestyle change, which means the way I live my life has to work for the kind of life I live. I don’t want to offend the birthday girl by refusing cake. I don’t want to worry I can’t holiday without a weighted vest. Even if the American lifestyle is part of the problem, it’s not too much to ask to find my own way within it.

The problem is not the prescription, it’s the compliance. I’m not following it, mostly because I’m succumbing to social pressures. The spiral tries to convince me the blame lies with me. I am not so sure. 99% of the time failure is a result of an incapable method, not an incapable person. My prescription is obviously too strict.

Diet compliance in particular is a problem. All my research on diet has left me even more lost and confused than before. In some respects, ignorance was bliss, back when I wholeheartedly believed my choices were the healthiest. I miss having that wholehearted faith; unfortunately the science isn’t compelling enough to convince me of anybody’s dogma now. I am a big believer in the scientific method. The proof of my health wasn’t there before, thus the method needed to be changed.

The proof still isn’t here, six weeks later, which means the method needs changing again. Let’s take a look at my initial assumptions and see what needs to be reconsidered.

• Lower body fat is healthier
• Gaining strength is possible
• Diet is 80% of the equation
• Calories in != Calories out
• All exercise is equal

The last two are suspect. As for calories in not equalling calories out, I find it hard to believe 300 calories of raspberries and 300 calories of salmon are burned the same way. The experience of eating those caloric equivalents are too different to be equated, which led me to conclude the what you eat is significantly more important than the how much you eat. Maybe that isn’t true. Might meal habits affect insulin response more than meal content? Might there be an insulin range your body prefers? Let’s come back to this.

The last assumption purports that any expenditure is getting me closer to my goals, which mightn’t be the case. Intensity could very well be a bigger factor than either duration or frequency, especially if the calories in / calories out model is oversimplified.

There’s more up for debate; let’s look at my execution. Even if all my assumptions are sound, there’s still the method to contend with. What have I been doing to get fit, and what might be ineffective?

1. Exercise 20 minutes every day
2. Eat a high protein breakfast first thing
3. Avoid sugars (excluding fruit, dairy, alcohol)
4. Avoid starches
5. Take a day off once a week
6. Stand up 50%+ of day

I’ve gone back and forth on 20 minutes. It’s an arbitrary number, and while at first I thought it was too little, now I’m leaning towards being too much. Either seems possible. If I have overlooked the importance of intensity, the specifics of my 20 minutes might be more of a problem than the number itself.

Avoiding starches, on the other hand, is effective but impractical. For starters, not all starches are created equally. Then there’s the fact that excluding all starches from my diet is too difficult to manage. If it really is just a manner of creating a caloric deficit, then it wouldn’t matter how many starches I eat. So again, I just don’t know.

Of course, the problem could just as easily be something I’m not doing. For example, I never ate much in the way of sweets before, so my avoidance of sugar can’t be having a big effect on my fitness. Fruit, dairy, and alcohol on the other hand, might, and none of those are addressed in my method. What if the problem is not drinking enough water? What if it’s a vitamin deficiency? There are plenty of variables at play and plenty of ways to modify the method going forward.

I must now hazard my best guess to determine in what way I am going to change the method. Now it gets tricky.

I may have taken umbrage with the salad. I may have been skittish about soups. I had no idea the alternative was indulging in an entire bag of macadamia nuts. A skipped lunch leaves me casting about the cupboard later for biscuits and jam. It’s gotten out of hand.

This is a war, and I have been losing. Don’t think lunch doesn’t know it. Lunch has been fighting back ever since I told it to shape up. The score thus far, Leigh 0, Lunch 9. Witness:

Tactic 1: Skip lunch. Ravenous by 16:00, routinely ruined suppers. Failed.
Tactic 2: Snack instead. Over-consumed snacks because unsatisfied. Failed.
Tactic 3: Switch with breakfast. Gross, so skipped pre-breakfast meal. Failed.
Tactic 4: Stick to Japanese food. Frustrated by limited skills. Failed.
Tactic 5: Salad. Actively avoided eating. Failed.
Tactic 6: Soup. No time for scratch, no starch-free canned. Failed.
Tactic 7: Replacement. Could not make protein powder palatable. Failed.
Tactic 8: Cold-cut plate. Craved crackers with cheese. Failed.
Tactic 9: Anything goes. Encouraged bad habits in other meals. Failed.

Lunch has recently enlisted other meals to help, throwing my entire routine off and sucking the life out of cooking. My distrust of lunch in particular has caused all manner of backsliding, from bilberry muffins to half a loaf of sourdough bread. Changing my lunch habits has even conned away the urge for my daily egg breakfast. The question is, what am I going to do about it?

One thing is clear: changing the food itself hasn’t helped a lick. The menu might not be the problem. Rather than try another tactic to tiptoe around it, I’m going to change the context in which lunch exists. Get ready for an Inquisition because I’m about to oust lunch like the Iberians did the Moors.

Ignoring lunch didn’t work, nor did replacing it, which means the environment — timing, habits, and the like — is at least partially to blame. I can think of two main differences between lunch and supper, even if the fare is the same. First, supper tends to have larger portion sizes because it’s traditionally the main meal of the American day. Second, supper tends to last longer, mostly because it’s a more social meal. Even when I did work in an office, I spent most lunches at my desk, while I routinely meet up with others for supper. I cook dinner for all my mates most Sundays.

The first aspect, portion size, is less important. Come to think of it, my favourite suppers are eaten as small assortments, little dishes shared around the table, like dim sum, mezze, or izakaya spreads. Grazing is fun, albeit not all that filling, though I never seem to notice because I’m too engrossed with the conversation in between courses. This latter aspect, the conversation and slow, teatime-like cadence, is much more important. Sampling banchan and eating a sandwich have two very different atmospheres.

Now that I look at it, I find it surprising that I’d enjoy a nice charcuterie platter with supper but turn my nose up with lunch. If I can get away with eating luncheon food for dinner and enjoying it, then perhaps that’s what I should do. There are plenty of cultures that herald lunch as the main meal of the day and simply snack their way to bedtime. Tapas, merienda, onces, these are all perfect occasions to nibble your way through the typical American supper hour.

Of course, cultures that celebrate the early evening snack typically eat a much larger and more leisurely lunch than we do stateside. Just because supper is the biggest meal in my country doesn’t mean it has to be mine. I can’t keep up with the nocturnal Spaniards long enough to make it to their midnight supper and three o’clock parties, but the spirit is there, even if the flesh passes out on the couch long before the clock strikes one. I can certainly get behind their idea of a nice, long afternoon siesta out of the hot sun.

The more I flesh out this idea, the more appealing it sounds. Smaller supper means a bigger lunch, and a two hour siesta means I can actually cook something hot and delicious. Maybe I can even nap a bit while the thing bubbles away. I’m envisioning the scent of British pies and bean stews filling up my kitchen with their rich aromas. Later lunch means I won’t be so hungry come sunset that I start eating Nutella by the spoonful. If I can manage to cut grains and sugars out of my lunch, I’ll have the majority of my day covered. Best of all, it’s making me actually excited about lunch for once.

There are more pictures here than usual. I’ve decided it might help to photograph everything that I eat, not just my main meals, since most of my backsliding has been outside of mealtime.

There’s this thing that happens when my female friends find out what I’m up to. At first glance they seem down with it. I mean, girl culture is all about looking good in a swimsuit, but threaten to use the equipment around the stationary bike and women put on these disgusted, squinty faces and quickly change the subject. It’s part of our cultural brainwashing to think those pink, three pound barbie weights actually do something. While men compete over who can bench press more, women compete over who has less upper body strength. Now I’m the one putting on my disgusted, squinty face because to be honest, I’m a little horrified.

For a segment of the population so obsessed with banishing belly fat, there should be far less misinformation floating around. And yet. How do you think those celebrities got their toned abs? Surely you don’t think by running on a treadmill, that would be totally…oh…you do? But it doesn’t make any…yeah but…you’ve got to be kidding me. Put down the celery and come with me, young chickadee. Mama bird has a lot to teach you.

Lifting weights is good for practical reasons like wanting to be able to carry your groceries to your boyfriend’s fifth floor walkup without ruining the surprise dinner you’re going to make him. It’s also good for vain reasons like wanting to murder arm flab in its sleep and up your sex game. It’s also good for holistic reasons like preventing bone disease and improving sleep. You don’t even have to do it every day. Twenty minutes a month would be enough. So why don’t more women do it? Why are we so afraid of the leg press machine?

Maybe it’s the idea of bulking up? It sounds so primeval, like we’re about to go chase after a mastodon to get us through the winter. I know I was terrified adding any muscle would make me look like those freakish bodybuilder chicks in the Bowflex infomercial with thighs so overly defined you get a little nauseous if you look at them for too long. I didn’t want anyone to feel ill the moment their gaze found my legs. I envisioned it was instantaneous. One minute you’re doing squats and BAM! the next you’re eating nothing but raw eggs and grunting in a baritone. I’d rather live with love handles, thank you very much.

Of course, this is not just irrational, it’s impossible. I could eat ten steaks a day and bench 100 kilos and I would still never look like the Hulk. There’s a little thing called estrogen, and it was invented to keep your hips in baby-birthing mode, which fortunately for us, means remaining female-shaped. Testosterone is the primary hormone that helps humans build muscle, and women don’t make as much of it as men, which is why it’s harder for us to get six packs. This hormone balance means olympic weightlifters look like normal women who just happen to be able to dead lift three times their bodyweight. My point is unless you start an illegal steroid habit, your body will remain 100% safeguarded against becoming a man-shaped freak of nature. Plus 10 for biology!

Bulking up also requires that you eat like a horse with a gland problem. Ever wondered why bodybuilding was a full-time job? Because it takes so much work to feed yourself. It’s not about the gym time, it’s about the calories. Trying to build muscle AND lower your body fat to an unhealthy percentage AND keep yourself from excruciating pain due to vitamin imbalances requires full-time hours. Female bodybuilders eat 700 calorie tuna and oatmeal shakes that taste like paste as a freaking between meal snack for chrissake. If you thought it sounded gross, you’d be be right; suffice to say they ain’t doin’ it for the taste. Chances are you would never be able to keep up with the sheer calories needed to circumvent biology even if you did start an illegal steroid habit. The possibility of a woman looking like Gregg Valentino with ladyparts is absolute, unquestionable, nonnegotiable zero. Never. Even if you were really good all year and Santa decided to give you a testicle for Christmas. So, you can be less nervy about it now.

Just take a look at your local gym. Most of the dudes making faces on the overhead press machine aren’t about to do a magazine cover shoot anytime soon, and this is the fittest segment of the population, the ones who both have and actually use their gym membership. It’s the same for women, who tend to go for muscle tone over bulk.* Last time I was around exercise equipment, I found myself surrounded by lots of lithe women queuing for the treadmill. Were they magazine worthy? Nope. If you ask me, it’s because trading hours on a treadmill and comparing the caloric content of different ice cream brands will not make you Anastasia Ashley.

You need to lift some goddamn weights already. Partially because you don’t get Jillian Michael’s abs or her ability to smugly torture fat people into submission without honest-to-goodness resistance weight training, but also because it’s not just about how you look.  It’s about how you feel.  All the cardiovascular exercise in the world will burn calories, but it will not give you Michelle Obama’s arms or Linda Hamilton’s derriere. It will not get your obliques to come out of hiding and give you an awesome hourglass shape. It will not help you feel power coursing through your veins or encourage you to play a pickup game with the boys.  You want real strength? There’s no substitute.

*Do you know the difference between tone and bulk? A minute and a half. If you want to gain muscle fast, you do enough weight to barely manage seven reps over one and half minutes. If you want to tighten and tone what you’ve already got, use enough weight for 14 reps over three minutes. 7 reps vs 14. 1.5 min vs 3. Not even two measly minutes separate athletes from MILFs, so why not go for both? Yes, you read that right. Bulk requires half the time commitment of tone. There’s really no excuse.

Maybe not, but probably because my life is awesome. I say this my first day back from holiday, not my first day starting. Was it the personal best workout where I now graduate to the next stage of assisted pullups? Was it the warm pot of perfectly brewed tea that put me in a state of utter content? Was it the smell of my own pillow, bathed in sunshine? Maybe it was the four hour morning of uninterrupted creative work? Man, I feel more relaxed now than I did vacationing last week, and I felt pretty great then too. Like I said, my life is awesome.

It’s awesome by design. I make the effort to eat right, to work smarter, to get enough sleep, and even though remembering to step away from my computer and get some sunlight every once in a while helps, I think there’s really only one reason my life is so awesome: I audit my stress levels constantly. If working with a particular client ruins my day, I look for a replacement client. If I find myself dreading meeting with an old chum, I stop agreeing to hang out. If I’m too exhausted to function, I take time to unwind. A single anxious moment can derail the loveliest of weeks, so I tend to avoid stress like the poison it is, and when stress is unavoidable, I make sure I have ample time to recover. Recovery, I’ve found, is key to life.

I don’t spend enough time talking about recovery, especially in training. I’ve mentioned the disastrous effects of insulin overproduction on health, but cortisol is arguably as destructive. My own experiments have affirmed that 20 minutes of pointed exercise isn’t simply sufficient to reach my goals, it’s actually optimal. Any more and you set back your progress by overtaxing your body and letting cortisol wreak havoc, shaking your metabolism about like a maraca. In fact, I’ve made huge strides in my upper arm development after taking a week off on holiday. Doing nothing actually helped me progress faster. This makes me consider cutting back even further on my strength training to provide more time for recovery. Less than 20 minutes a day is better? My mind is still being blown by the proof.

Not exercising wasn’t any harder than exercising, really, but the before and after is too huge to ignore. I’m talking ’bout mood here, people, and even a weensy little workout today has left my entire body more relaxed than it was during my exercise-free week. My mind is quiet, my hamstrings slack, my breathing steady. After I got out of my post-workout shower, I felt this incredible calm seeping into my chest, like watching a cat unfold in front of a sunbeam, or winding down a chat with a close friend over great coffee. This is what athletic people have been talking about for years, but silly me, I never understood (or believed) it. Once you’re in shape, exercise becomes a non-negotiable. A trillion studies show regular exercise, even just walking, is more powerful than all the anti-depressants science can distill. And now that I’m in the habit for the first time in my adult life, I don’t think I could go back. It feels too good to indulge.

Indulge, I say, as if exercise is something questionably legal and slightly shameful. Even my language has changed. The first week of this journey I was talking about exercise like it was going to the dentist. I spent so much time searching for ways to prod myself into doing it. Now I talk about exercise like it’s my boyfriend. We have comfortable moments and uncomfortable moments, but I’d be devastated if we broke up. What a change, eh?

It’s true. You can’t always trust yourself. Just like effective advertisements, our desires are easily shaped by things around us. What you want is all regularly influenced by what everybody else wants. In other words, what we think we want and what we actually want are often two different things.

Not convinced? There have been numerous studies reporting the disconnect between what men and women say they want in prospective mates. In one study on speed dating, the women said they prioritised attributes like a sense of humour and family values, but their actions showed otherwise, always picking dates that scored the lowest on these attributes. In another similar study, the involved women stated what they wanted in a partner both before and after a speed dating session. Depending on which attributes the potential dates exhibited, the women changed their criteria. Quite literally, one day they wanted someone sincere and attractive, and the next they wanted someone funny and smart instead. As if we needed more scientific evidence saying women are nuts, right? Except men are no different. The same gap between what we think we want and what we actually want exists for both men and women. It’s a universal trait that humans don’t have a clue what they want.

Dating is a particularly poignant example because, according to numerous marriage studies, successful long-term relationships are a big, fat key to happiness, longevity, and even immune function. In more primal terms, pick a good mate and you’re set for life. We know this consciously; it’s socially acceptable to fret if so-and-so is the one or if such-and-such your soulmate. We vilify adultery and make compatibility the central issue of romantic comedies. But dating is not the only way to experience a life of contentment, as Henry David Thoreau will be the first to tell you. We are equally terrible at picking out what we want in other, equally important arenas of our lives.

Our desires, it seems, are faulty. Sometimes they’re just desires, with no lasting happiness behind them. New shoes will not bring me years of amusement. Part of my brain is convinced otherwise. It’s a normal phenomenon; the desire for close friendships and the desire for new shoes feels eerily similar. I am the worst offender of such confusion, as evidenced by my 200-plus long list of life goals filled with scores of stuff I don’t actually want to do but I think might be fun. No one really has 253 life goals. That’s absurd. As I always believe, the things important enough to do at all are important enough to do every day. Days just aren’t long enough and some of my goals, not real enough.

Yesterday I finally drew the line. I deleted my entire list, without blinking. I didn’t quickly revisit it first, I didn’t cherry pick the few I wanted to keep, I deleted all evidence of my absurd list. I delete deleted. Emptied the trashcan on my computer deleted. Close my Lifetick and 43things accounts deleted. Real and forever deleted. I managed to keep it together for about 2 minutes before I lost my cool completely.

But saying the important things are worth doing every day and living that mantra are two very different things. Time to put my money where my mouth is. If I really want to do it, I won’t forget about it. I started over. Now my life goal list is ten items long. All of them I wish I could start doing right now, and that’s exactly how I should feel about a life goal. The question is not “what would you like to have done when you die?” but rather “what would you like to spend your time doing until you die?”

It’s not my fault my list grew unmanageably long. Desires are unreliable. How am I supposed to know what I deeply, truly want and what I only think I want? You can’t just leave it up to the slight twinges behind your bellybutton. You have to find some other way to tell the difference. I use results. This is why I spend so much time on self-experimentation. There’s not going to be a magical genie that provides you with your genuine desires on command, but you can use your behaviour as a litmus test for whether a desire is legit or simply a passing fad.

So you say you want to run a marathon. Do you regularly talk yourself out of going for a run? Do you avoid training with a partner because they’ll push you too hard? Do you grumble to your friends about how hard running is? I hate to break it to you, but you probably don’t want to run a marathon. On the other hand, if you are trolling for training tips on your lunch break and bullying everyone into coming out on race day, then you probably do. You can usually coerce yourself into running one marathon, but unless your desire is genuine, you won’t get around to becoming the next Steve Prefontaine. And me? I’m looking for Steve Prefontaine. I would rather excel at a few things I care about than be merely competent at many I don’t.