Duncan Forbes Eats With His Fists (and you should too)

We put this off as long as we could.  It is April 15, the day things come due.  You have two months before the Memorial Day, shorts, and no excuse for the extra layer you think is hiding things.  There are slimming silhouettes (Flouser Sack Suit comment notwithstanding) but that only works in air conditioning.

Quick side note, and there is a post about this in my notebook I will get up here in the next few weeks.  The healthier your body is, the better your clothes will look.  Zero exceptions. 

Meet Duncan Forbes.  Duncan is a Nutritional and Fitness Leader, with his own clients and a corporate gig doing the same.  I know Duncan.  He shares responsibility with Dylan for what I think this morning is 3 inches off my waist since the first of the year.   We have had several private sessions around nutrition and health, and the only thing I can tell you that he knows his s**t.  Literally, actually, more on that in a second.

First, get to know him.

 
Another great story about Duncan.    I had just finished running, and it was not pretty, hands tugging shorts, bent over, gasping like a fish on the dock, Duncan comes over and says something encouraging.   My sense of humor is a professional tool but it is also a defense mechanism, so I, between open mouth oxygen gapes, say “I wanna look like you.”  He smiles, and starts walking away, over his back he says, “Don’t be the next Duncan, be the first you.”  And that was a throwaway line.  I don’t even think he meant for me to hear it.  I am going to this guy more often, not for nutrition but for material.

So I lost three inches, and you can see Duncan here, he’s good, right?

Duncan’s first rule.   There is no perfection, so shoot for 80%.   He doesn’t have cheat days, he has truth days.  Truth days.  Before meeting Duncan, I was apparently VERY honest.

 

 

Duncan’s second rule.  Don’t eat products.  Anything that comes in a box he calls a product.  I didn’t ask, but in going over his diet I am not sure he even eats anything wrapped.   If you just tried this rule, no products, nothing processed, for a few days, you would feel something remarkable.  I did.  You feel clean.  And your waist goes in threes.  At least mine did.  For two days, NOTHING would happen.  Then on the third day, hmph.  Something!  On the next third day, Something!  Before I know it, I am in my tailor taking things in instead of letting them out.  And Bob’s your uncle.  (I love that expression, it probably is a little extra here, but whatever).

Duncan’s third rule.  Water.  I know.  He has me drinking 97 ounces of water a day.  I was like, you do know I have a job where I have to sit still for more than 20 minutes at a time?  And who can type in the bathroom with that fan running?  His answer:  I would rather go to the bathroom 8 times a day today than go to the hospital once.   He has a formula for your water intake, when we do the Q & A with him I will ask him, unless me drops it in the comments here.

Vegetables.  Duncan preaches vegetables.  He emailed me, try to eat 3 – 5 fistfuls of vegetables a day.  Now, I am an elite competitive athlete in my prime who has to text while he works out just to keep turning down endorsement deals, performing way way way past the norms of my age bracket,  and still attractive to 20 year olds.  So my requirements might differ from yours.  But they probably don’t.

Duncan measures protein, his other gospel, with his hands, too.  A palm of whatever is 25 grams of protein.  I am like, you measure protein the way my gas pump measures gallons to dollars.  He is like, just try it.  So I am.  I will report back to you.

Week on, weekend off is the way he works.  He drinks Tito’s with a slice of orange on the weekend.  Why?  Because Tito’s is made of corn and not wheat (in addition to not being raised with our birth parents, we have another thing in common – we both don’t tolerate wheat well).  Why an orange slice?  Because orange juice at a bar is a…  product.

Finally, the universal.  The world begins in your head (that’s a tagline of a meditation company I am working on, so shameless plug, sorry).  But the world does.  So I talked to Duncan about that too.   First, I asked him why he does what he does.

Because I give my clients back their own time.

I thought that was cool.   He told me that for him, health in all forms is at the center of everything.  Nutrition is tough to get a handle on, but he said, “If you control your diet, it shows you, you can control other things.  It promotes confidence.  You look down in three weeks and you say that if you can control what you eat, there are other areas of your life where that discipline can be applied, now that you know you have it.”

He concluded, “It’s spiritual.  Spiritual health comes from service.  Service comes only after you can serve yourself.”

I wanted to say, serve yourself anything that isn’t a product, right?  But not everybody wants one liners all day.

If you have questions for Duncan or want to work with him, you can email him at Dforbes@lt.life.  I have seen his work with clients, and it is SO NOT just the stupid wear a rubber band to remind yourself to drink water stuff.  It is science-based, but psychologically and spiritually driven.   Otherwise, I am hitting him up to do a nutrition post answering questions here once in a while.

JB