Trophology
An Eating Blog
by Josh Winslow

I have been weight training seriously for three years and for the past two years I have also been experimenting with different diets and supplements. I have had mixed results. Recently I tried a new diet called trophology, the science of food combining. This diet interested me because it claimed better food digestion and absorption, a healthier colon, and cures for common eating problems. I learned about trophology through a friend who for as long as I have known him seemed to have endless amounts of energy and is very healthy. Trophology is a diet based on proper food combinations, very unlike the Western concept of eating protein, carbohydrates and vegetables together at every meal. 

In each issue I will update this blog with more information. Below is the story about my experiences up until trophology. 

People want to buy supplements for weight problems. Commercialism has told us that certain supplements produce tremendous results. Popular sources that encourage supplement use are fitness and health magazines. They are notorious for encouraging supplement use. Flip through a muscle magazine, if you haven't already, and tally how many different drugs they are advertising. These weight-loss or muscle magazines claim that supplements will work. Many of these supplements are hyped with supported "research" that tricks the consumer into buying them. Western culture has grown fond of supplement use. If, for example, the person looks like they have "water weight", then they can buy a diuretic pill.

Claims about losing fat, gaining muscles or becoming shredded seemed a little far fetched, but I tried it anyhow. I spent tons of money on supplements that claimed wonderful effects but I had poor results. It was a frustrating cycle. People at health stores would exacerbate the problem by claiming certain drugs work more effectively on different people - and I believed it for awhile too. They make it a quest to find your holy grail. After research and spending lots of money, I decided that I would start to find alternative ways to supplement my body without buying supplemental pills, including multi-vitamins. I hope, by eating correctly and gaining proper nutritional yields from the diet I would gain energy and become leaner.

People are informed that cardio-routines will give them a leaner body. The cardio-workouts improve your cardiac health and help burn excess calories but they are not the solution. These workouts do create a leaner body but does not address the nutritional aspect of your body - you are what you eat!

Furthermore, who has time to be constantly running? I certainly didn't - I am a college student with piles of homework! I ride my bicycle almost every day to school, nine miles, I get enough cardio. Gaining and losing weight was a conundrum. For guys the weight isn’t in the right places and for women they never wanted the weight in the first place. Cardio-routines were not the answer for love handles or weight loss.

After hearing about trophology I decided to give it try. My friend lent me a book and the information was really convincing. (No one was making money off of me!) I decided to follow the trophological rules. I immediately began to feel less discomfort after eating meals. I lost 3 lbs after several weeks, too.

Typical American diets of balanced meals cause undesired weight gain. According to Taoist tradition, certain foods have optimal food mixtures. They claim that eating a tomato with soy sauce and vinegar would be a good combination. Why? Both the tomato and the vinegar are acidic thus they will not conflict in the stomach. Certain food combinations work great together! 

Others FAIL! Steak and potatoes FAIL because your stomach creates opposite pH environments. The pH environment for steak conflicts with the potatoes' and so it takes longer for your body to digest the food. This is because conflicting foods create a pH environment that disrupts the bodies enzymes to properly digest food. After a poorly combined meal, you feel heavy and full. Personally during this time, I felt lethargic and wanted to rest. What happens during poor digestion is that the food literally ferments, because of bacteria, while the body strains to digest the food.

The discovery that I had been eating incorrectly was unbelievable. I eliminated cardio-routines that supposedly shredded muscle, stopped using recovery enhancement pills, and limited multi-vitamin supplement use. For several years I was misled and now I was vexed and shocked. I had been told that I needed to take multi-vitamins and this other crap by "experts" if I wanted proper nutrition, but I was never told that food combinations matter! All these years, I just needed to eat correctly! People are told to have a balanced diet but this is garbage. It isn’t about eating a variety of food in one meal, but rather eating nutritious dense foods that also facilitate the best digestion. In other words, people need to properly combine foods! 

This blog will discuss my tragedies and triumphs as I journey through my new diet and exercise. Hopefully, I will teach others from my own mistakes and inspire the benefits of self-cultivation.