The Travis McGee Diet Plan
What the inside of a badass's head looks like
Odds are, you haven’t heard of the Travis McGee series of novels which chronicle the adventures of the greatest American Hero no one’s ever heard of, a “salvage consultant” who gets back other people’s stolen property. The author was a former OSS Lieutenant Colonel and Harvard MBA named John D. MacDonald, and you probably have heard of one of his other works, Cape Fear.
The whole series of novels has a lot of physical details. Travis details much of his workout and diet, and given the military history of MacDonald, I think it represents the author’s workout and diet as well.
When Travis needed to lose some weight after a period of debauchery, he went on a diet of “…cheese, meat, and salad.” A sample meal consisting of “…twenty ounces of rare beef and a peck of salad.” And he wrote this in 1965. Just goes to show that the low carb, high protein and fat diet as a means of weight loss has been around forever. If you want to learn a more in depth history on this topic, I recommend Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.
Incidentally, he also details some of the exercises he does. Travis uses calisthenics throughout most of the series, like the Roman Sit Up and One Legged Deep Knee Bed, and mentions weights only once in the last novel.
Seriously though, an OSS agent says to lose weight and get strong, you need calisthenics and low carbs. How cool is that?
If you want to learn more about the history and science of low carb diets read…
Or if you want to get cracking on the first Travis McGee novel…
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by John Solter. John Solter said: The ' 60s Travis McGee books had exercise and diet advice that is good today. http://www.eatsteakloseweight.com/the-travis-mcgee-diet-plan/ [...]