A dose of discipline in your everyday diet

Steve Jobs famously wore the same outfit daily. Jobs’ rationale is equally famous. He chose to avoid wasting mental effort on a trivial decision so some additional daily aliquot of that vital commodity could be directed at more important matters, like the elegant design of the Mac I am using to type this.

I have yet to take that plunge in my closet. I have done so, however, in the kitchen — where I contend it actually matters a whole lot more. The constraints of select uniformity in the closet may save us a bit of mental activity and some number of seconds daily. Much the same in the kitchen and cafeteria could, in principle, save our lives.

I reflect on Jobs’style discipline applied to diet in the immediate aftermath of a trip to Australia. I was there primarily to participate in a Lifestyle Medicine conference, but then my wife and I had some down time with dear friends in beautiful Evans Head, several hundred miles up the coast from Sydney.

Our friends were obviously committed to spoiling us, and indulged us in every expression of love and hospitality. Among those was the food. One of those friends is a talented, creative, and enthusiastic cook — and enticements came out of his kitchen in a dazzling array, at impressive frequency. The nutritional standards were very high throughout; our friends are devoted to that, as are my wife and I. But still, there was lots of opportunity for the sheer volume and variety to drive diet off its rails, and produce the oftlamented weight gain of “vacation.”

That didn’t happen, because I selectively but consistently declined culinary novelties, however tempting. I realize, of course, this probably makes me a less gratifying house guest than others — and I will understand if you choose not to host me accordingly! To be clear, I enjoyed (and greatly appreciated) much of my friend’s cuisine over the course of the stay, but I also often just stuck with my routine, however appetizing the alternatives.

That routine has long involved eating much the same fare throughout the day, and bundling more variation into dinner, which for me has always been the primary, and most social, daily meal. Throughout the day, I tend to think of food more as a source of fuel, energy, sustenance than diversion. Dinner, the daily reward after a generally busy day of work, is customarily both.

I hasten to note that I very much like what I do eat every day, throughout the day — just as, presumably, Steve Jobs liked his daily outfit. My breakfast is generally mixed berries (yes, expensive), other fruits in season, simple whole grain cereal such as steelcut oats, often with walnuts or almonds. I vary the cereals, the fruits, and the nuts — but not the formula. Throughout the day, my food choices are generally limited to vegetables, fruits, nuts, and/or grains in their naked, native state. This doesn’t feel like asceticism to me, but rather the ease and efficiency of fewer decisions — just like Jobs’ outfit.

However, with diet, the advantages are far greater. If some balance is struck between what is relatively fixed and what varies, some structure is imposed on daily eating. Structure is a surrogate, and substitute, for discipline and effort. Just as the structural safeguard of a seat belt relieves the work on your muscles and minimizes how much a car crash tosses you around, the structural safeguard of some dietary pattern minimizes how much the buffet of daily choices tosses around your health.

My family motto has long been that we can “love food that loves us back,” but as with every other source of potential pleasure, that means operating within sensible bounds. Almost everything we do for pleasure, we do selectively, at appropriate times, in appropriate context.

There is no reason diet should be exempt. Since diet is the single leading cause of premature death and chronic disease in our culture, the benefits of getting it right and under reliable control are apt to be protean. In my case, my weight, stamina, strength, and biomarkers at nearly 57 years old are almost exactly what they all were when I was 20 (and I was quite fit at 20). Diet is only one part of the responsible formula — but it’s a crucial part.

Daily decisions lean on willpower. Skillpower attenuates those demands, by reducing the number of daily decisions. When decisions are premade, the discipline comes easy. I don’t know yet what I’ll wear tomorrow, and maybe I should. But I do know what I’ll be having for breakfast.