It can’t be cured.

That’s what I was told.

The physical pain was bad enough. Eating would bring me to tears. The mental health struggle. The fear that came with being told the condition might not go away.

Any medications that I used just helped numb the inflammation and symptoms but never seemed to change the underlying situation.

I kept going to doctors looking for another answer.

But it didn’t seem anything they were doing was having an effect. And when I asked about it, they said that there wasn’t much else known on how to treat it.

So I started researching and trying to grasp for anything that could help.

I talked to some people and read a few places that fasting might help my autoimmune conditions. I chose to do it because the few people I knew that had autoimmune conditions said they were hearing fasting may help too.

My wife had experimented for a while with fasting.

When I was asked to join her, I said, “I am definitely not doing that.”

But now, I was thinking I’ll try anything.

So I swallowed my pride and started to fast.

I was hopeful that this was the direction that would change my health.

The research on fasting and autoimmune conditions is limited and far from complete. 1

What I didn’t realize is that I was wrong about the mechanism.

Fasting was not the answer.

But it was the first domino.

After the first one fell, it really started to accumulate positive results.

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There were three big changes that I noticed after I started fasting.

First came discipline.

After a few weeks of doing it, I realized that I told others I was gonna do it and stuck to it.

It was a struggle for the first few days. But then it just became a part of what I was doing.

Second came agency.

I felt like I was in control of my situation and I was enacting change. I went in with the mindset that I was going to heal myself.

I’d made a contract with myself to get better. And then things that were small became cumulative.

The reward became the foundation.

After a month I started feeling better.

After month two, I started looking better.

I started getting comments like, “you look great chef” and others asking me what I was doing.

I was able to share and told them that I was feeling great.

I never weighed myself except at the doctor. But everyone has the humbling routine of seeing their reflection each day.

When I looked into the mirror, I started seeing a better version of myself. More than the weight.

It felt like I had more control of my destiny and I started feeling better.

I started looking better.

I wanted everything to continue.

Third came attention.

When I found success with something, especially when I was in a darker place, I started wondering if I made one positive change, what could another positive change do?

I started to look at my life and what other things were suffering.

Once one thing started working, I began to ask a different question.

Instead of looking at what was wrong, I started looking for what else I could improve.

The attention to my body began revealing things I had ignored for years.

I started looking at my sleep.

Then I started looking at my diet, most notably that my protein might be lacking.

Here’s what fasting looks like for me now.

I still fast every day.

I feel blessed that I started this practice.

I enjoy the way I feel, so I continue.

My day normally consists of two large meals and I start my first meal around 1pm.

I then eat dinner around 8 pm and am done for the day.

When I am out with friends or socializing, dinner can end up a couple hours later.

When it does I go with it.

Optimizing a fasting window at the expense of connection is a fool’s errand.

Once or twice a year, I do extended fasts for three to four days.

I don’t think of these longer fasts as a cleanse or a cure. I like the mental reset that they give me. I find the experience useful for reflection. Longer fasts are not appropriate for everyone. They can carry different risks than simply delaying breakfast.2

Fasting did not heal the condition, but it created the conditions for everything else to begin.

When something started working, I wanted to believe I had found the thing that did it.

Looking back, I don’t think my improvement worked that way.

Fasting, sleep, protein, movement, leaving the kitchen, and eventually moving to Portugal all had a cumulative effect resulting in health improvement.

Fasting was simply the first domino.

Moving to Portugal changed the routine again.

I no longer consider a late dinner with people I care about a failure of my health routine.

Social isolation and loneliness are associated with higher mortality risk. 3

I’ve learned there is a big difference between solitude and loneliness.

The people I care about are part of my health too.

Rigidity in the name of health that costs you meaningful relationships isn’t health.

Fasting was the beacon when my health was the foggiest.

It wasn’t the cure-all I hoped it would be.

It showed me where to look next.

It allowed me to identify other gaps in my health and more ways to feel better.

First came discipline.

Then agency.

Then attention.

And eventually, the wisdom to know when to be flexible.

What was your first domino?

If this was useful, there’s more to come. Everything stays free to read. Paid subscriptions simply support the work.

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^{Educational only — not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health, diet, or exercise routine.}

Sources

A5 wagyu, 60 dollars an ounce with a 4 ounce minimum.

Bring us 12 oz shared for the table.

U-2 shrimp from Nigeria, two to a pound. Make it a scampi for our surf and turf.

Who raises this beef the best and can we buy the whole farm?

Protein was the focus of almost every plate.

Not just type, but where it was from and how expensive it was.

Sometimes the objective was different. The goal was how much we can get for the lowest possible price.

We searched exhaustively for the most delicious versions of things.

How do we procure as much as possible of items limited and rare?

All types of caviar, closest to Beluga without being illegal.

This methodology brings you to a completely different place than health.

The word protein comes from the Greek proteios, meaning ‘primary’ or ‘of the first rank.’

Protein is like our retirement.

How much should you save for retirement?

The real question is, how much should you save for the future you want? We all know we are supposed to save money. Yet 39% of American adults say the largest emergency expense they could cover using only their savings is less than $1,000.1

Protein is the same. Everyone knows it’s important.

Saying that I eat protein is not the same as, am I getting enough to support the body that I want to keep?

The new U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend a target of 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight for adults.2 For some older adults, that would be a substantial change. In a pooled study of adults 55 and older, about 7 out of every 10 adults are not hitting even the low point of 1.2g/kg.3

That recommendation is higher than the longstanding international benchmark around 0.8 g/kg.4 I don’t think a new guideline means everyone should automatically change what they eat.

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Protein is important.

But what does it do for you besides help with muscles?

How about supporting immune function, helping build and repair tissues, providing the amino acids used to make enzymes and hormones, contributing to overall bone health, and helping preserve lean tissue during weight loss.5

Protein also helps us with satiety. Higher protein meals usually leave us feeling fuller than low-protein meals, which can make managing appetite much easier.6

Doing the protein math is easy. Deciding which number to use takes a little bit more thought.

Once you do the quick math and calculate your goals, you don’t need to obsess over the recalculations daily.

Just be consistent.

Protein needs can change as we age, grow, train, become ill, cut calories, or move into other stages of our life.

For women, the equation can change at different stages of life. Pregnancy, low energy availability, and the transition through perimenopause and menopause are times when paying closer attention to nutrition, protein and maintaining muscle become equally important.7

Protein can’t do this job alone.

Resistance training becomes important as we age because keeping muscle requires both raw material and giving the body the reason to use it. Protein supplies the amino acids, but resistance training can supply the stimulus. If you want to maintain strength and function, I would put the two together rather than treating them separately.

Protein quality matters. Protein quantity is imperative.

WHEN THE MATH CHANGED

When I started to look at what protein meant for me, the math started to look different. I looked to change a life full of excess and imbalance. Success was addressed one thing at a time.

I figured out how to get my sleep in line and then really needed to start examining my diet.

My diet revolved around my incredible access to great food but often at the detriment of my health. My job was to know everything that was being served, prepared and how it tasted in every outlet of three hotels totaling 6,926 rooms!

So I broke down each major protein: chicken, pork, beef, lamb, soy (tofu/edamame), fish, shellfish, beans, lentils, dairy, eggs, chickpeas, etc.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet for you -

I like almost anything (except salmon), so this list wasn’t scary and easy to vary. I also knew that I had the skills to make anything delicious. I used the access I had to chefs and gleaned ideas from them too. One of the perks of hospitality.

But I had to make a plan.

So here’s what I did to make it consistent.

I knew a diet or temporary change wasn’t going to work. I needed a number I could build my meals around.

The longstanding international benchmark is around 0.8 g per kilogram, while the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines target 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram. I wasn’t looking for a number simply because a guideline told me to eat it.

I looked at my resistance training, activity, and goal of maintaining muscle as I age. Based on that, I chose 1.4 grams per kilogram. A level within the range supported by research on protein intake and resistance training. At my body weight that came to about 130 grams of protein per day.8

Then I started figuring out how I could reach that goal. I tracked it for the first couple of weeks and then was able to use my chef brain to convert it and just wrote down the total each day to ensure I was getting it. (Recommend to keep track if a chef brain is missing)

Let me illustrate what success looks like:

This did feel like a lot more food at first. But quickly, it felt normal.

When I started to eat more of the food I wanted to prioritize, I realized how many of my previous calories were coming from foods that were empty and not helping me reach my goals.

It was important to get my wife’s buy-in. Getting your household on board makes consistency much easier.

Making meals for my wife and me became easier after building a protein chart. You will be able to get a good measure quickly even when dining out after looking at this chart quickly every day before a meal.

Want a quick reference? Download the FL - Protein Cheat Sheet

Protein Cheat Sheet

3.5MB ∙ PDF file

Download

A simple guide to common protein sources and how much protein they provide. Save it for meal planning, grocery shopping, or a quick reference.

Download

The other thing to note is that if you work out, giving yourself just protein and a diet without carbs and vegetables will really hit your energy levels. Be sure that you balance your diet.

Protein accomplishes plenty, but is not the silver bullet.

HOW TO MAKE IT WORK

I did the math. Now how do I eat all this food? How will I have the time?

Well, the answer is simpler than the execution.

I started the day with a big protein rich breakfast. I recommend prepping all but the eggs the night before.

I meal prepped once a week.

I brought a meal or two to work and then would reheat something for dinner. Food access was a luxury, but I had to figure out how to sustain it when I got my one or two days off that week.

Here is your plan.

You now have your target for protein.

Take the list of proteins from above and circle the ones you like.

Buy some eggs/egg whites or a vegetarian equivalent and use that for breakfast.

Having a consistent breakfast gives you a ritual. You also start the day without the stress of asking what are we going to eat?

You should experiment with adding a different protein every week. It expands your meal possibilities and will create new favorites. Even a different cut of a favorite like chicken creates variety. Swap boneless thighs for the usual white meat. Garbanzos or edamame for lentils.

Live a little.

Add spices to your protein. You can transform your protein without adding many calories. You can use marinades too, but be cautious - this is where you can add lots of calories and sugars quickly.

Your menus and shopping lists can be done easily with your favorite AI app.

Tip: A preheated 400°F (204°C) oven can cook many of the week’s proteins in less than 20 minutes on a sheet tray or two. Equally, rice, beans and lentils can be done quickly, and most likely you have a gadget you can set a button and walk away.

A FEW THINGS TO WATCH

With protein being the focus everywhere, marketing has added it to everything imaginable: cereal, waffles, coffee, chips, pasta, popcorn, soda, and even water.

Protein is emphasized on almost every package.

Protein additions on the label don’t automatically make that product healthier. You should also consider the addition of the item’s calories, added sugars, and saturated fats.

Food quality still matters.

There are a few more pitfalls to consider when incorporating protein into your diet.

Trying to be perfect, not enjoying your food to reach goals, or worrying about the meal is often more counterproductive than the act itself.

Be kind to yourself.

You can also eat too many calories when trying to reach your protein goals for the day. Be honest and also try to make the best choices you can.

Focusing on protein was part of improving my life in several ways:

I started feeling fuller longer and was satisfied after I ate. This was/is helpful when you are around temptations at work.

Second, I noticed my body was changing.

I really felt the difference at the gym. This took a few months, but my sessions improved and the mirror wasn’t something I tried to avoid.

The biggest impact was my focus and overall brain function. I felt sharper and didn’t crash like I had before.

I spent decades knowing exactly where my protein came from.

What grade it was. What it cost. How it tasted.

I just never knew how much I actually needed.

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A comment, a restack, or sharing it with a friend is one of the simplest and most generous ways to support creative work right now. It takes a moment, but it makes a real difference.

Educational only — not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health, diet, or exercise routine.

SOURCES

These are some of the sources I used to understand the research and make my own decisions.

Maybe this is just what 40 feels like.

There was a morning years into my job that I slept the whole night. Eight hours.

When I woke up, I felt like I was walking through a swamp. I just felt slow, foggy and irritable at everything for no apparent reason.

I remember thinking to myself, how am I tired after just having the best sleep?

I had felt terrible many times before, and always knew the reason. This time I had the hours on my side and still couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t forty, or at least I didn’t know at the time.

Working in hospitality does not protect your sleep.

You end your shift late. Wired not tired.

You’ve spent the whole time working full speed, making decisions and solving problems. Then you are supposed to go straight to bed.

You do this for a while and then you start finding ways to help with this. So you discover something to take the edge off. Maybe a drink or two after close.1

Most nights… It felt like it was helping. But it definitely wasn’t. Being sedated and having a healthy sleep are not the same thing.

Alcohol seems to get you to sleep faster and also wrecks what happens after. That’s why it can become such a powerful routine. At least the falling asleep part.

That routine continued and I knew that something was wrong when I would get the hours I wanted but after I woke up, I never felt rested.

There’s a big difference between how long you’re asleep and the quality of it once you get there. The time is the same, but there is so much that can differ.

Sleep moves through multiple stages and the order matters. When sleep becomes fragmented (stress, alcohol, etc.) or doesn’t follow the normal pattern, that is when eight hours of sleep can feel very different.

Most people work 8 hours. Sorry, hospitality people. Knowing that someone worked eight hours doesn’t tell you how they actually worked.

Let’s look at two 8-hour shifts.

The first one, you go through your tasks in order. Getting the tougher things done while sharp, and then clock out having something to show for it.

The second, you are interrupted every twenty minutes, take an extra long lunch, and spend half the shift recovering from distractions. You go home having accomplished nothing.

Same eight hours on the punch card. Different shifts.

Now imagine that the second shift started at 4pm Monday, 7pm Tuesday, and 9am Wednesday.

Sound familiar?

The second shift, that’s non-restorative sleep.

One of the biggest disruptors of our sleep is actually something different from stress and alcohol.

It is sleep timing and it interacts with your circadian rhythm.

We constantly bargain with ourselves, promising ourselves more sleep tomorrow or a payback on the weekend.

While a baseline of hours is needed, another important factor is the time we go to bed and when we wake up.

The most irregular sleepers were 26 percent more likely to have a major cardiovascular event. This is observational, so it shows a pattern rather than proving the cause. It also tracked 72,269 people with devices rather than questionnaires, which is unusually good for this kind of study.2

Your body needs consistency. It needs to know that sleep is coming.

Dramatically changing your sleep can be like repeatedly changing your time zone.

I started putting these ideas into practice and my sleep improved.

The minute I started guarding my sleep timing on both sides, the change became noticeable.

I went to bed 90 minutes after work each day and treated that as my bedtime.

I then set the alarm for the same time every day, even on the weekends.

I found that the wake-up consistency was more important than bedtime even though I protected both.

I paired the wake-up with getting outdoor exposure to help sunlight set my circadian clock.

The days that the job interrupted on either side I did my best to stay within 60-90 minutes of my optimal timing.

Once sleep stopped being the afterthought, everything else started arranging itself around it.

When you make things non-negotiable, they become more successful.

I had several things that needed to change.

Sleep was the one I couldn’t run from. It became one of the few things I could control.

Someone once told me, “This is what getting older feels like.”

Looking back, I don’t think it was.

My body spent years trying to sleep on a schedule that rarely stayed the same.

There were even stretches where I got the hours. The problem was I never had the consistency.

The morning I couldn’t explain earlier… It wasn’t that eight hours was the wrong number.

I was sleeping.

My body just never knew when that sleep was coming.

Live well,

Nathan

I spent much of my career trying to make guests forget the clock. Not in a sinister way. Just in the way that anybody who loves hospitality understands. We want the room to feel right before anyone understands why .

You want the first drink to loosen something slightly. The bread service should arrive before anyone asks for it. Share plates should land in the middle of the table making everyone feel like they already decided they are going to have a good night. The sound of the room changes the way that you talk and interact with each other.

Then the meal becomes something larger than hunger. This is the whole point and was always the whole point.

A great restaurant is designed to make your night feel pleasurable and worth repeating. The night is also orchestrated to make you eat more than you’re meant to.

These two things aren’t in conflict. When you see how the whole thing works, you can stop blaming yourself for what happened while you were there. The hunger you came in with is just a normal signal. A well-designed restaurant meal is anything but.

The food is prepared for you. Every decision about flavor has been tested and perfected. The levels of salt, fat, acid, and sweetness were executed better than most of us will make at home. This isn’t a trap. This is the craft.

Think about what happens before anyone on your table orders the main course. A server will come and ask you if you want to start with drinks. You don’t usually drink, so the server will make you something with fresh-squeezed juice and a house-made shrub. You are convinced it’s something worth having. The warm bread hits the table with butter, spreads, and crunchy salt to enhance it. The bread you will be thinking about the next day.

A good server knows how to make people feel cared for. They’re able to read the mood of the night and make recommendations with confidence. They take all the friction out of deciding. “We have beautiful prawns tonight. They were flown in this morning. I’d recommend you get a few appetizers for the table.“

By the time the entrée arrives, most people have already made a series of decisions in favor of more. They don’t feel like decisions because they feel like a good night getting started.

I spent years tinkering with dishes until they were right. I added a little more crunch, a touch more salt, a few drops of acid. A spoon of butter splashed into a sauce to make the richness come alive. Umami, salt, fat, temperature, and texture were all tuned so that the next bite would feel as good as the first.

The plate itself was warmed just for your steak or chilled for your seafood tower or salad. While these details seem very small, no one notices them when they’re right, but everyone notices them when they’re wrong.

The goal is never to make someone lose control. The goal is to make sure nothing interrupts the pleasure of eating it. Every plate is designed to be memorable.

The dessert menu arrives when everybody is already full. Nobody needs dessert. But then someone asks, “We should at least look, right?”

People stay much longer than they planned. They share crab legs or lobster tails because it felt festive. They ordered desserts because someone else wanted one. They ordered more cocktails to keep tonight alive.

Sometimes it’s simpler than all of this. When is the next time you’re gonna have a night like this? Why not treat yourself the way you want on a real occasion? This is a genuine feeling, not something manufactured.

Most overeating done in restaurants doesn’t happen because someone lacked the discipline. It happens because dinner stopped being about hunger halfway through.

After the appetizers, the reasons to continue felt completely legitimate. That is also when you remember that you ordered the truffled mac and cheese and garlic fries to go with your steak.

This is not an argument for eating with less pleasure. A great restaurant meal is one of the best parts about being alive. I’ve spent 25 years trying to give people more of them.

There is a difference between choosing to continue and not realizing you had a choice.

Once you understand that the experience has been designed to make your enjoyment so easy to continue, you get to decide where enough is for you.

The goal is not to eat any less joyfully. It’s to stop mistaking a beautifully designed meal for a personal failure.

Live well,

Nathan

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Every two weeks I examine the changes that matter most and the evidence behind them.

Further Reading

People tend to eat more with familiar company than alone, though the size of the effect varies with context. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31435639/

The Cochrane authors noted that overeating is usually blamed on lack of self-control and personal characteristics.. Anyone who’s worked in the food industry already knew that. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26368271/

Educational only — not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health, diet, or exercise routine.

What is the restaurant moment that always gets you? Leave it below, I read every one.

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Part 3 of 3

New here? Start with Part 1: I Spent 25 Years in Food. I Missed What Was Happening in My Own Body.

People started telling me I looked happier.

Not in the polite way people usually say it. They were trying to solve a puzzle.

What changed? For five years I’d worked on my health: better food, more exercise, better sleep. All of it mattered. What surprised me was how quickly things improved once I stopped working against myself.

The first thing a major life change gives you isn't something new. It's what disappears.

I started noticing how many habits and obligations quietly accumulated over the years. They had accumulated slowly enough that I barely noticed them.

For years I went to Europe to relax because I couldn’t get called into work even if they needed me. I moved there because I wanted a different way to live. When I arrived, there was finally space for myself, space to create. For the first time in years, my mind felt clear. I was present. I wasn’t cramming in a yoga session just to disconnect. I started noticing the world around me again. I heard a dog barking, a couple of people laughing, and noticed how good the breeze felt. The dog was just happy to be running free in the park.

Years in high-pressure environments made stress feel normal. Then slowly it started leaving my body before I fully noticed it. I started sleeping better and waking up with more energy. The symptoms I’d spent years trying to manage started easing with far less effort.

Now my mornings look like this.

I wake up without an alarm. I get my mind ready for the day rather than it being taken from me before it started. Then I have a little ritual where I make coffee. My coffee got smaller because I no longer needed it the same way. This moment is for me to enjoy. Coffee is no longer a bridge carrying my tired body to more intensity.

Sometimes it’s a social moment shared with friends. Either way, we take our time. No more rushing. No more to-go cups. Understanding this difference was enormous.

It’s something that I didn’t know until I lived it. I stopped reaching for my phone every time it buzzed. The constant feeling that something needed me began to fade. I was no longer trying to compress a week into a single day off.

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The same shift happened with food. I had spent 25 years working with exceptional ingredients. I understood sourcing, the seasonality of foods, and how to choose the best quality. This was my profession. Living it is completely different.

Portugal has a very different relationship with food. You buy what’s in season because that’s what’s available and that’s what’s good. You visit the market run by the next generation of the same family that’s operated it for years. You build meals around what looks good that day instead of forcing ingredients into a plan that you already created. Sometimes dinner changes because you walk past something too good to leave behind.

That way of eating changes more than the meal itself.

After eating, I simply feel good here. That sounds obvious until you realize how many years I spent eating things that immediately made me feel worse. I had become used to eating standing up, missing a meal because of a meeting, or having Uber deliver food to my house after work so I could call it breakfast. Here, meals are something I make time to savor.

I changed too much at once to know what did the work. What I know is that here, the things I was already trying to do stopped requiring effort.

Your environment decides how much effort your health costs you.

Some environments make healthy choices feel like another job. Others make them feel like the normal way you live.

I’m not telling you to move to Portugal. I’m telling you to stop treating your environment as something separate from your health.

You don’t have to move countries to test this. Start with the parts of your day that constantly feel rushed or harder than they need to be.

No supplement I ever took made healthy living feel this easy. Changing my environment did.

Live well,

Nathan

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Start at the beginning:
Part 1 → I Spent 25 Years in Food. I Missed What Was Happening in My Own Body.
Part 2 → Endurance Is Not Health

Educational only — not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health, diet, or exercise routine.

What in your environment is quietly working against you and what would it take to change it?

There is a version of eating that looks healthy from the outside.

I was surrounded by food I intimately understood. I spent decades learning what makes it work. I tasted and moved constantly. I knew more about what was on that plate than almost anyone.

I spent a career inside that version and I was wrong about something fundamental the entire time. The belief I carried through all the openings, private dinners, and menu changes was that if you move enough, the food stops mattering as much.

It wasn’t just me. Most of the industry holds this thought and most still do.

Early in my career I ate the way kitchens eat. Cold staff meals in a hallway or dry storage closet. Food devoured behind the line between service. A steak burrito was eaten at midnight in a few bites on the way out. Eating was an afterthought to a life that was always too full to stop.

Later, I was the one sitting in the dining room approving menu changes. Selling new dishes to senior executives over a proper tasting. From the outside it looked like I had figured something out but that was often the first thing I had eaten all day. I was still running on cortisol and espresso lattes. The setting had changed even though the body was the same.

High stress and a few hours of sleep. Mainlining espresso to fill in where energy should have been. A stomach that complained regularly and got ignored every time. I told myself all the movement cancelled it out. That the physical intensity of a kitchen shift bought me something metabolically. It seemed like a good story but I never looked too hard at whether it was true.

Then I went to Europe. Several times, over several years.

The food was different but what mattered more were the things I barely noticed at the time.

The thirty minutes of company before you ordered. The two hour meals. The sharing of multiple dishes in the center of the table. The long walk home afterwards.

My weight started coming down and the inflammation had settled. The stomach that had been complaining for years suddenly went quiet and my skin looked much better. When I looked in the mirror I looked younger and I felt good before noon and coffee.

After the first trip I slipped straight back into old patterns. All the symptoms returned quickly and I was too busy to stop and address it. That pattern repeated itself across multiple trips before I was willing to accept what it was telling me.

The body was speaking clearly every time. I just did not have the bandwidth to hear it.

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When I finally accepted what Europe had been showing me, I stopped looking for a better diet and started changing how I ate.

I brought food to work instead of waiting until I was starving. I stopped eating late at night. I gave my body long stretches without food. None of it felt dramatic at the time. The alcohol was the last thing I looked at and the first thing that made a measurable difference when I pulled back. I am not saying I stopped. I am saying I stopped using it the way I had been using espresso. What surprised me was how quickly my body responded. My sleep changed first then I started waking up differently. I felt good before coffee.

I felt better tired. I even ordered a smaller chef coat.

That distinction was worth paying attention to. Exhaustion is often the cost of a full life. But exhaustion that comes with brain fog, broken sleep, digestive issues, and a body that feels like it is working against you usually has a cause. For me, the cause wasn’t how much I was doing. It was how I was eating around all of it.

The question worth sitting with is not what you are eating.

It is whether eating is a deliberate act or just another consequence of your schedule.

Live well,

Nathan

If you've made a change like this yourself, I'd like to hear what shifted first.

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Educational only — not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health, diet, or exercise routine.

Go deeper

The personal change came first. The science gave me language for what I had been noticing.

If this topic interests you, these are three pieces worth exploring.

• Later meals, worse metabolic health.
  A 2023 review found that eating later in the day is linked to more metabolic disorders, while an earlier breakfast and earlier dinner improve blood sugar control.
  BaHammam & Pirzada, Clocks & Sleep, 2023 → https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10528427/

• Later meals, worse sleep.
  A 2024 study of over 7,000 adults found that eating later in the day — and eating more often — were both linked to measurably worse sleep quality.
  Yan et al., PLOS ONE, 2024 → https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0308172

• Meal timing shapes weight and metabolism.
  A 2025 review found that eating earlier in the day supports better insulin sensitivity, while late-night eating is linked to impaired glucose control and more fat storage.
  Reytor-González et al., Nutrients, 2025 → https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/17/13/2135

Founder’s Story • Part 2 of 3

New here? Part 1 is where it started: I Spent 25 Years in Food. I Missed What Was Happening in My Own Body.

Go home. That’s why you have a team.

My wife said it more than anyone. My boss, team and my friends said it. I usually heard it from people who hadn’t gone home either.

That’s the first thing that nobody tells you about the industry. The advice I was given and the behavior that I saw were completely separate universes. I learned very quickly that what gets rewarded isn’t balance or time with your family.

It’s your presence.

Things ran better when I was in the building. I knew it, my team knew it, so I stayed. Eight hours was a half day. Nobody made me do it, but the culture rewarded it. Somewhere along the way I started measuring my value by how much of myself I could give to it.

I got in early most days to get ahead or stay prepared. Then when I was about to go home, someone took an early out, a VIP walked in, or a banquet doubled in size. And somehow I was always the person expected to save the day. Every day offered a different reason to stay. Especially if I had plans.

One night, my wife and I had hockey tickets and planned to grab something to eat before the game. I was supposed to leave work and meet her. Something came up, then something else did. I kept telling myself I just needed a little more time.

I never left.

The tickets went unused, and she went home without me. At the time, I treated it like another night when work had to come first. Looking back, that was the pattern. There was always a reason to stay, and the people I cared about were usually the ones expected to understand.

I worked six days a week for months at a time. My body was screaming at me that it needed rest. I started snapping at people who were nice to me and my fifth coffee at 4pm wasn’t working anymore. I couldn’t handle one more problem. My day off came, and it wasn’t rest. I needed to check in with a friend, pay my bills, or visit a doctor. Instead, I was still reading emails and making sure I had staffing for tomorrow’s service.

Then, another successful hotel opening, a five-star rating, a promotion with a larger bonus. Friends in the industry told me I was doing something great. I took it as proof I was doing the right thing. I used that to convince myself the cost was worth it. If the approach was wrong, why did it keep getting rewarded?

Endurance and health are two separate things.

I confused one for the other for most of my career. Fatigue that didn’t resolve after a night’s sleep or a day off. Joint pain from being on my feet all day. Gut issues I wrote off as stress at the time. I forgot what calm felt like, even when I appeared to be calm.

Hospitality is built on a particular kind of pride. The ability to make people remember how they felt. Spinning a plate as you finished garnishing the food for a VIP. Surprising your team by showing up on a holiday you had off and being the person in the room that everyone depends on. That type of pride produces genuinely extraordinary work. That work overshadows your ability to hear your body. Hearing your body means admitting limitations. In a culture built around performance and presence, limitation feels like weakness.

No one around me was talking about what chronic stress does to the body over time.

I can’t say the work caused it. But I know it wasn’t helping, and I know I kept ignoring what my body was trying to tell me.

I thought exhaustion was the cost of doing something meaningful.

The knowledge existed. It just was not part of my conversation.

I did not understand yet that the work would take more than I had to give.

Continue the story → Part 3: What Portugal Taught Me That Supplements Never Could

Live well,

Nathan

Educational only — not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health, diet, or exercise routine.

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Founder’s Story • Part 1 of 3

I spent 25 years inside the food industry, including as Executive Chef of the Bellagio, working at a level where you learn things most people never see. Not just cooking techniques, but how food is sourced, processed, marketed, and scaled. I understood supply chains and what “from the source” actually meant. I could read a menu and tell you what the chef cared about and what they were trying to cover up.

What I could not do was apply that knowledge to myself.

The diagnosis came slowly, then all at once.

Something had felt off for years. I interpreted the signals as the cost of doing business.

My fatigue was dedication. My poor sleep was ambition.

I was on my feet 10 plus hours a day. I treated stress like an occupational hazard. For years I believed that this was simply how life felt when you worked hard enough.

Then came the diagnosis. I had an autoimmune condition.

My first reaction was relief. At least I knew what this is, but that feeling was short-lived. A doctor had identified an autoimmune condition and offered a treatment pathway. The treatment was designed to manage it, not resolve it.

When I asked if I needed to worry, the answer was direct. My doctor explained that the condition carried a risk of cancer and would need ongoing monitoring.

I’m not here to criticize. For many autoimmune conditions, the goal isn’t to eliminate the disease. It’s to manage it well enough that it doesn’t take over your life. I was told the condition would never go away. But the more I learned, the more interested I became in addressing the gap between managing my symptoms and understanding what was driving it.

I still get regular medical follow-up. The lifestyle changes sit alongside that care, not in place of it.

So I started reading.

Not wellness content or social media health advice. I read peer-reviewed research on inflammation, autoimmune disease, and studies from some of the top medical institutions in the world. What I found changed the direction of my life. I started realizing the stress I was living under wasn’t abstract. My body was responding to it constantly.

My situation is not yours but there were a few things that changed my health more than anything else. The first was sleep quality, not quantity. Nine hours of fragmented sleep did less for me than seven hours of genuinely restorative sleep. I stopped treating sleep as recovery time left over after work was done and started treating it as the foundation everything else rested on.

The second was reducing the load instead of fighting symptoms. I started paying attention to what was constantly putting my body under stress. The question became: what in my life keeps adding fuel to the embers?

That’s when things really started to change.

The third was actually changing the pace of my life. I had tried adding massage and meditation to a lifestyle that was exhausting me.

Sometimes adding good things to what you’re already doing makes everything worse.

The hardest part was realizing how disconnected I had become from what healthy even felt like. Once I started paying closer attention, there was far more room for improvement than I had imagined.

It wasn’t perfection that changed things. It was paying attention consistently and asking better questions.

That’s what this is.

Searching for answers after you’ve been told there aren’t any.

Live well,

Nathan

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Continue the story → Part 2: Endurance is not Health

^{Educational only — not medical advice. Consult your physician before changing your health, diet, or exercise routine.}

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Chronic psychological stress appears to interfere with the body's ability to switch off an inflammatory response. That doesn't mean stress caused my condition, or that reducing it cured anything. It meant the way I was living wasn't biologically neutral.
Cohen et al., PNAS, 2012