Feed Only Meat: A Systems Based Approach To Life

My Mum lives in a care home now and whenever I visit her I can’t help but notice that by her seat at the table in the communal dining room is a little tag that says “does not like meat.” My goal in life when I end up in Mum’s position is to have a little tag at my seat in the dining room that says “feed only meat.” When Mum was still living at home, I tried mightily to convince her to eat more protein and practice getting up and down from the floor. I was never successful, and, after a while, even I, a perpetual optimist decided that these were two battles that I would never win.

Getting my Mum to implement a system would have been ideal. The system would be pretty simple, eat 20 to 30 grams of animal protein (my Mum’s not that big) three to four times per day and, every morning, get up and down off the floor ten times. The goal behind the system is obvious, build muscle mass and maintain functional ability. Getting up and down off the floor may not seem like much, but, for older people this ability is literally life saving. Far more life saving than spurious vaccines, and, unlike fake vaccines, completely free and without any nasty side effects.

I just finished Scott Adams’ book “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life,” in which Adams extolls the benefits of a systems based approach to life versus a goals base approach. It’s unlikely I’ll ever give up goals: they give you something to aim for, something to train for, something to erase the existential nihilism of modern life (decidedly an odd thing for an optimist to admit), but there is a lot to be said for systems.

Well designed systems lead to goals so the two things can exist side by side. The beauty of well designed systems is achieving goals simply becomes a product of following the system. What systems really do help is us delay the gratification of short term desires to attain long term goals. And we all need help with that; will power either doesn’t exist or is finite.

I’ve been listening to this Peter Attia podcast on protein muscle synthesis which is really about how older adults can avoid anabolic resistance. Anabolic resistance is essentially the curse of aging wherein our bodies become resistant to muscle protein synthesis. In plain language this means loss of muscle mass and consequent loss of function and inevitably frailty and even death.

I’m in the age group where anabolic resistance is real and, in some people I know, happening at accelerated rates. I’ve got friends upon whom I can literally see the muscle melting off. A well designed system could prevent this. The system would be simple, eat 30 grams of animal based protein¹ (one egg contains about seven grams of protein as does 30 grams of white fish or chicken breast) three to four times per day, resistance train two to three times a week, and do some sort of aerobic capacity work you enjoy. There it is, a perfectly simple and easy to implement system that you could follow for the rest of your life (with minor tweaks). I should patent it, and you should send me money, and with the money, I’ll buy meat.

1An isocaloric isoprotein (aka the same as) vegan meal delivered significantly less muscle protein synthesis when compared to an animal based meal.