When I decide to reduce the old dad bod, I made the conscious decision to not look at my diet.

The reasons for this are many but the biggest is that I don’t trust nutritionists. I don’t find their information to be that reliable.

If you look at most of the advice, where does it come from? The first you hear of this advice is on some breakfast show, some woman’s mag, or on the news before the sports. Social media is a massive proponent of random diets.

It’s important to note what follows this advice. Usually there’s a book involved, or some sort of course. That should be a red flag right there. That information has a price. If you do some research on the diet in question, you’ll often come back to the person who’s written the book. If you research the writer you’ll often find that they have no scientific qualifications. Should you be taking their advice then?

What you'll find is that much of the science that backs up their writings is of limited scope. They also use a limited dataset. Then there's the fact they also ignore a wide array of variables which would skew their results. If the data isn't examined in total then how can that diet be reliable? In fact, think of the vast majority of diets over the years and how many are still used? How many of them have since had their findings debunked?

I don't deny that eating junk food is bad, but in moderation there's nothing wrong with it either. I don't buy into the eat more fruit and veggies when the science doesn’t actually back that up. In fact, there is a lot of science that says we should concentrate less on fruit and veggies and more on meat. This is because our bodies can’t access the nutrients found in fruit and veggies all that easy.

I've long held the belief that the best way to eat veggies is to filter them through an animal. In other words, feed the animals vegetables and then eat the animals.

Meat has a higher nutrient density than vegetables. This means that pound for pound meat contains more of the proteins our bodies need. Why would you limit yourself to these needed nutrients?

Another thing that I’ve noticed more and more is that the way we farm vegetables is bad. Farmers tend to grow one crop each year. Some regions have a reputation for this crop or that crop or whatever crop. Sure, much of that has to do with the climate but a lot has to do with markets. This produces an over supply of these crops. This over supply is the reason we have junk food in the first place. The need to supply a large population with food with little cost is vital. But it’s this need that has produced hyper-palatable foods that cause us to eat more. It’s this eating more that causes us to become obese. And this is also the case with fruit and veggies.

Once again, the science is there to back the claims up. So I’m going to create a plan for me that will see me eat nothing but meat for a week, then add in some veggies. I don’t like fruit much because I don’t like their textures. My veggies would be more salad stuff like the following:

• Iceberg Lettuce
• raw Carrots
• pickled Beetroot
• pickled Onions
• Gherkins (pickles to you Americans)

I want to replace my drinks with milk. That won't mean I give up my tea. But I will give up sodas. I'll also cut back on sports drinks. Not because I don't need them, but because they sometimes give me heartburn.

The best thing about eating more meat is you don’t have to worry about how to cook it to get flavour. Vegetables, by and large, are bland. You usually have to add stuff to make them taste appealing. Not so meat. Slap a hunk of beef on a BBQ and it tastes great as is. To me this is an important distinction. Adding things to make something taste good often means adding sugar. Aren’t we supposed to be doing less of that?

All in all time will tell. January is being used as a month to collect data of how I'm tracking. February is going to be the month I start my meat diet. I only have to get Mrs Wookie on board. Wish me luck.