Diet and life are tightly interwoven. If your life is out of balance, chances are your diet will be too. There’s no fixing one without the other.

On the flip side, if you resolve to master your diet, your life may well decide to come along for the ride. That was certainly the case for me.

So, let’s take a look back at the messy journey to the ultra-clean, willpower-free diet I enjoy today. The story starts all the way back in 2009, where we find a rather intimidated 24-year-old South African starting his career in the middle of the frigid Norwegian winter.

1. Intelligent Micro-Environment Design (IMED)

The last two years in South Africa were good to me. I had finally discovered the world of personal development and consumed the classics by Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, and Napoleon Hill like an addict.

The timing couldn’t be better: I arrived in the world’s most developed country with only a suitcase, a reasonably well-paying job, and a mind bursting with ideas on how to build a great life. And the best of these ideas was “intelligent micro-environment design,” or IMED.

Having recently recovered from a mercifully mild case of cancer, health was my top priority. So, I applied IMED to improve my diet using a simple rule: Never buy empty calories on my weekly grocery run. As we’ll see in the next sections, my empty-calorie-free home did not magically heal my struggles with unhealthy food. But still, it played an important role by making unhealthy eating much less convenient.

It wasn’t long before IMED spilled over to the rest of my life. I started by setting up automatic monthly investments that left only half my salary for spending. With these savings, IMED soon gave me an ideal home for car-free living with nature in my backyard. This car-free life would eventually help me earn financial freedom at age 34, according to the 4% rule. It also teamed up with my beautiful surroundings to give me lifelong fitness.

Yes, if I had to choose the insight responsible for the most good in my life today, it would be IMED.

2. Zero-Compromise Foods

My diet improved beyond all recognition over the past decade. Every tiny upgrade played its part in boosting either health, enjoyment, practicality, affordability, or sustainability without compromising the others.

There’s no better example of this evolution than my breakfast:

• 2009: Whole-grain cereal with milk and plenty of sugar
• 2009: Fruit muesli with sweetened fruit yogurt replacing the cereal every other day
• 2011: Fresh blueberries in the cereal and raspberries in the muesli
• 2014: A luxurious sprinkle of expensive hemp seeds in both breakfasts
• 2018: 3x cheaper bulk seed purchases to increase variety and volume
• 2020: Dropped sugar and sweetened yogurt in favor of plain Green yogurt
• 2020: More variety with mixed nuts and mixed frozen berries
• 2020: The ideal breakfast described here
• 2021: Some amla powder for an additional health boost

I continue to keep an eye out for further improvements, but honestly, it’s hard to imagine anything better.

As my zero-compromise diet was developing, my zero-compromise life also started to take shape. Believe it or not, life can be happy, healthy, wealthy, productive, and sustainable all at the same time! In fact, this is the core principle behind my writing on Medium.

3. Smart Progress Tracking

My trusty body composition monitor arrived in 2014 and immediately gave me the bad news: Despite plenty of cross-country skiing and daily bicycle commutes, I was carrying around much more fat than I thought.

But then, something quite magical happened: Within six months, my body fat percentage dropped from 20% to 15% all by itself. It seems like my self-image simply refused to accept 20% fat and subconsciously changed my behavior to repair this disconnect. Sometimes the Ego can be useful!

Even earlier, in 2011, I started something called the Graph of Life — a daily morning habit to track my life trajectory. One of the first things I learned from this exercise was the enormous effect my eating habits had on the overall outcome of my day. It took me years to put this knowledge to good use, but this data eventually inspired several of the following steps.

Progress tracking also spilled over to other areas of my life. I’ve monitored my journey to financial freedom since 2014 and my monthly productive hours using RescueTime since 2016. Both these datasets provided a constant stream of insight and inspiration on this journey.

4. Healthy Indulgences

I’ve always been super-motivated to do the right things and unlock the compounding benefits of good choices made early in life. But there was a problem: Every so often, I would run out of willpower and succumb to a self-destructive weekend of binge-watching and binge-eating.

It took far too many of these multi-day binges to make me realize that I was not a robot. Like all other humans, I had to pace myself and look after my happiness, especially when life got tough.

So, three years ago, I did something strange: I splurged on a super-luxurious massage chair. Every time I got an unhealthy craving, I would treat myself to a massage. It wasn’t the magic bullet I was secretly hoping for, but that chair sure kept a lot of empty calories out of my body.

Soon afterward, I decided to make better use of my home’s great location by going on a daily walk in nature. Rediscovery of my badly neglected guitar and piano soon followed, with fresh discoveries of meditation and afternoon napping close behind. Thanks to these healthy pleasures, I’ve finally managed to sever all ties with the “empty pleasure industry” and its addictive junk food and media.

5. Food for a Better World

Outside of Medium, my job is to design new processes and systems for our clean energy future. When writing the introduction chapter to my Ph.D. on the topic, I soon became obsessed with the intricacies of climate change and the global energy transition. This passion has since led to more than 100 popular science articles on Energy Post and the Energy Collective.

More importantly, my climate and energy obsession ignited my passion for sustainable living.

A newfound determination to live lightly on the Earth triggered my pursuit of happiness through creation instead of consumption. This life philosophy simultaneously supercharged my productivity and accelerated my journey to financial freedom. Indeed, after IMED, I can confidently state that my sustainable ecological footprint has contributed most to my life.

When it comes to food, sustainable living presented a real challenge: meat. I (deeply) love meat, but I soon learned how bad it is for the environment and animal welfare. This was a big problem that eventually inspired the “meat as a vegetable dressing” principle that shapes my lunches today. I’m still amazed by how much culinary joy I can tap from the 5% meat in my diet today!

6. Damage Control

Despite all these ideas, I was still prone to the occasional binge-eating-binge-watching session. And there was no better trigger for such self-destruction than an EU research proposal.

Huge admin burdens, frustrating creative constraints, overly complex consortiums of headstrong partners, low success rates… Just thinking about it gives me a headache! But still, we had to get research funding, so EU proposals inflated my stress levels and upended my healthy eating habits at regular intervals for an entire decade.

There was only one way to protect my health during these trying times: Never start eating in front of the TV. Of course, this is much easier said than done, so I created a charitable donations contract that bound me to donate one hour of wages to charity every time I activated this binge-trigger.

Eventually, I also had to admit that I need some pleasure foods during tough times. So, I resolved to treat myself to more luxurious treats with at least some nutritional value — things like premium dark chocolate, yogurt-covered nuts, and quality ice cream with fresh berries. These luxuries made tough times rather expensive, but I realized that my health was worth it.

7. Cravings and Personal Growth

Even though I managed to ward off the worst effects, these job-related health impacts were still not acceptable. I tried my best to find a solution within the system, but there wasn’t one. Eventually, I realized that the liberty I so deeply desired can only be found outside the system and that my growing wealth could make that happen.

I must say, the idea of attaining complete creative freedom well before the peak of my career was truly intoxicating. It helped me further cut my expenses, and eventually, by age 34, my net worth surpassed 25 times my annual expenses, allowing me to claim my freedom.

Amazingly, all this was inspired by my desire to fix my self-destructive food cravings. And I’m happy to report that it worked! Without the worst job frustrations, my diet is flawless.

8. Escape the Matrix

A liberated mind is a wonderful thing. Mine is giving me effortless research focus and inspiration to take on the greatest challenges of our time. And it wasn’t long before this natural focus fell on empty calories. According to my rough estimation, empty calories cost the world more than $6 trillion — quadruple the cost of climate change.

Seeing this number was a real eye-opener. In fact, it was almost like being pulled out of the Matrix. Suddenly, the endless rows of colorful nutrient-free treats displayed on the most accessible shelves of the grocery store filled me with disappointment instead of desire. From that moment on, I no longer had to waste any willpower resisting their charm.

9. Deep Values

If you want to build the perfect diet (or accomplish any meaningful goal), you will need a reliable source of motivation and drive. I know of only one such bottomless source: a deep connection to your fundamental values.

For me, this connection happened with the realization that excellent health is essential to my ambitions to help solve the world’s greatest challenges. More energy each day + more days in my career = much greater impact. This deep value connection sealed the deal on my ultra-clean diet.

With this powerful source of motivation firmly locked into place, it was finally time to take on my nemesis in the tenth and final step.

10. Quit Sugar

I find it hard to imagine that anyone on this planet loves sugar more than me. For years, the dangers of sugar kept popping up in my research. And for years, my enormous sweet tooth got me to blatantly ignore every warning. But now, I finally had the motivation to quit sugar.

And to my great surprise, it turned out to be one of the easiest steps on my entire 12-year healthy eating journey. It was also one of the most rewarding. As soon as I removed the numbing effect of sugar on my ability to experience sweetness, the rest of my whole food diet suddenly tasted much better.

I should have done this years ago, but hey, better late than never!

Self-Mastery

Today, my life is completely free from empty calories and empty media. And, despite abandoning all these sources of instant pleasure, I’m happier than ever before! I also manage to work 3500 hours per year on projects I find truly meaningful. Stress is low, and there is no hint of burnout.

The one thing I learned for sure is that self-mastery is not about developing boundless willpower. It’s about designing your life such that actions consistent with a happy, healthy, wealthy, productive, and sustainable living happen automatically. This is far from easy. But it certainly is doable.

I wish everyone could experience this feeling, and I’ll do my very best to make it more accessible.