Part 2: Preparation Matters

You do not begin anything serious without preparing for it, mentally and physically. That is true whether you are starting a business, changing your body, or deciding that this year will not look like the last one. After reading the responses to It’s January and I’m Getting Started, it became obvious that people are not short on motivation. They are short on direction.

You can ask one hundred people what to do next and get one hundred answers. I am not interested in pretending there is a single right one. I can only tell you what helped me. But before any of that matters, there is something you need to accept. Preparation is your responsibility, and preparation begins with educating yourself.

Most of us believe we eat well. We say it casually, almost defensively. Most of us are wrong.

We are taught in school that humans originated in the ocean. If you believe that story, even loosely, then salt suddenly becomes less optional. Yet the Food and Drug Administration presents a food pyramid that prioritizes carbohydrates while barely acknowledging the minerals the body actually runs on. I am not talking about table salt. Sodium is only one piece. Magnesium and potassium matter just as much, if not more. Potassium, in particular, keeps the lights on.

Eric Berg points out in his videos that the recommended daily intake of potassium is about four thousand seven hundred milligrams. Then he does something that should make everyone uncomfortable. He shows what that amount looks like in real food. It is an absurd volume. Enough that even someone who eats competitively would hesitate. Yet mention potassium in the United States and people immediately reach for bananas, which sit near the bottom of the list.

That was my first real lesson. Question everything, especially when the guidance comes from institutions that assume one size fits all.

Once I understood how much mineral support the body actually needs, I started juicing with discipline that bordered on obsession. Celery, spinach, kale, green apples, ginger, lemon and carrots are my drink. Sometimes avocado, pit included. Sometimes watermelon rind, which is loaded with potassium and almost always thrown away. The point is simple. The salts your body needs come from Sun-drenched green foods.

There is also such a thing as too much at once. Potassium does not play nicely when you flood your system. Overdo it and the itis does not fade quickly. Some lessons you only learn by feeling them.

I spent months sipping juice all day, convinced I was doing something virtuous. What I did not realize was that I was quietly working against myself. Every time you eat, insulin enters the bloodstream. Eat constantly and insulin never leaves. The body adapts by tuning it out. Resistance sets in. Weight follows.

This is where most conversations about diet fall apart. It is not only what you eat. It is when you eat.

Plain popcorn still spikes insulin. Unsalted pretzels do the same. The body does not care that you skipped the butter. If you understood that every snack triggers the same hormonal response, you would stop pretending these choices live in a different category. They do not. They are closer to soda than we like to admit.

Just before the pandemic, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole after my brother mentioned intermittent fasting. One video from Johns Hopkins University stopped woke me. It explained the digestive system in plain terms and introduced research they had not previously discussed publicly. The message was clear. Insulin resistance improves when the pancreas gets a break.

Eat less often and the system breathes.

Intermittent fasting has its own vocabulary. Feeding windows. Fasting windows. At first I ate within eight hours and fasted for sixteen. Later that window shrank. Eventually I was fasting twenty-three hours, feeding for one. I was eating once a day. The rules were not complicated. During fasting hours, I drank water, tea, and black coffee. Nutrition still mattered. What changed was the mental noise. Food stopped running the day. Time opened up. Focus followed.

From there, I moved into alternate day fasting. The difference was smaller than it sounds. The principle stayed the same. Fewer insulin spikes. Longer stretches of rest. During those stretches, the body enters autophagy, a process worth researching without anyone else interpreting it for you.

The work you put into learning and paying attention prepares you for longer fasts. There is an unexpected side effect. You learn to listen to yourself and your body. You spend less money on food. Eventually, you spend that money replacing clothes that no longer fit.

There is another part of this that rarely gets discussed. Food is social currency. Every gathering revolves around it. When you change how you eat, you change how you move through the world. You will watch people snack continuously without noticing. You will want to explain. Most people are not asking to be helped. They just want you to participate.

If you accept an invitation while fasting, say so in advance. If being around food feels impossible, decline honestly. Tell the truth. The discomfort fades as discipline grows.

Fasting also requires planning the exit. You cannot treat your first meal like a celebration. After extended fasting, the body is not ready for excess. Start slowly. Liquids first. Then vegetables. Let the system come back online at its own pace.

One of the strangest and most satisfying outcomes came afterward. Vegetables tasted sweet. Tomatoes felt like fruit. Grapes were overwhelming. Chocolate, once automatic, tasted flat and unpleasant. That alone was enough to convince me something fundamental had changed.

Preparation matters. The results, in my experience, are worth it.