Creating a Kick Ass Diet

Rediscover How to Kick More Ass with Your Food Rules

One of my goals for 2025: getting back to feeling more awesome. I have a hunch that through dietary changes, I’ll kick 10% more ass.

In 2024, my diet could best be described as the “Seagull Diet.” It consists of dive-bombing my kids' plates and finishing off whatever leftovers they’ve abandoned. I tend to caw about food waste and do the dishes at the same time. The hallmark of this diet is the opportunistic eating behavior. If it’s around, I tend to eat it—for better or for worse. I often visualize this eating strategy as if i’m one of those born ready Granville Island seagulls waiting for that fry to hit the ground. So, for this year: “Thou shall not be the seagull.”

The “Science”

The science of studying nutrition is dirtier than a hot tub left unattended and frequented by drifters and a 70's rock band. Food lobbyists implicated in paying off researchers, the saturated fat witch hunt of the 80’s, or the cherry-picked data of the China Study—yuck. Can’t trust “them” or the Liver King.

So, what makes a good diet? Is it the one that turns you into a glowing beacon of health or just the one that doesn’t make you dread every meal? Should we all push play on the blue zone diet or whatever else centenarians are eating? For myself in 2025, it’s about three things: simplicity, sustainability, and starting strong every day.

Marc’s Maxims of Food

Thou shall eat more vegetables, straight up:
The cornerstone of my diet this year is eating more vegetables without dressing them up like they’re auditioning for a food magazine. Mornings now start with three handfuls of lettuce—yes, like a rabbit—paired with a 50-gram vegetable-based protein shake and my coffee. It’s not fancy, but it works, and frankly, my mornings don’t need drama.
I’m borrowing this from my jacked mentor and professor  Andre Potvin of Infofit, who at the time was in his late 40s when I met him in the classroom. In this instance, casually eating leaves, shoots, sprouts out of a bag/box in the way many eat chips. (Infofit, one of the premier technical schools for health and fitness in North America).  Andre remains my dietary pace car of no nonsense nutrition. Side note: It’s also a great social experiment eating leaves out of a box in front of others. Try it yourself!

Thou shall hydrate by lunch:
My 1.5-liter kombucha bottle has become my hydration checkpoint. Ive often snickered at the bodybuilders and their mini keg size water bottles. But I see the wisdom in automating that if I’ve finished my oversized water bottle by lunch, I’m halfway to my daily water goal. It’s simple, effective, and doesn’t involve any apps or alarms yelling at me to drink. I have yet to find the perfect message to convince all humans to always nail their water intake but, the foundation of all diets and is hydration. Want to lose power, feel more tired run the body a little dry. Back-of-the-napkin calculation: take your body weight in pounds, divide by half, and you need that many ounces of water. If I’m 150 lbs, I need 75 ounces of water.)

Thou shall consume 3 protein shakes:
Protein is Latin for "first source" (who knew?). Peter Attia et al. are championing protein, the macronutrient most underrepresented in most diets, especially north of 40. If I’m picking one variable for every client, 90% of the time, this is what we’re adjusting first.
Last thought on protein: For myself, this equates to three shakes a day spaced out as much as possible. It’s quite repetitive, but I know this: if I want to be sore from workouts, all I really need to do is not hit my minimum of 180 grams a day, which is considered a moderate dose given my weight (180 lbs) and activity level. Dinner is my time to eat like a modern human in this case with the Carbivores.
 The Carbivores, aka my boys Max and Caleb eat enough carbs to sink a battleship. They are 10 and 11 afterall. Dinner is my meal to get a little sassy. So as long as I load my plate with veggies 3/4 that is, I can indulge in some grains, pastas or other slightly naughty carbs on the menu. But really my belief is that this style of eating affords me some slack at dinner time to eat a modern processed meal.

The "Why" Behind These Changes

One major influence on my approach is the research of Dr. David Ludwig, author of Always Hungry. His work dives into the gut-brain connection and how food impacts our impulses. His seminal studies out of Boston Hospital, utilizing functional MRI imagining has shown that his whole food, no refined sugars with small servings of allowed grains aka an ancestral-esque or minimally processed diet improved the impulse-control zone of the brain and the gut biome in as little as two weeks! And of course they lost weight and felt better. Check him out, his study and the specifics of the diet. The appealing part for myself is this diet really gets upstream of food cravings, and asks less of my will power...

Peeking behind the curtains of this diet, the prioritization of fiber-rich and nutrient-dense foods, WITHOUT any sugar or refined oils, is the key to low and stable glucose levels. Everyone, "even those steeped in science" agree- Low and steady glucose levels means better body composition and less inflammation and health risks.

To me, these dietary preferences of whole foods and minimal processing passes the eyeball test of common sense too. It ought to work because all the “classic” errors many of us make with our modern diets are negated. Dr. Lane Norton, the pro bodybuilder and nutritional researcher, highlights the largest difference in our foods in the last 20 years has been the rise of more plant based oils in all refined foods. His point is there are simply more calories hiding in our food choices than ever before, at a time our species is less active and more stressed than ever before. Still experiencing cognitive dissonance of the hidden calories? Look no further than your caloric frenemy the caesar salad! (google it). The calories ain’t coming from the Romaine…

To be clear, I'm not jumping in the camp like Dr. Don Saladino that all soy, palm and hydrogenated oils can’t be consumed in any safe amount, nor am I downplaying sugar but it's impossible to ignore we are miles away from our ancestral diets. Heck even diets 70 years ago appear to be devoid of the refined food choices we accept as normal today…

Final Thoughts and getting your diet a little more ancestral

Should you eat a fat based keto-loving Inuit diet or should you go the route of the plant-carb-loving hunter-gatherers of Africa? To what extent should we all refrain from an ultra-modern, high-processed diet?

What I do know is that pictures of our great-great-great-grandparents serve as a reminder of what humans use to look like pre-processed foods. These humans still ate pies! So there was obviously some sugar and fat/lard/oil in their diet. But clearly they ate simple and largely unprocessed food.

My vision is that modern humans, FitSapiens, see modern processed foods as one of the easiest pieces to adjust in their diet, they're aware of their intake and have a simple strategy to keep those foods in check. Closing thought, if your food isn’t all dressed up with all the high calorie fixings, it's really difficult to stuff back 3 baked potatoes without the fixings, or eat more than 1 boiled chicken breast, or consume 5 oranges like OJ from concentrate, etcetera.

So what if I can rewire my taste buds, brain and gut to enjoy arugula straight up? What might I find easier or what might I be more capable of?    

What might you add more of, and what is worth subtracting in YOUR diet?

Kicking ass or being more awesome ain’t easy. But for 2025, food is here to fuel my life—not distract from it—and my maxims, I am betting on, are a step toward becoming the best version of myself. I'll have an update for the June edition.

Oh, and one more thing: if you’ve enjoy this article you may find the podcast and discussion with my wife, Conchita Huddlestan teacher and 2x Fitness model interesting. We follow up on what diet worked for her to win 2 regional events in her early 30's . We discuss what worked then, the trends, whats changed and how to create a compass for yours.