nutrient rich® healthy eating

(Ben Green) #1

My decision to Switch occurred 23 years ago when I was 19 years old. It was at 7:00 in the morning.
I had been up since 5 a.m. to open my gym, Olympia Fitness Center, which was a hardcore
bodybuilding gym that I bought while I was in college. I was a bodybuilder, a fitness trainer and a
gym owner before I was 20, and I thought I knew everything there was to know about eating—
except how to eat healthy, which I did have an inkling I was not doing. I knew that the stress and
strain of the extreme eating style that bodybuilders endure was already taking its toll on my body.


And then came this particular morning. I’m not sure how it found its way into a bodybuilding gym
across the country, but I remember getting a newsletter called The Health Reporter from what I
later learned was a mail-order Ph.D. company called the American College of Health Sciences. It
included an excerpt from Harvey Diamond, the author of Fit for Life, which was the biggest-selling
health and diet book of the 1980s and early 19 90s. This book inspired millions of people, including
me, to look at a new way of eating. It talked about eating fruit for breakfast and all kinds of plant
foods, or what we would refer to today as a plant-based diet.


Relaxed after just successfully competing in the Mr. New Jersey contest, I opened what looked to be
a junk mailer and began to read. From that moment forward my life would never be the same.


I could not believe what I was reading. Protein and calcium comes from plants? Your body is 75%
water, and you need high-water-content foods that are rich in nutrients? On and on it went with
ideas that would have been considered heresy in my gym if I had read them out loud. The thought
of eating “vegetarian” or “near vegan” (a term that was rarely heard back then) would have created
a mass exodus straight out my front door. We bodybuilders believed in the religion of animal
protein!


That was over 20 years ago, but some of the ideas I learned from that mailer still sound like heresy
to much of the general public. Eliminate or greatly reduce animal products? Don’t eat junk food? Eat
a diet that’s 90% or more unrefined plant foods? Where will I get my protein? Where’s the pleasure
in life?


Like many people, I had experienced the negative side effects of the Standard American Diet (SAD)
combined with weight loss-only dieting. Nobody, especially at that time, dieted harder than a
bodybuilder who was looking to burn off excess fat while maintaining and building muscle mass.
And that’s essentially what we did.


Brought up on the SAD for most of our lives, we bodybuilders were inspired to lose weight and
build muscle. To do so, in the off-season we followed what I now call the weight loss-only method of
eating—predominantly fish, chicken, some vegetables, occasional starches and some fruit. On
holidays and throughout the rest of the year, would eat a healthier version of the SAD. Then we
would follow a very low-cal, low-carb, high-animal protein diet for eight to 10 weeks to shed all of
our excess fat, while taking additional protein supplements with some added vitamins in an

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