Here's What I Eat in a Day. And Why.
What I Want From a Diet
Before the food makes sense, the constraints have to be clear.
This isn’t an optimal diet. It’s a tailored one. Built for a specific set of trade-offs.
What I want:
Extremely busy. No time to cook. Hours are not the resource I have to burn.
No eating out. Restaurants compromise on quality, cost, and control.
Whole food. No ultra-processed shortcuts.
Full nutritional coverage. Adequate protein, healthy fats, fiber, micronutrients, fermented food for the gut.
Tastes good. Non-negotiable. Flavor is what makes it sustainable.
Suits the lifestyle. Training, recovery, energy, sleep, focus.
The goal: 80% of the results for 20% of the work.
The Pareto equation, applied to food.
Most “optimal” diets fail this test. They chase the last 20% of the result at the cost of 80% more effort. That’s the trap.
The real win is the highest-yield floor you can hold forever.
Repetition is the unlock. Not variety.
The Daily Stack
Morning
No breakfast.
Supplements, including creatine.
One small portion of fermented food. Sauerkraut, kimchi, coconut kefir, milk kefir.
The morning lineup.
Drive to work. At work: black coffee and black tea, with two protein bars used as the sweetener. Whatever brand. Doesn’t matter.
Lunch (about 5 minutes)
The ingredients. Sourdough, Normandy mix, beef patties.
Air fryer does the work.
Two baskets. Patties on one side, veggies on the other. Five minutes.
Two beef patties. Four pieces of sourdough toast. A large cup of air-fried vegetables. Broccoli, cauliflower, Normandy-style mix.
Out of the basket.
That’s it.
Built. Lunch in five minutes.
Dinner (about 5 minutes)
Four eggs mixed with olive oil. Microwave ninety seconds. Add seasoning. Spread it on four pieces of sourdough toast.
Eggs and olive oil on sourdough. Ninety seconds in the microwave.
Sautéed vegetables.
The stir-fry blend. Goes straight in the pan.
Round two of fermented foods. Kimchi, coconut kefir, milk kefir, sauerkraut.
Night
A few supplements. Including magnesium.
Flavor
Japanese barbecue sauce. Sriracha.
Bachan’s and Ho-Ya. The two that matter.
Life without flavor isn’t a life.
Optional Top-Up
Whey isolate shake with chia, flax, and hemp seeds. Only when training was heavy. Or when the sweet tooth hits.
The Thesis
Not optimal. Tailored.
Total prep across all meals: about ten minutes.
Hits protein. Hits healthy fats. Hits vegetables. Supports the gut through fermented food at both ends of the day.
Sustainable because it requires zero decision fatigue and almost no time.
The contrarian move is the repetition itself.
A Quick Word on Pareto
For the reader who hasn’t met the concept.
Who was Pareto? Vilfredo Pareto. Italian economist and sociologist. Late 1800s into the early 1900s. He noticed that roughly 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Then he noticed the same pattern in his own garden. 20% of the pea pods produced 80% of the peas.
What is the principle? A small minority of inputs produces the majority of outputs. The ratio isn’t always 80/20. Sometimes it’s 90/10. Sometimes 95/5. The pattern is the asymmetry.
Where it shows up:
- Wealth. A small percentage of people hold most of it.
- Business. A small percentage of customers drive most of the revenue.
- Software. A small percentage of bugs cause most of the crashes.
- Health. A small set of habits drives most of the outcome. Sleep, protein, training, walking, sunlight.
- Relationships. A small number of people account for most of the meaning.
- Time. A small slice of the day produces most of the real work.
The takeaway. The question isn’t “what’s optimal?” The question is “what’s the 20% that delivers 80%?”
Find it. Hold it. Let the other 80% of possible effort go.
That’s the move.
This diet is that move, applied to food.
This is how I get this body.
Joking. There’s more to it than food.
But food is more of it than people think.