I ate bacon for a whole Year, Here's What I Learned

Eat a balanced meal, with carbs, protein, and vegetables. Sounds good right? On paper, yes, but in reality, it's missing something. how did I find this out? I ate bacon for breakfast for a whole year.

Modern wisdom tells us that we need to eat a balanced meal of carbs, protein, and vegetables in order to be healthy. Pay more attention to the people who do eat like this and you'll see they struggle to put down the spoon when hungry.

We're told that abstaining from eating is difficult because of hunger, but from this last year, I can say that the hunger they feel is simply a symptom.

This isn't to say you should eat bacon the way I did; bacon illustrates the flaws of the modern diet. Here's what I learned from eating bacon for a whole year.

1. Fat is Essential for Good health

Years ago, it was spread that eating fat made you fat. This same propaganda was spread by companies wanting to sell sugary cereals and drinks. Those companies successfully convinced people that fat makes you fat, which simply isn't true.

I remember before I went on my bacon diet, I struggled with hunger and cravings. If I went long enough without a meal, I'd get those familiar hunger pangs. I tried fasting to get myself used to the hunger, but that didn't last too long. 

Eventually, I stumbled across a video on YouTube talking about the importance of fat in your diet. I don't remember everything, but the one thing that stood out to me was fat helps with hormone regulation. So I decided to get on a higher-fat diet.

For breakfast, I'd eat eggs & bacon with a bowl of vegetable sticks. For lunch, fish with another bowl of veggie sticks. My protein shake contained milk, peanut butter, a banana, and the protein powder, & dinner was whatever mom cooked.

The result? No more hunger, no more cravings, higher energy, better sleep, & better mood. 

I don't know the exact science behind it, but the results speak for themselves. I've never felt so good in my day-to-day life, and it only happened once I started consuming more fat in my diet.

2. Add more good instead of taking out a lot of bad

In a previous post on monk mode, I said that you should focus more on adding good habits instead of removing bad ones. This same principle can be applied to your diet as well.

Growing up, I was lucky to have a mom who believed in healthy home-cooked meals. She would always (still does) cook meals with primarily whole ingredients while minimizing processed ingredients.

Despite this, I still ended up having quite a bit of junk food in my diet. I've always had a sweet tooth, especially for chocolate and that sweet tooth made it hard for me to put down the sugar.

It wasn't until I picked up a higher-fat diet that it got easier for me to say no to sweets and yes to fruits. It was by eating bacon for a whole year that I learned something important about food.

Food tastes good when it has either high sugar, high fat, or both. When it has neither, it tastes horrible. The difference is that food high in natural fat is much healthier than food with sugar.

Yes, that includes natural sugars like fruit. 

By adding more good food to your diet, you'll naturally crowd out the bad. Eventually, you won't know where it went.

3. Eat the Right Amount

When it comes to diet, what works for one person won't exactly work for another. The right amount for one person may be wrong for another. For this reason, it's important you know what the right amount for you is.

Shortly after picking up my higher-fat diet, I also picked up macro-tracking. What is measured can be managed, and at the time I wasn't measuring my caloric intake.

I don't remember the exact macros I had, but I do remember my fat being about 45 grams per day. My bacon & eggs for breakfast, plus my fish for lunch, and my protein shake after my workout easily got me to 45 grams.

In the beginning, I did this for about 2 months before I started seeing the results I mentioned earlier; no hunger, no cravings, better mood, higher energy, & better sleep.

It was after I'd started seeing these results that I also started noticing I was gaining a lot more muscle than before. On top of all the fat, I was also coincidentally getting more protein than before.

Months later I came across a video on YouTube that shed some light on the topic of macro intake, and this is what I learned from it.

Too many people in the modern day aren't getting enough fat in their diet, which affects their quality of life negatively. A safe bet to make is at least 20 grams of fat per day.

On top of knowing how many calories you're eating, tracking macros also makes it easier to lose weight or gain muscle. I recommend anybody who wants to get a better physique to learn how to track their macros.

I ate bacon for a whole year, and I'm still doing it

Above all the other reasons, this diet was and still is sustainable for me. I love eating bacon, which is why I have no trouble keeping up with it as my staple breakfast food

The most important part of creating any diet will be how sustainable it is for you. The most effective diet is the one you can stick to.

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 - Karl