The Path is Too Deep

For most of my life, I treated coffee as a vice. It was something I drank because I saw adults drinking it when I was a kid. I grew to love the bitterness, but I spent decades trying to mask it. My relationship with coffee has been a long evolution. In early adulthood, I drank it because it felt like a rite of passage. I enjoyed the bite, but I buried it under waves of cream and sugar. That eventually spiraled into the "Cafe Era"—years spent ordering high-carb, syrup-laden "fancy" drinks that were essentially milkshakes with a shot of espresso. I didn't think about the health implications—or the potential dehydration—until I hit middle age. Interestingly, I noticed that caffeine rarely disrupted my sleep; I seemed to metabolize it efficiently. As my palate matured, I stopped treating coffee as a caffeine delivery system and started treating it as a craft. I became a "javaphile," obsessed with sourcing single-origin beans, grinding them myself, and mast...

If you hang out in the low-carb corners of the internet long enough, the algorithm will eventually serve you a steak on a plate with absolutely nothing else. No broccoli. No avocado. Just meat, salt, and water. This is the Carnivore Diet (or, at an extreme, the " Lion Diet "). It is the ultimate elimination diet. Its proponents - many of whom are brilliant and incredibly healthy - argue that plants are full of "defense chemicals" (anti-nutrients) and that humans evolved to eat apex predators, not salads. Given that my daily OMAD is anchored by a 1.5 lb. ribeye, people often assume I’m one step away from going full Carnivore. But I haven't. And I won't. While I respect the Carnivore approach as a powerful therapeutic tool for autoimmune issues, it doesn't fit my clean keto lifestyle. My goal isn't just elimination ; it’s optimization . And for my specific goals - heart health, gut health, and sanity - I believe the right plants act as medicine, not p...

Disclaimer: My dietary choices involve eating meat. I have many friends who choose to lead a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle, and I respect their dietary choices as much as they respect mine. Anything I talk about here is not an attempt to convince anyone to change their lifestyle...as always, I'm simply talking about my research, my findings, and what is working for me. If you are strongly against the consumption of meat, you might want to give this blog post a pass. We’ve all heard the old saying: "You are what you eat." It’s a catchy slogan, but it’s incomplete. If you really want to understand nutrition, especially on a clean, anti-inflammatory diet, you have to take it one step further: You are what they ate. In a  previous post , I audited the dairy aisle and explained why I choose grass-fed butter. Today, I want to apply that same "Compliance Audit" to the meat counter. When I buy a steak, I’m not just buying a piece of protein. I’m buying the biological ...