The Accidental Household Diet

The Accidental Household Diet

One of the first useful discoveries in M3 wasn't really about me.

It started with Mom.

She needed to change how she ate, so the household started moving toward meals that were lower in sodium, lower in refined carbohydrates, calorie-conscious, light on fried food and built around more reasonable portions.

And I realized something obvious:

Dieting is a hell of a lot easier when the house isn't fighting you.

If one person is eating grilled chicken and vegetables while everybody else is eating pizza, somebody has to exercise willpower every single night.

If everybody is basically eating the same meal, the healthy choice stops being the special choice.

So I joined in.

For my purposes, the rules have evolved into something pretty simple:

Keep sodium around or below the standard daily limit when practical.

Avoid added and processed sugar where possible.

Reduce refined carbs without pretending carbohydrates are poison.

Favor protein and vegetables.

Minimize fried food.

Watch portion size.

And make the food taste good enough that I actually want to eat it again.

That last part matters.

I'm perfectly happy with spicy food, so I've also started Brianizing otherwise mild meals with heat that doesn't require dumping sodium all over them.

This hasn't meant living on salad.

I've had a grilled Zaxby's Zalad.

I've eaten a Whopper without the bun and added avocado.

We've made spaghetti with ground chicken and lower-sodium sauce.

I've replaced Coke with things like sugar-free cranberry juice and tea.

My coffee uses sugar-free French vanilla creamer and stevia instead of becoming liquid dessert.

None of these changes individually qualifies as revolutionary.

That's kind of the point.

M3 isn't looking for revolutionary.

It's looking for sustainable.

And so far, sustainable appears to be working.