What It Takes to Get Strong 2
There are six banana bread recipes in my cooking log, and only one of them is really good. That’s why I started keeping the log in the first place — not to track anything about myself, but to keep the good banana bread recipe from getting lost among the mediocre ones.
I didn’t think of it as a record of me. But I got serious about weightlifting in 2024, and I recently became curious whether my eating had changed since I got more engaged in lifting. So I went back through the log. Here’s what I learned.
2023: Cooking Like a Semi-Vegetarian
In 2023, I cooked like a semi-vegetarian without saying so. I made many dishes centered on beans, lentils, chickpeas, and tofu as the main proteins. My repertoire included an East Asian kitchari, Cuban-style black beans, and the First Mess sweet potato coconut milk lentil stew. I made scrunched cabbage with almonds more than anything else that year. A little chicken. Less and less beef.
2024–25: The Protein Climbs
In 2024, I got more engaged in lifting. I started hunting for ways to build muscle. Legumes dropped by half. Animal protein rose. Tofu BBQ gave way to eggplant lasagna, which gave way to grilled dishes. By 2025, I was cooking meat and fish several times a week: flank steak, roasted salmon, brook trout, and a Portuguese fish stew we’d had out and loved. Madison Park granola on repeat.
2026: Chicken Takes Over
In 2026, my partner decided to restrict animal fats, and my cooking shifted again. Green chili chicken, BBQ thighs, mustard-roasted chicken, and seedy wings. Beans and red meat fell back. I more or less stopped baking: we’d also gotten Whole30-ish, restricting many types of carbs (wheat, rice, alcohol). The sweet things in the 2026 log are shrubs and teas, not pudding or cake. These past two months, I’ve been prepping for my second powerlifting meet. That means more protein, more carbs, more food, full stop. I’m still mostly off the alcohol, fried food, white bread, and sweets.
What Didn’t Change
Through all these shifts, my diet stayed vegetable-focused. According to my recipe log, more than 40% of my cooking each year centers on vegetables. Salads, sautés, roasts, and braises are all there, along with the dish I’ve made most over the past three years: a roasted potato dish based on David Tanis’s Patatas Bravas (truly delicious every time). So when the beans receded, it wasn’t vegetables that filled the space. I was already eating those. It was lean proteins like white meat pork and chicken.
What the Log Can’t See
The one shift the log doesn’t show, because it isn’t recipe-driven: I’ve pretty much stopped drinking. Yes, there’s the occasional French 75, a Lillet, a glass of wine. But more often it’s fizzy water, iced tea, a hibiscus shrub, or a non-alcoholic Fieldwork Day Money. All of it good.
I’m a more serious athlete now, someone who’s very happy working out four or five days a week and is totally addicted to the mental health benefits, as well as to improved mobility and strength. But I’m also a much more conscious eater, more connected to the joy of food as fuel that powers me as I move through the world, embracing seasonality and local farmers, and making as many things as possible myself.
What It Takes to Get Strong 2
There are six banana bread recipes in my cooking log, and only one of them is really good. That’s why I started keeping the log in the first place — not to track anything about myself, but to keep the good banana bread recipe from getting lost among the mediocre ones.
I didn’t think of it as a record of me. But I got serious about weightlifting in 2024, and I recently became curious whether my eating had changed since I got more engaged in lifting. So I went back through the log. Here’s what I learned.
2023: Cooking Like a Semi-Vegetarian
In 2023, I cooked like a semi-vegetarian without saying so. I made many dishes centered on beans, lentils, chickpeas, and tofu as the main proteins. My repertoire included an East Asian kitchari, Cuban-style black beans, and the First Mess sweet potato coconut milk lentil stew. I made scrunched cabbage with almonds more than anything else that year. A little chicken. Less and less beef.
2024–25: The Protein Climbs
In 2024, I got more engaged in lifting. I started hunting for ways to build muscle. Legumes dropped by half. Animal protein rose. Tofu BBQ gave way to eggplant lasagna, which gave way to grilled dishes. By 2025, I was cooking meat and fish several times a week: flank steak, roasted salmon, brook trout, and a Portuguese fish stew we’d had out and loved. Madison Park granola on repeat.
2026: Chicken Takes Over
In 2026, my partner decided to restrict animal fats, and my cooking shifted again. Green chili chicken, BBQ thighs, mustard-roasted chicken, and seedy wings. Beans and red meat fell back. I more or less stopped baking: we’d also gotten Whole30-ish, restricting many types of carbs (wheat, rice, alcohol). The sweet things in the 2026 log are shrubs and teas, not pudding or cake. These past two months, I’ve been prepping for my second powerlifting meet. That means more protein, more carbs, more food, full stop. I’m still mostly off the alcohol, fried food, white bread, and sweets.
What Didn’t Change
Through all these shifts, my diet stayed vegetable-focused. According to my recipe log, more than 40% of my cooking each year centers on vegetables. Salads, sautés, roasts, and braises are all there, along with the dish I’ve made most over the past three years: a roasted potato dish based on David Tanis’s Patatas Bravas (truly delicious every time). So when the beans receded, it wasn’t vegetables that filled the space. I was already eating those. It was lean proteins like white meat pork and chicken.
What the Log Can’t See
The one shift the log doesn’t show, because it isn’t recipe-driven: I’ve pretty much stopped drinking. Yes, there’s the occasional French 75, a Lillet, a glass of wine. But more often it’s fizzy water, iced tea, a hibiscus shrub, or a non-alcoholic Fieldwork Day Money. All of it good.
I’m a more serious athlete now, someone who’s very happy working out four or five days a week and is totally addicted to the mental health benefits, as well as to improved mobility and strength. But I’m also a much more conscious eater, more connected to the joy of food as fuel that powers me as I move through the world, embracing seasonality and local farmers, and making as many things as possible myself.