the premade dinner and eat it. You’ll feel better right away.
Meal prepping does take a lot of practice and will be time consuming when you first start; however, the more you practice, the faster and easier and more enjoyable it becomes! Some other strategies are cooking one or two meals in bulk, then finding friends who will do the same and swapping meals. If you do this with two other friends, that’s six different meals for the week in just a few hours.
Anchor Seven: Experiment.
This is the “nice to have” anchor and not necessarily an essential part of your nutrition, but we do think it’s important to know yourself as best as you can. Experimenting is one great way to know if you are allergic to certain foods, to see if certain protocols work better for you, if certain macronutrient percentages are better, and so on. We highly recommend trying this step only once you have consistently stayed on track with the other anchors.
Top three experiments to try first:
•FODMAP elimination protocol. If you have allergies, prioritize this one to make sure you get rid of the foods that are causing you discomfort and inflammation.
•24-hour fast. I love this experiment because it really does change how you feel hunger.
•Intermittent fasting. This also changes how you feel hunger but because it is done over a longer time frame, you will notice a fairly quick change of your normal eating habits.
For more information about FODMAP, see the section on food intolerances in chapter 5, Guts and Brains, and for more information on fasting, see the section on the benefits of fasting in chapter 4, Longevity and the Aging Athlete.
ESTABLISHING GOALS AND ENSURING CONSISTENCY
You have to master the basics and focus on the fundamentals 80 percent of the time. Learning to climb, backcountry ski, mountain bike, or even backpack can’t come from just reading a book. Eating well can’t come from reading this book either. You have to take these tools, practice them, fail a lot, and keep going. Don’t get bogged down by the details yet!
In order to stick to the basics (the peak nutrition anchors), you have to include this next step, the secret sauce of improvement and seeing results: consistency. But how do you get consistent? The trick is to find out what really matters to you and why, then create a system to reach your goals. To establish goals and stay motivated (so you can be more consistent), follow these steps:
•Know who you are (identity).
•Know what you stand for (values).
•Create goals that fit your identity and values.
•Plan for failure.
•Measure your progress.
•Make it a habit.
“We have uphill dreams and uphill growth goals, but our habits are downhill. Consistency compounds. It’s a high-return habit. Every day, consistency builds up just a little. You’re getting better every day. Don’t think you are trying to get better by tomorrow, get better today. If you have good actions, you are bridging your intentionality, to be mindful of what you want.”
—John Maxwell
Goals that don’t have much meaning to you personally will be challenging to follow through on. Even if you think a goal is the best in the world, you won’t be motivated to work toward it if it doesn’t resonate deeply with you. For your goals to take shape, first figure out how you identify yourself and what your values are. When you think of a goal, think about how it fits into your values and identity. From there you can match your behaviors to your identity, values, and goals. And from there, you can break goals down into outcome and process goals, which will lead to consistent habit formation, rather than a reversion to old habits.
Who Are You?
The first step in creating a system of effective habits is to figure out how you identify yourself: for example, “I am an athlete,” or “I am a student.” Another way to figure out who you are is to tune into what others say about you. How do your friends or your family describe you? You don’t have to stop at one or two—make a list of 20 identities. See how many things you can pile up.
PEAK PROFILE
COLIN HALEY
I end up eating a lot of packaged bars, not because they’re my preference, but because they travel well on lengthy expeditions and are convenient during hard climbs. But my favorite food for high-output days in the mountains is baguette with dried figs or, even better, onigiri (Japanese rice balls wrapped in seaweed, usually with some fish in the center).
At home, it’s easy to keep myself well-fed and healthy. The challenge is maintaining a healthy diet during the several months per year that I am on expeditions. When you’re packing for an expedition, it is easy to rush the food decisions, because they seem less critical than equipment decisions. There is no easy solution, but I do try to bring things like dried seaweed, powders of freeze-dried spinach and kale, dried fruit, canned sardines, etc.
I think my general eating habits are quite good, actually! My worst eating habit is probably that I sometimes end up doing a day or two of hard exercise with almost no food, leaving my body depleted for quite a while.
For some time I was a bit “tricked” by food fashions that dictate a certain ratio of macronutrients, like the keto or paleo diets. Even though I never really followed any of them, I definitely made conscious decisions to eat more protein and fat than I naturally craved. More recently I reverted to eating whatever ratio of macronutrients I grew up eating and naturally crave, which I estimate to be about 65 percent carbohydrates, 25 percent fat, and 10 percent protein (by calories). I feel healthier than when I was intentionally trying to eat more meat.
Mochi with bean-paste filling! Also, I always think coconut water is tremendously delicious.
I like dogs,