Maximus Mark argues there's no universal best diet, only what works for your body. He points to two successful traditional models: the Inuit's high-protein, high-fat approach and the Hunza's dairy-focused diet. The real rule is eating whole foods you could hunt, fish, gather, or pluck, while avoiding refined sugars, trans fats, and processed products.
Hi, it's Maximus Mark, and a very common question that I get asked is, "What's the best diet? What should I be eating?" Well, to that, I always like to answer that with an analogy. I want you in a second to imagine that there's, you know, two little kids out in front of you right now, and they're playing. There's little Bobby and there's little Jane. Now, little Bobby has a Thomas the Tank Engine jigsaw puzzle, and little Jane has a Barbie jigsaw puzzle, and they're playing away, and then, you know, Bobby needs to go to the toilet, so he goes off to the toilet, and then Jane reaches over, grabs some of Tommy's pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, and starts putting it into hers. Now, Jane's only 4 years old, and Bobby's 8 years old, so Bobby being very analytical and logical male, he wants to make sure all the pieces fit, and she's 4, she's happy doing what she's doing, she's not really too concerned, but she just starts playing with her jigsaw puzzle, then Bobby comes back, and he's looking at this jigsaw puzzle, and Jane's mixed up the pieces, and Bobby's He's really trying to complete this jigsaw puzzle and he's putting the pieces in and he wants the pieces to fit, but you know what? The pieces will never fit because he's playing with the wrong jigsaw puzzle. Now, that analogy is true for a lot of people and the way they look at their nutrition. You know, quite often people hear soundbites of, you know, don't have carbs after 4 o'clock, that you must have glucose in a post-workout training shake, or, you know, you have to have oats and eggs in the morning, or you need to start your day with a breakfast cereal, or you know, you're not supposed to eat meat, or you're supposed to eat meat every single day of the week. Now, all of those are basically sound bites and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. So, you know, they may be a piece for you, they may not. So, I don't really look at the world of nutrition as, you know, any absolutes. There are things that absolutely work, there's fundamentals, but from there, it's all about experimentation. And once furthermore, it's about the communication and the message that those foods are actually sending to your body. So yes, absolutely, there are some underlying principles that I think we all should adhere to, such as don't eat refined sugars, avoid genetically modified foods, don't use trans fatty acids or vegetable oils or hydrogenated oils, avoid margarine, don't fall for marketing scams like Vitaminwater and Nutri-Grain and all those other, other products that are basically, you know, commercializations of food and, you know, avoid commercial milk definitely as well. So there are some principles there that are underlying and they're going to be in everyone's diet. But, you know, the two real models of nutrition are basically this. This is what I found to be true, that, you know, no one really, if we look at culture, was really a vegetarian. Okay. Most people do struggle on a vegetarian diet. I mean, that's just it. You know, some people swear by it, but you know what, if you don't eat meat because of spiritual reasons or because you don't like what they do to animals, I can absolutely appreciate that. I'm not going to argue with you about that, but that's, That's an ideology. That's not physiological means. It's not science. So, I can absolutely appreciate that, but at the same time, people who come and see me are after results. So, you know, I've never gotten anyone results on a vegetarian diet, and I'll say that much. I don't like to take on vegetarian clients. I don't think I've actually taken on any veg— actually, there's been one, but I didn't talk to him about his food because he just came to see me to train. But I digress. The point here is that everyone has their own unique jigsaw puzzle. And yet those two models that I was talking about before, there's basically the high protein, high fat diet. Think of that as like the Eskimos, where the Eskimos used to eat a lot of protein, a lot of meat, and a lot of fats. Basically, you know, not a lot of vegetables grew up where they were and, you know, they had a lot of fish in their diet and blubber and they were a very healthy culture. But then on the other side of the world, you had the tribes like the Hunza who still ate meat, but they didn't eat a lot of meat. You know, they mainly had milk. They were what you would call a lacto-vegan model where they had dairy in their diet. They ate some meat, not a lot of meat, but they did have the dairy to compensate. So, you know, you want to get that communication happening with your body. You can read infinite amount of textbooks, but at the end of the day, it's going to be doing and using the principles of good nutrition to take that step forward. And again, The principles of good nutrition are eat things that are hunted, fished, gathered, and plucked. If, you know, it doesn't fall on that list, it's probably not the best food to eat. You know, if it's a processed food or cereal, it's not a good choice. So, till next time folks, train hard, eat healthy, and supplement smart.
