Of course red wine isn’t important unless you want it to be.

Eating vs. Experiencing: I do both to stay ripped

I take time to schedule time to focus on savoring and engaging with the food that’s in front of me… but that’s only if the food in front of me is worth experiencing.

Here’s an example: tonight I might have a chicken breast with a heap of braised cauliflower, a few ounces of roasted kabocha squash and a baked potato. These are all foods I enjoy eating, and together they also present a nice nutritional profile; that’s great. My primary goals in eating are that 1) I’m consuming something that I think tastes good, and 2) I’m getting the right amount of calories from primarily whole sources. But the foods I typically eat for these purposes are also less complex from a gustatory standpoint. I’ve always referred to them as “face foods” i.e. foods that I can just pound into my mouth without really thinking about their flavor profiles, namely because they’re either sort of subdued or not exceptionally complex. Like rice pasta in red sauce with spinach and meatballs tastes really good to me, but I don’t consider the flavors to be exceedingly complicated or especially noteworthy. For me, a food that just tastes good is very different than a food that makes me stop and think about the way it tastes when I put it in my mouth–a food that creates an experience.

Strong, pronounced flavors are deeply satisfying and are a great tool for helping me keep ripped

Foods that create the most intense experiences for me are those with very strong and/ or complicated flavors. 100% dark chocolate. A fine imported salty prosciutto with sweet honeydew. An ounce of fatty Italian salami. A few shavings of black truffle. A tablespoon of a small-batch, high-quality peppery organic olive oil, sipped as if it were never meant to be consumed another way. A three or five-year old Gouda. An espresso, black. A complex red wine like Rioja or a deep, inky petite syrah. I make time to eat these foods when I know I won’t be distracted and can focus on them alone and experience their unique scents and flavors. I don’t consider myself a foodie, but I can certainly appreciate when something has an exceptional flavor according to my taste buds. Sometimes I feel as if I fall into an almost meditative trance when engaging with food in this way. Not only is it immensely satisfying, but it’s also a way for me to satisfy my soul without going overboard on calories, since I’m slowly consuming relatively small amounts of food. If I can, I enjoy breaking my daily 21-hour fasts at least a few times per week through this experiential style of eating.