Diet seems to be a really controversial subject. Some people are into raw foods. Some believe in the cave man diet. Some think we all should become vegans. Some avoid all genetically engineered foods. Some are into organic food. It can be expensive to be on certain diets that are so particular. But, we all are different and have different biological vulnerabilities.  This diet has evolved as time went on and was higher in protein at times than I would recommend!  It is important to do some good research and self experimentation in order to find a healthy diet that works for you!  Edited 9/26/20

My most recent diet is Vegan with my main staple being oatmeal mostly in the form of quick oats that since they are partially cooked in processing I  can eat raw.  I do add some salt to it.  I have been eating them with canned peas. Both are very healthy especially when I add a good multivitamin daily.  I have eaten peanuts at times during those 2 years.  Fresh cooked greens would work better if readily available! I eat frequent small meals. My diet does work for me enabling me to handle my very extremely physical/spiritual training program.  I have been on this program for the last 2 years

 I have to be frugal and I do not fear scientific innovation when it comes to food and nutrition, provided it was done with reasonably good intent(an intuitive value judgement) and has some history(not extremely new). I do use vitamin supplements, but do not use the expensive more natural ones. My calorie restricted vegan low fat diet works well for me and my hard training, but would probably be too harsh for a lot of people.  I do not eat any junk food or add any spices(extra flavoring) to my food.       

This is my past diet history along with my thoughts at the time:

3/16/14: I eat 6 small meals a day about 3 hours apart.  My diet includes vegetables(mostly cooked greens), fruit, whey protein, one tablespoon refrigerated canola or soy oil(meals 1&5 only-not used in cooking-do not fry food), salt(need some to feel okay), oatmeal/brown rice, and a lot of vitamin and mineral supplements.  I take Vitamin C(250-500 mg) with 4 of my meals.  I take a multi-vitamin mineral tablet and B-complex tablet twice a day with meals 1 and 5.    I make sure I get plenty of calcium/magnesium in either my multi-vitamin-mineral tablet or in other added tablets.  I am lately on a very high protein diet – about 140 grams of protein a day.  I can replace rice or oatmeal with fruit.

I did a lot of reading the last 2 days on the subject regarding eating before and after exercise. I did learn a lot. But, I found no need to change the unique approach that I feel works so very well for me. I just figured out why it may be working well for me. I do believe that we all have to figure out what approach works well for us. I do not seem to have any bad days when I exercise, they all are very rough and very similar. I do keep trying to push harder every time.

I do eat a lot of(whey) protein in my 6 small meals(3 hours apart) with one of these meals being shortly after exercising. When I work out in the morning without breakfast, I will not have a lot of glycogen stored in my body, since(I read) the body uses up a lot while one sleeps. This will affect how long I last when doing my intense exercises. I do feel I last long enough to have a lot of positive impact. Often when you subject your body to more challenging conditions(heat and altitude for example) you gain results from doing this. I believe one can train ones body to burn fat more efficiently(thus needing less glycogen in your fuel mix)and also train the body to store more glycogen. One will then find that when you train under more ideal conditions(with more available glycogen-like after carbo-loading), one will be able to last so much longer.

I have read about different people doing quite well doing different things. It can takes a while for the body to adjust to a quite different program. Science often does not take this enough into account as well as other variables. In the past body builders use to believe in training on an empty stomach. Arnold Schwarzenegger did quite well doing this. I read about a person doing quite well exercise-wise on a very low carb diet. We all are different(genetically) and have different goals. So we have to do our own research and figure out what approach works best for us.

Update 8/13/14:  I now have been eating a 7th meals at 2:00 AM on mornings(4:30 AM Monday-Wednesday-Friday)  I do my really intense 2 handed overhead non-stop (modified)dumbbell swing exercise.  This acts a little like carbo loading and allows me to last longer.  I am now able to last 15 minutes non-stop swings, doing first fifty 40 lb swings followed immediately by as many 20 lb swings as i can safely do.   I forgot to mention that I use Lite salt(contains sodium and potassium) a lot to provide the electrolytes I need to exercise really hard and to help hydrate myself adequately especially when it is hot.

Updated 3/31/15:  I have cut my the amount of protein in my diet down quite a bit to around 90 grams a day.   Updated:  May 2015 lowered protein to about 75 grams a day mostly from whey protein.

I do have to focus a lot on my diet in order to stay lean and fit. My body can easily gain weight due to all the stress in my life. I have had periods in which I have had quite a bit more body fat. The main thing is to focus on eating healthier and eating the amount of food that makes you function at your best. Different diets and body types work better for different people. Everyone is different! Addictive type foods can readily sabotage a diet. I do not eat any junk food, but have not done so for a very long time. Just like exercise, diet requires a lot of effort over a long period of time to get good at it. The body has to adjust to any changes one makes in regard to diet and exercise. So one usually does best to make incremental changes and allow the body time to adjust. If you try to do too much too fast, your body and spirit can become overwhelmed and cause you to have a setback. Also, if you do have a setback and lose control of ones diet, one should not give up, but just go right back on your diet with what ever adjustments you can figure out will help make it work better in the future. One should not allow one bad day destroy your diet. Nothing works perfectly. One will have some setbacks, but one just has to try to maintain a constant effort over time.

Updated 7/7/15:  I have been on an austere calorie restricted diet(some people use this type diet to increase their longevity)which along with very intense meditative and cardio exercises is helping me develop an ascetic body type that works really well for spiritual strength and awareness.  I now weight 124 lbs at 5’10”.

8/11/15:  I eat 6-7 meals(usually a meal every 3 hours) a day. I eat really small portions at the beginning of the day and try to build up as much hunger as I can. I then use meditative walking to help me better handle this hunger. I find battling hunger a really effective and challenging spiritual exercise. I do tend to push the edge a lot physically and spiritually and have been doing this for a very long time, so am quite good at doing it safely. I do eat a little more the last 2 meals of the day(6PM&9PM)so that I will have some energy for my 4 AM exercise routine. At 2 AM a couple of hours before I do my dumbbell swing routine(3 days a week) I eat an extra meal/snack of salted oatmeal to give me the extra energy this exercise requires.

8/15/15:  I had to increase my daily calories in my diet and eat a 7th meal of salted oatmeal every night. My body made it clear to me that I could no longer feed off of my remaining body fat, which is very little! Maintaining my current body type will be as hard as it was to get there. Being a spiritual pioneer, it takes me a little while to figure out how to mask adjustments when a transition is required. Have to figure things out on my own since have no really good sources/references to use to guide me. But, after a few days of experimentation I seem to have made the required adjustments to my diet. I do do things to the extreme, but we live in an age where we need to be able to handle really extreme situations. We do live in the “Atomic Age” where we have to have experts who are able to handle situations in which the “margin of error” is extremely small and the consequences of mistakes can be extreme!  I now weight about 120 lbs at 5′ 10″.

6/29/16:  I have eliminated whey protein from my diet, so that I am now getting most of my protein from oatmeal.  I have been using quick oats and eating them raw(they are cooked to some degree in the process that creates them before packaged and sold).  I have been on this diet for a while and it has been working well with my training routine.  I had weighed as much as 150 and have already lost 5 lbs on it.  It seems to be enhancing my spiritual sensitivity a little more.  So my diet is now Vegan.  But, I do not exaggerate the spiritual benefits of being a Vegan like a lot of people seem to do.  I try not to be overly self-righteous!

6/25/17:  I am cutting my calories by a quarter by having meals every 4 hours instead of 3(6 meals done around the clock). WHY am I doing this: because I am not reaching people well enough with my fantastic spiritual ideas and techniques. So I need to intensify my stoicism, which I have done in the past with a sort of hunger training. I need to bring really strong(spiritual) survival energy to this world. I do not fool around in a world that is in denial about how backwards it is spiritually! I weigh around 138 lbs at 5’10” but am extremely fit physically and spiritually! I am a spiritual athlete which is quite different from a physical athlete. A spiritual athlete has a body conditioned to handle really strong emotions and the physical stress that comes with it!

7/16/17  Cut down to 5 meals(3AM, 8AM,12PM.5PM&10PM.)

8/1/17  I am reducing my calories even further since my weight has stayed even for about a week at between 130 and 131 lbs. My metabolism has obviously quickly adjusted most likely as a result of how my meditative exercises help my body to quickly adjust to a slower metabolism. I feel I am still not intense enough, since I am not yet getting the support I really need for the fantastic spiritual theories and techniques I have developed! One less meal(4) and around 1300 calories. I started yesterday and already feel I can handle it. This diet may be temporary, I may go back to 1600 calories, I may not. All I want is to keep getting stronger spiritually and so far that is happening.   I have done similar cycling before. It helps makes my spiritual energy sharper and more intense! I can handle spiritual states others are unable to handle and the body has a lot of impact on what type of spiritual state you are able to maintain. I need really strong survival type spiritual energy and I need to be very much on the edge or fine line that can make that happen. I need to be in an extreme state that is opposite from those that are so addicted to various drugs/desires that they have really tuned out this challenging reality that exists on this Earth with all of its problems rooted in the spiritual. So many people have their spiritual perspective distorted or inadequate and have no idea how tuned out they are spiritually as compared to what is required by the demands of these times!  I continue to take the same amount of vitamin and mineral supplements:    I take a multivitamin-mineral tablet and 500 milligrams Vitamin C at my 6 AM meal,  take a calcium-magnesium-zinc(1/3 daily value) at 12 AM and PM meal with 500 milligrams vitamin C, and I take a B complex vitamin tablet and 500 milligram Vitamin C at 6 PM meal.

8/16/17  Went back to 5 meals(1600 calories)with about 50 gm protein on 8/4/17(4 meals 1300 calories lasted only 4 days).  I has a muscle spasm in my lower back that led to a minor injury and threatened my training program so I decided that 1300 calories with about 40 gm protein was too hard on my body.  1600 calories is rough, but it is working well!  It may be a diet that can last long term, since I am not losing weight on it!

9/19/17  Back at 6 meals a day(1900 calories)  weigh 124 at 5’10’, but am really healthy physically and spiritually with spiritual ascetic body type!

10/13/17  Still on same program, but will add an extra meal when I feel I need one to keep my energy up!  My weight is staying even and I still am able to do my extremely intense spiritual exercise routine.  I do a really intense 3/4 of a mile meditative run every other day and a 6 minute nonstop modified meditative 2 handed 20 lb dumbbell swing exercise the days I do not run!  Here is a link to my intense dumbbell swing exercise:

https://astrogoodwin.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/crunches-stretches-13-minutes-non-stop-2-hand-overhead-behind-back-dumbbells-swings-and-1-mile-meditative-runshort-walk/