Anti-optimization Guide
The Anti-Optimization Guide to Eating Well:
Why simplifying your nutrition may be the most effective form of optimization.
We live in an age of optimization.
Optimize your protein. Optimize your sleep. Optimize your hormones. Optimize your workouts. Optimize your supplements. Optimize every last micronutrient.
And to be clear, I'm not against optimizing — I use the word myself, and I optimize plenty of things in my own life. But optimization can work against you when it comes at the expense of simplicity. Break something simple into enough isolated pieces and you don't end up with a better version of it — you end up with something more complicated that's easy to lose the point of.
And somehow, in the pursuit of better health, eating has become incredibly complicated.
But what if true optimization isn't about adding more?
What if it's about simplifying?
Optimization vs. reductionism
There's an important distinction between optimization and reductionism.
Reductionism takes something complex and breaks it down into individual parts. In nutrition, that can mean focusing intensely on one vitamin, one mineral, one macronutrient, or one isolated compound — while losing sight of the food it came from and how the pieces work together.
A more holistic approach asks a different question: What does the whole food provide?
A serving of beef isn't simply protein. It also contains B vitamins, minerals, amino acids, creatine and other naturally occurring compounds.
Liver isn't simply a source of vitamin A. It also provides vitamin B12, iron, copper, folate and other nutrients.
Heart isn't simply a source of CoQ10. It also provides protein and B vitamins.
Fruit isn't simply carbohydrates.
And honey isn't simply sugar.
Whole foods come packaged as a matrix of nutrients and compounds that exist together within the food.
That doesn't mean every nutrient in food works magically together, or that supplements have no place. Supplements can be useful when there's a documented need, or when getting a nutrient through food alone is difficult. Often, that difficulty comes down to food quality: when meat and produce are sourced from farms that take care of their land and soil, more of that nutrient density stays intact. Low-quality, mass-produced food is part of why so many people end up supplementing for gaps that better sourcing could have closed in the first place.
But there's a meaningful difference between supplementing a nutrient-dense diet and trying to build a diet around supplements.
When "more" becomes more complicated
We've been conditioned to think that better health requires more.
More supplements.
More powders.
More protocols.
More tracking.
More testing.
More things to remember.
But complexity has a cost.
The more complicated your health routine becomes, the harder it is to sustain. And if you're spending more time managing your health than actually living your life, it may be worth stepping back and asking what really needs to be there.
I'd rather build my foundation around foods that are nutrient-dense, minimally processed and sourced from people I trust.
Then I can make the rest simple.
Nutrient density over nutrient isolation
This is one reason I keep coming back to nutrient density.
Instead of asking, "What supplement do I need to take to get more of this one nutrient?" I think it's more useful to first ask: What foods naturally contain it?
That might mean adding more quality beef, eggs, dairy, fruit or organ meats to your diet. It might mean learning how to prepare liver in a way you actually enjoy. It might mean buying directly from a local ranch or farm when that option is available to you. If you want a starting point, this is exactly what my animal-based guide walks through — the basics and the foundation, without turning it into a project.
The goal isn't to create a perfect diet. It's to create a strong foundation.
Optimization starts before the food reaches your plate
There's another piece of nutrition that often gets overlooked: where your food comes from.
Optimization doesn't end with the nutrition label. And honestly, labels themselves can only take you so far — "grass-fed," "natural," "pasture-raised" — these terms get used loosely enough that they don't always mean what you'd hope. The label isn't the thing. The farm is.
This doesn't have to mean overhauling how you shop. A simple place to start is just one food: beef. Instead of relying on a label, find a farmer you can actually trust — one you can visit if they're somewhat local to you, order from for delivery, or just take a little time to research yourself. I keep a list of farmers I trust for exactly this reason, and I'd rather point people toward real farms than toward a word on a package.
For me, this is where nutrition, local agriculture and food sovereignty intersect — but you don't need to think about it in those terms to benefit from it. You just need to know that food quality starts long before it reaches your plate, and starting with even one ingredient sourced well is enough.
It's also worth asking whether the rise in nutrient deficiencies over the past few decades tracks with how far we've drifted from well-tended food systems. The closer that connection, the less a diet tends to lean on supplements to fill the gap.
The anti-optimization approach
My version of optimization is surprisingly simple:
Eat real food.
Prioritize nutrient density.
Include quality sources of protein.
Make organ meats part of the conversation.
Choose minimally processed foods.
Learn where your food comes from.
Eat seasonally when you can.
Get outside.
Move your body.
Sleep.
If you want a place to actually start, that's what my animal-based guide is built for — the foundation, laid out simply.
And then stop thinking about it quite so much.
Because maybe the goal isn't to get better at managing an increasingly complicated health routine. Maybe the goal is to build a foundation so strong and so simple that you don't have to think about your health all day.
That's the shift. From optimizing pieces to trusting the whole. Real optimization doesn't complicate things. It gets out of the way.
That's my version of optimization: better inputs, less noise, and a whole-food foundation that does more without asking you to do more.
Final Takeaways
Optimization isn't the enemy here…losing the bigger picture is. It's easy to optimize individual pieces so hard that you forget what they were supposed to add up to in the first place.
Nutrient density beats nutrient isolation. Whole foods carry more than any single nutrient you're chasing, and that's not a bonus — it's the point. The same goes for where your food comes from. Sourcing well is part of the nutrition, not separate from it, and it often does more for you than any supplement stack could.
At the end of the day, simple is sustainable. A foundation you don't have to think about all day is one you'll actually stick with.
The goal was never to do more. It was to build something simple enough to last.
