The Chambers Diet, Part I: BTFB (Back to Fucking Basics)

I: BTFB (Back to Fucking Basics)

Q: What Do I Eat?
A: Anything you want.

Let me say that again. Eat anything you want. “Well okay,” you say, “I’ll see you at McDonalds.”

Here’s the catch: you only get to do it once a day.

This is not a diet of fish or greens or other wonderful things that make you healthy, that give you strong bones and a positive outlook on life. That’s not the way life works. If you want to eat those things, fine. But you don’t have to.

The nuts and bolts of how the diet part of the Chambers Diet works are pretty simple. You get one meal each day. Eat it any time you want, in the morning, mid-day, evening – hell, eat your meal in the middle of the night, I don’t care. But remember, you only get one.

Sound unrealistic? “But I’ll be hungry all day,” you say, “and when I do eat, I’m liable to just eat ten hamburgers. That can’t be healthy.”

Here’s the thing, if you limit yourself to only one meal each day, your body will adjust. It will stop craving so much Goddamn food, I promise. Within a few weeks, you won’t be hungry – except at mealtime. And then you will be very hungry, but you will also be unable to pack it away, because your stomach will physically shrink.

Now, I know this sounds unhealthy. And what about those times in the middle of the day or night when you have to go another three hours until meal-time? There is actually a pretty simple solution to that too.

Our bodies aren’t designed to eat three meals a day and then sit around. The way communication between the stomach and brain works is pretty fucked up. Neither one knows what the hell is going on. And let me be clear, the Chambers Diet isn’t for everyone. If you are working in the shit, if you’re chopping wood or digging ditches, for example – if you’re running around all day – this might not work. You probably need more regular calories. But even for manual labor, most of the time then I suspect it will still work. Why?

Have you ever been to the Zoo? Animals are constantly running around, stressed that they’re going to get eaten and won’t find enough food. That’s the way the world works. It’s also what we evolved to do. Here’s the big secret to our diets: eating more doesn’t necessarily correlate with longer life spans. In fact, in studies of chimps, there’s pretty compelling evidence that the moneys – which are 98% human – live significantly longer, if you just cut lots of calories out of their diets. In that study, most of the scientists were so dumbstruck by the evidence that they immediately tried to cut their own calories too. It’s a lot of damn work to process food all day. Our bodies are stressing all the time to deal with phenomenal amounts of calories we never evolved to consume. We just aren’t made for this.

Imagine yourself in the prehistoric savannah: you’re hunting or gathering, doing your thing. How many calories are you getting each day? Not many, right? And when you do eat a lot, what kind of calories do you think those are? Prime rib? Not likely. How often do you take down a wooly mammoth? Pretty rarely, right? And when you do – here’s the kicker – that meat doesn’t really save. Our prehistoric ancestors – in the hundreds of thousands of years when we did most of our evolving – didn’t know a whole lot about preserving food. So when they came across a big meal, they went all out. The rest of the time, they ate a little of this, a little of that, whatever was easy. That probably meant nuts and fruit.

So that’s my answer: when you are hungry during the day, when you absolutely need to eat something before that one meal, eat some nuts, eat an apple. But that’s it. You don’t get a meal, you get a tiny snack. Then you wait a few hours, and if you need more, you eat more. Most of the time, if you’re hungry your brain just wants to stimulate your stomach. Drink some water.

Then, when you have your meal, I guarantee you’ll be less and less likely to crave junk food and crap. Your body is going to tell you what it needs when that one meal rolls around. See the thing is, unlike other self-help gurus, I actually don’t trust the human mind. I think we’re lazy and can’t control ourselves. I’m not asking you to control yourself. That’s why we have laws. If people could control themselves, society wouldn’t need traffic lights or rules against stealing. But we make rules, because otherwise we’re liable to run a little wild.

So here’s your rule: one meal, and in-between nuts and berries.

Within that law, you get to do whatever you want. I promise, no matter how many burgers you think you’ll eat, eventually that number will drop. Eventually, you won’t get hungry during the day. Your body will get the message. ‘Oh right, we’re back in the savannah. I can’t eat constantly. I get one meal I look forward to, and the rest of the time, I deal with it.’

There’s another trick to handling that meal: alcohol.

“Oh my God,” you say, “listen to this fucking guy. This is the most unhealthy diet I have ever heard of. The burger and booze diet.”

It actually can work like that. If you’re an alcoholic or a prude, ignore me. Flip to the next section. Actually, if you fall into either of those categories you should probably put this down. But for the rest of you, I’m going to be a big enabler/pusher for a few minutes. Bear with me.

Civilization began when people learned to store grain and foodstuffs, right? Guess what they did the moment people figured out agriculture. That’s right, they made booze. I’m not inventing something new – the Chambers Diet has been around since before time began – I’m actually getting back to basics.

I want us around the campfire for our daily meal with a bottle of alcohol. I’m not saying you have to drink everyday. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. But there’s also plenty of scientific evidence now – just as with the monkeys that are always hungry – that a little alcohol never hurt anyone. For most people, it actually helps. Moderate alcohol usage makes you healthier. Make some of those daily calories alcoholic. This is getting us into a later section – about stress and health – but the point, as with the food, isn’t that I want you to keep a chart or stress about points or buy into some packaged plan. The Chambers Diet builds on a holistic philosophy. Let’s get back to fucking basics.

Eat your nuts, berries, and mammoth; drink your booze, and you will be merry. You’ll also lose weight, I promise. You simply won’t be able to eat as much, because your stomach will shrink. You also won’t be as interested in food. Stop fetishizing it. Food is what we need to survive, but it shouldn’t occupy so much of our time. Make that meal a good one, by all means – and I suspect you’ll pay more attention to it too, if you only get one – but look around. There’s a whole lot more to this life than calories.

To say nothing of the fact that when you drink on a pretty empty stomach, you’ll get more bang for your buck – you’ll enjoy it more – and you’ll care so much less about eating. This is all about tricking our bodies that have been conditioned into the modern world, it’s about convincing – re-convincing – our cells that we’re back where we belong. See, we haven’t evolved to this. We haven’t evolved to deal with the Chicken McNugget, because the modern diet – as anyone who knows anything will tell you – has changed radically in the past few decades, to say nothing of the past few hundred years. How fast does evolution happen? Not that quickly. It can’t keep up. We’re designed to eat very little and drink booze. Back to basics.

That’s where the Chambers Diet begins.