In the 1960s, Bob Hoffman, the self-styled father of American weightlifting, launched a protein supplement called ‘Protein from the Sea.’
Pure Protein, harvested from “the seas of the world.
Today’s marketing jargon would push it as a way to tone up your arms and melt belly fat.
The reality:
It had the texture of dried sand.
Looked like seaweed left out in the sun.
Smelled and tasted like something that died three docks over.
Bodybuilders choked it down anyway.
One teaspoon at lunch, one at dinner.
Because that’s what dieting meant...
Suffer now, to look good later.
We’ve come a long way since a powdered tin of rotting fishy decay was the price of admission.
Most people associate dieting with suffering.
Get through it as quickly as possible so you can get back to your life.
The same life that made you miserable enough to want to add more misery to it by trying another obscene diet.
I harp on about an obesogenic environment.
How none of us stands a chance, surrounded by untold amounts of goodness begging to be rammed down our throats any moment we feel a twinge of boredom, stress, or sadness.
But we’ve also never had a better environment for removing diet suffering.
One that doesn’t always have to include boredom, stress, sadness or starvation.
Protein in the 60s was an acquired taste.
Now?
It’s all the rage.
The ultimate diet food.
Options galore. A craze.
WARNING: most of your beloved foods labelled with “high protein” aren’t that high in Protein.
So how do you know what’s actually worth the high-protein price of admission?
Aim for 10 g of Protein for every 100 calories from any self-proclaimed high-protein food, beverage or fish powder.
If the numbers don’t line up or get close, it’s marketing hype.
Peanut butter, delightful as it is, gives you around 25g of Protein for 600 calories...
It’s a high-protein world; we’re all just living in it.
This craze can be used for good or evil.
The goal of any diet should be to eat more, not less. Not that choking down endless kale and fart smoothies and celery sticks is the answer to more.
These days, plenty of weird, fruity, flavourful sauces exist that are outrageously generous with their lack of calories.
If all else fails, I crack open the emergency box of fajita mixes.
I make a mean stir-fry, and can fajita-mix the fuck out of a sweet potato.
Unfortunately, that’s where my culinary skills end.
Fin.
Treat yourself like a toddler.
Chop veg into tiny pieces and hide it in your chosen fruity low-calorie sauce. Or drown the blandness with one of the 666 seasoning varieties on offer. Many high-protein now, I’m sure.
Curbing a sweet tooth doesn’t have to mean giving anything up or consuming less of anything.
Find a high-protein yoghurt or mousse flavour you enjoy, add some fruit (berries) you can stomach, and eat it with your preferred sweet treat sprinkled on top or off to the side.
It’s never been easier to fill your hole with the treat you actually wanted whilst getting more of the fruit and veg you should be eating.
None of it takes that much effort.
None of it takes that much culinary skill.
None of it requires that much suffering.
Genetics continue to load the gun…
Your environment can be trigger-happy. Always surrounded by high-calorie, low-protein goodness begging to be rammed down your throat.
The difference these days?
Flavour’s easy to come by. Treating every diet like another six-week, hold-your-nose kale and farts extravaganza is a bland excuse.
Which leaves one variable unaccounted for.
The one that, every time a new diet starts, acts like it’s been dead a week and dumped three docks over...