How do I actually eat?

After writing about the belly and then reviewing the various diets that promise to reduce it, there is an obvious question left to answer:

What—and how—do I actually eat myself?

Over the years, I have gradually developed a particular system. It suits me reasonably well, but that does not mean that everyone should copy it. Some parts are deliberate. Others have evolved almost accidentally from my personality, working habits and general lack of enthusiasm for organising my life around regular meals.

I have always been naturally slim. When I was younger, I also burned a great deal of energy and was sometimes so busy that I simply did not make time to eat.

I have occasionally wondered whether my appetite-regulating hormones are wired somewhat differently from those of other people. I rarely become desperately hungry, but I also seldom eat until I feel completely full.

I simply stop because I no longer feel like eating.

This is not a carefully designed scientific method.

Breakfast Has Never Been My Strong Point

I have never been a morning person.

Whether I was going to school or work, I was usually operating at the last possible minute. Breakfast therefore never became particularly important to me.

Like many Icelandic children, I was undoubtedly offered cornflakes and similar cereals when I was young. As I grew older, however, eating a substantial breakfast increasingly made me feel heavy rather than energised.

I still eat breakfast occasionally when staying in hotels. This may be partly because I have more time there—and partly because I have already paid for it.

It seems wasteful to ignore an entire buffet once it has been included in the room rate.

When I worked in the emergency department, I always started the morning with several cups of coffee and two Prince Polo chocolate wafers from Poland.

This provided enough sugar and caffeine to keep a man alert, although it would probably not appear in many modern textbooks on clinical nutrition.

When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavík in 1986, their summit became an important turning point in relations between the two superpowers and eventually in the events that brought down the Iron Curtain.

I have sometimes joked that Icelanders had begun this reconciliation much earlier.

For decades, one of our unofficial national combinations had been American Coca-Cola accompanied by Polish Prince Polo.

East and West had already met successfully in Iceland.

Today, now that I have greater control over my own time, I like to have about an hour to myself after waking. I drink two cups of coffee during that time but consume relatively little additional caffeine during the rest of the day.

This is a considerable change from the years when coffee was administered at almost therapeutic intervals.

From Two Hot Meals to One Late Meal

The food culture was different when I was growing up.

Many families ate proper cooked food both at lunchtime and in the evening, sometimes with entirely different dishes at the two meals. It was ordinary, wholesome home cooking—the kind now often referred to affectionately as mother’s cooking.

The main course was frequently followed by porridge or soup. When I later began staying in hotels, it therefore came as a small cultural shock to discover that the soup was served before the main course.

Apparently, the rest of the world had been eating it in the wrong order all along.

As a child, I ate a proper lunch when circumstances allowed. At other times, I might have milk, home-baked cakes, biscuits or whatever was readily available at different times throughout the day.

Later, when I worked regular daytime shifts at the hospital, I usually ate lunch because a visit to the staff canteen was built into the working day.

I have also noticed that I eat unusually quickly.

When friends and I order the same dish and the same drink in a restaurant, I am often finished long before everyone else. For years, I blamed this on emergency medicine: perhaps I had learned to eat rapidly because I could be called away at any moment.

I now suspect that it has more to do with my personality.

Over the years, I have gradually moved towards eating mainly in the evening—and often quite late, not entirely unlike the Spanish approach to dinner.

When my children were growing up, everyone was occupied with sport and other activities. Dinner was therefore frequently delayed until later in the evening. The advantage was that once everyone was finally present, we could sit down properly and talk over the meal.

I have often eaten rather like a python in the evening and then considered the matter settled until the following night.

This sounds dramatic, but it is essentially how I drifted into a form of intermittent fasting without making a formal decision to do so.

Low-Carbohydrate—But Not a Religion

For a while, I flirted with the idea of following a ketogenic diet.

It seemed far too restrictive and difficult even to begin, let alone maintain in ordinary life. What I now eat is better described as a relatively low-carbohydrate diet combined with a limited daily eating window.

I did not select intermittent fasting after studying clocks, graphs and metabolic pathways.

It largely selected me because I was already skipping breakfast and lunch.

I am not particularly fussy about food and can eat almost anything that is offered. I must admit, however, that I am particularly susceptible to sauces.

If I occasionally stop at a petrol station for a hot dog, my main objective sometimes appears to be fitting as much sauce as physically possible both above and below it.

Even a naturally slim man can eventually accumulate some abdominal fat. That has happened to me over the years, although regular exercise has helped keep it within limits. Consequently, I have also become more conscious of what I eat.

I am fortunate to be married to a woman who prepares excellent food. As before, I generally do not eat a proper meal until the evening, partly because I remain occupied with other things throughout the day.

Fish Is the Centre of the Meal

Today, I eat fish almost every day.

I genuinely enjoy it, and I find a fish meal lighter and easier on the stomach than a large meat meal.

Years ago, while abroad, I was once seen scraping sauce away from a piece of fish. I explained to my foreign companions that I was attempting to discover what the fish itself tasted like.

They assured me that different fish did not really have different flavours.

On this point, Icelanders must firmly disagree.

My favourite is breaded haddock. I recognise that breadcrumbs are derived from bread and therefore do not fit perfectly into the strictest interpretation of a low-carbohydrate diet.

I have decided to live with this inconsistency.

Fatty fish is often recommended, and rightly so, but I personally prefer trout to salmon. Herring can also be excellent, although it creates the additional risk of rye bread and generous quantities of butter appearing beside it.

It is a pity that many children and younger people today seem to eat relatively little fish—even in Iceland, where fresh fish has traditionally been such an important part of our food culture.

Food fashions change, but abandoning good fish while importing increasingly elaborate processed foods does not strike me as an obvious nutritional advance.

My wife also prepares the sauce served with the fish, usually using Greek yoghurt, garlic and other seasonings. Sometimes she uses low-fat cream cheese as the base.

As will become apparent, that sauce is not always allowed to retire when the fish has been eaten.

What Replaced the Potatoes?

I largely stopped eating potatoes several years ago.

In their place, my wife usually serves boiled cauliflower, often flavoured with the sauce accompanying the fish. Sometimes she uses couscous instead, so the meal is not strictly low in carbohydrates on every occasion.

That is intentional.

I follow a general pattern, not a legal code.

Alongside the fish, I usually eat salad containing ingredients such as tomatoes, broccoli, garlic and nuts. My wife dresses it with olive oil and lemon juice.

I also have a separate bowl of leafy salad and avocado, again flavoured with lemon juice and garlic powder.

Naturally, I eat meat as well—particularly on special occasions, when eating elsewhere or when the circumstances call for it. But at home, fish is generally the centre of the meal rather than meat.

The Evening Does Not Always End With Dinner

After the main meal, I may sit in front of the television and begin to graze.

I keep pieces of cauliflower, broccoli and carrots available and dip them into the same sauce that was served with the fish.

This is clearly preferable to eating sweets all evening.

Unfortunately, it does not always end there.

I have gone through periods when I became very enthusiastic about ice cream or 70 per cent dark chocolate. More recently, popcorn has usually been my preferred evening snack.

Alongside this, I drink a considerable amount of homemade tomato juice—about three bottles a day. My wife prepares it with garlic powder, and tomatoes are among my favourite foods, so this is not a difficult habit for me to maintain.

I also usually drink about two bottles of a homemade protein drink, particularly in the evening. My wife makes it from vanilla skyr—the flavoured variety containing the least sugar—mixed with whey protein powder, creatine and marine collagen.

These drinks provide additional protein, although they also mean that my evening intake consists of rather more than the single dinner plate might suggest.

The python, in other words, has developed side dishes.

During the rest of the day, I drink mainly sparkling water.

Should Anyone Else Eat Like This?

Yes and no.

This pattern suits my appetite, daily rhythm and personal preferences. It also helps me keep my weight within reasonable limits, although the final three or four kilograms above what I consider my ideal weight remain remarkably loyal.

They have shown no interest in leaving yet, although the plan is still that they eventually disappear.

There are features of my diet that may be useful to others: plenty of fish, vegetables, tomatoes, olive oil, avocado, nuts and protein; regular use of lemons and lemon juice, which I consider particularly wholesome; relatively little highly processed food; and limited intake of refined carbohydrates.

There are also features that are entirely personal.

Not everyone functions well without breakfast or lunch. Some people become hungry, tired or irritable and then compensate by overeating in the evening. Others have medical conditions, take medications or have nutritional needs that make long periods without food unsuitable.

My diet is not perfectly Mediterranean, ketogenic, low-carbohydrate, Nordic or based on formal intermittent fasting.

It borrows from several of them.

More importantly, it is a pattern I can actually maintain.

That may be the most useful principle of all. A theoretically perfect diet is of limited value if it becomes unbearable after ten days. A reasonably healthy pattern that fits a person’s appetite, culture, family life and daily routine has a much better chance of lasting.

I do not count every calorie or weigh every tomato.

I eat mostly food that I enjoy, try to keep the obvious excesses within reasonable limits and accept that breaded haddock and the occasional heavily sauced hot dog will not cause the entire nutritional structure to collapse.

This is how I eat.

It is not a prescription.

But there may be a few ideas in it worth borrowing.