If you’re still pondering a New Year’s resolution, I’d like to offer one for suggestion – try Les’ and my “Athlete’s Diet.” Ok, so Athlete’s Diet is really just a charming name we made up for a lifestyle diet that seems unbearable to most people, but it’s really stood the test of time with us and has made our life more manageable in many ways.

For breakfast this morning, we ate organic ground beef and peas. Yes, very unusual in the United States, but most other countries in the world do not have breakfast-specific foods like we have. Breakfast is just another meal like lunch or dinner, and thus, soup, meats, and greens are often on the plate. So before your mind shrieks, “That’s outlandish!” and runs away with you, let me explain a little bit about why this simple breakfast makes sense.

The reason Les and I refer to our diet as an Athlete’s Diet is that it makes us our best mentally, emotionally, and physically. What I like best about it is the stability it gives us. People often say, “You’re so calm!” and “I can’t even imagine you getting mad!” and “You guys are the most grounded people that we know.” It’s so rewarding to hear people say that when they used to say things like, “You’re so opinionated,” “You’re so sarcastic,” and “Take a chill pill.” Today people say that I’m athletic and passionate, but also relaxed, friendly, and really easy to get along with. I feel a lot calmer, too.

So here is an example of how our meals might go on any given day… Take a pro-flora upon waking. Carrot soup and ground bison for breakfast. Make hot herbal tea. Roasted chicken, brown rice, and salad for lunch. Head out for some exercise. Sweet potato and toasted nuts for a snack when we get home. Cabbage topped with pork sausage and toasted sunflower seeds for dinner. Yogurt or coconut mousse for dessert.

Sounds at least reasonable, right? What makes it a really great diet for us is that most of the meals have a low glycemic index, which is what gives us that steady baseline. The only carbohydrates are right before and right after exercise. That way we take in a few extra calories, right before we are going to use them, and then refill our glycogen stores within 1 hour after exercise.

Other things that we try to do are rotate our foods as much as possible. Ideally, one wouldn’t repeat the same food ingredient for 3 days, but that’s almost impossible. The best we can hope for in a cold climate in the winter, especially thanks to the fact that 97% of the vegetables grown in 1900 are now extinct, is to try to not repeat the food in the same day. If we do repeat a food too often, it’s pretty obvious, because driving home from the barn or other exercise, we’ll start to feel cranky or fester about something upon eating our carbohydrate snack. Something few people know is that most food sensitivities don’t show up as digestive problems, but emotional problems, until they’re pretty strong. Just as horses get too “hot” when they eat too much sugar, so do people. So we eat complex carbs in limited quantities. We use honey on occasion, but no sugar or artificial sweeteners, and the main spices we use are turmeric, garlic, and salt and pepper. From a food-combining perspective, the simpler the food, the easier time the body will have digesting it, allowing the foods to do the jobs they are meant to do.

We also take fish oils and calcium supplements, and make sure we get at least 30 minutes of walking or other flowing movement every day, even when we’re sick. 30 minutes of walking is really important – just 30 minutes a day drops the risk of all the major diseases by 50%. As a person gets fitter, many people need 1.5 hours of elevated heart rate exercise 3 days a week. Were we to eat the number of carbohydrates the average American eats, we would feel flustered and stressed most of the day, unless we had about 3 hours of exercise. We don’t like feeling stressed and we don’t have time for that much hard exercise, so instead we lower our carbs and still get to feel calm and collected.

Having the right pro-biotic really helps also. We rotate ours, so sometimes take acidophilus, sometimes S. Boulardi, and sometimes Garden of Life HSOs, which are very controversial.

So, that’s a brief overview of how things run in the Kiger household. I hope you’ll consider giving our Athlete’s Diet a try. Feel free to email if you have questions