Chapter 20
The Wilder Way:
(Mansplained for Men, by a Man)
By Jack Wilder
Okay, so your wife bought this book, and suddenly she’s talking about “carb cycling” and “the Wilder Way,” and black plates and white plates and gray plates, and suddenly Coke is evil and donuts are bad (but let’s be honest, guys, we’ve always known they’re bad, we just stopped caring), and now there’s no Coke in the house, and you can’t have carbs on Tuesdays because, for some stupid reason, she’s decided Tuesdays are low-carb days, but then Wednesday she’s giving you all sorts of carbs BUT NOTHING HAS CHEESE IN IT, and ...
What the fuck, right?
And I’m also going to guess that she just shoved the book (or the eReader) into your hands and said “READ THIS ... RIGHT NOW!”, and so you’re reading, but you’re still scratching your head and wondering why you should give a crap about any of this. And you’re thinking—even if you’d never actually SAY it to your wife in so many words, because you happen to like your balls attached thank you very much—that you like what you like, and you see no reason to change and if she won’t give you the foods you like you’ll get ‘em yourself while you’re out. Sneak in some McD’s on the way home from work, or a slice of pizza at lunch, or grab a Coke at the gas station when you’re pumping gas, or chow down a burger while you’re at the bar with the guys.
What if I told you (cue the stern Morpheus glare and dramatic pause) ... that you could STILL HAVE most of that? It won’t be EXACTLY the same, but it’ll still be burgers, still be pizza, still be beer, even cheesecake, brownies, pasta, all that. Donuts too.
No, I’m not going to sell you an eating plan. No, there’s nobody you have to call or email, no auto-subscribe spam email lists, no apps to download, no calories to count, no meetings your wife is going to drag you to, no pre-packaged microwaveable plasticky low-fat bullshit diet meals.
No, you’re not going on a low-carb diet, and you’re not going paleo or ketogenic, nor are you going on a 30-day all-shake juice cleanse diet.
THIS ISNOTA DIET.
Did you catch that, gentlemen? This thing, this weird “Wilder Way” your wife is doing is NOT a diet.
Well, let me go back and clarify. If you google “diet definition” right now, the following will pop up as the first definition: “the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.” That’s all a diet is. So yes, in that sense, itisa diet, in that it’s the kinds of food you’re eating. But it’s not a diet in the second definition sense: “a special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.” It’snotthat.
Why?
Because my wife, who developed this Wilder Way, has tried every single diet known to mankind, and none of them ever worked. The weight never stayed off. No one can stick with a diet indefinitely, because 99.9% of so-called “diets” are just unsustainable, and most of them are just plain old medically unsound.
Why?
There are entire books dedicated to this subject, so I’m just going to do a quick and dirty crash course for you. Ready?
Diets are bullshit.
Your body REQUIRES carbs to function normally, so a no-carb/low-carb diet is just going to fail and even make you feel worse. Even if you lose weight initially, the moment you start eating carbs again—which is inevitable, because carbs are delicious—WHOOOOOP! The weight comes right back on, and usually with compound interest.
Then there’s the good old standby diet: don’t eat as much.
Also complete bullshit. You’re meant to eat. Your body, once again, REQUIRES food, for ... you know ... everything. Like, for example,being alive, and not acting like a hangry monster all the damn time. Do I need to make that any simpler? I mean, it seems obvious. Yeah, you’ll lose weight if you all eat every day is two leaves, four grains of rice, a sliver of lean turkey, and a glass of water. But you’ll get hangry, and then you’ll get ... I don’t know what to call it, rage-hangry? Whatever it’s called when you haven’t eaten for two days all you can think about is food and you feel like a Hungry Hungry Hippo version of The Incredible Hulk. And then, assuming you make it that long without eating, one of two things will happen: either you’ll cave and binge-eat, or you’ll pass out from malnutrition, end up in the hospital, and find yourself saddled with a massive bill. So that’s out, too. Because it’s stupid.
There are lots of other diets out there, which I see no reason to list and debunk one by one—because, as I said, there are entire books written by people with PhDs that will do a better job at it. But these diets are all the same, and the results are always the same.
The basic premise of human nutrition is very, very simple. You need three basic food groups for your body to function properly: carbohydrates, protein, and fats. And yes, you do need all three; you just need them in the right proportion, and you need the right kinds of each.
Let’s talk carbs first, because those always get a bad rap. For a more in depth discussion of this topic, read the rest of this book, and even go back and read the first one,Big Girls Do It Running, because my wife is smarter than I am and explains this whole thing in better detail. I’m writing this chapter as a kind of hook, I guess. A chapter written by a guy who’s gone through the same process you’re going through. Read the first paragraph in this chapter again—yeah, that was me, except there was no book to read, just my wife trying a bunch of weird stuff I didn’t understand.
So, carbs. Bread and pasta, yeah? That’s pretty much it, right? What other carbs are there? Potatoes, for one. Rice. Broccoli, and the other fibrous greens your mom and/or dad made you eat when you were a kid. Quinoa—if you’ve never heard of it—is just another grain kind of like a mix between rice and pasta, and it’s pronounced “Keen-WA,” which I know just sounds pretentious as all hell, but regardless of how it’s pronounced, it’s pretty damn tasty when prepared right.
So, why do people go on low-carb diets, if we need carbs? What’s wrong with bread and potatoes? Well, nothing, exactly. It’s just that the modern American diet is pretty much ALL carbs, with a heaping portion of high-fat sauces and high-fat red meat. Think about it. Go to Olive Garden, and what’s the first thing you get? White bread, slathered in butter. And then you order the four cheese Ziti, which is more bleached-flour white pasta, with heavy red sauce, and a metric shit-ton of cheese. It’s absolutely delicious, and has so many carbs and so many calories in it that you might as well go to McDonald’s and eat three double Quarter Pounder meals in a row, extra large drink and fries included. This is an exaggeration, obviously, but not by as much as you might think. This book is not about counting calories, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how many calories are in those meals, either.
The point is, think about all those carbs. And, more accurately, the KIND of carbs. The white flour that goes into the bread and pasta is made from, to put it plainly, poison. That’s NOT an exaggeration, unfortunately. Worse, that white flour hits your stomach and then your digestive system gets hold of it, and you know what it does? It turns all that flour to sugar. That is a 100% true, verifiable fact. THAT’s why carbs are bad, guys. You eat three baskets of those damned delicious breadsticks at Olive Garden, and your body turns those breadsticks into sugar. And that sugar is going to do one of two things: either it’s going to get burned off, or it’s going to stick to your belly and clog up your arteries. Beer belly? Nah, son, that’s a BREAD belly.
There’s good news, though. There is bread you can eat that doesn’t turn into sugar. And no, I don’t mean the poop-brown cardboard “health food” crap you could build a pyramid out of. This bread is called sprouted whole grain, and it’s actually amazing. Soft, tasty, good with peanut butter, or lunch meat, or even in the occasional grilled cheese. You can buy sprouted whole grain bread, sprouted whole grain pasta, rice ... there are even healthy versions of things like pancake and waffle mix. No lie, I eat thick-ass Belgian waffles made with sprouted whole grain flour with syrup at least once a week. WITH BACON.
The difference is that the waffles are made from batter using nut and oats flours rather than processed and bleached wheat flour, and the syrup is made from stevia—a sweetener made from a plant. Stevia is not just a healthy sweetener, it’s also highly concentrated so you need less of it—and the bacon is chicken bacon. I know, I know, non-pork bacon is anathema, but chicken bacon is, I swear, just as good as regular bacon. Better than turkey bacon, by far. Chicken bacon crisps up more like regular bacon, and has a very similar texture and flavor, and is a lot healthier for you than the pork versionorthe turkey bacon, which I call liar strips.
Have I got your interest yet?
