This is not a diet!

Most nights before bed, Michelle and I eat ice cream.

Not a tiny spoonful eaten sadly over the kitchen sink. A proper bowl of thick, creamy ice cream with sauces, mix-ins and enough variety that we rarely have to eat the same flavour twice in a week.

There has been toasted coconut, chocolate fudge brownie, apple pie and salted caramel swirl.

Michelle has become remarkably good at making casein ice cream in the Ninja Creami.

Last night’s version was salted caramel with Ritz chips mixed into it.

Yup. Ritz chips.

The entire bowl came in at approximately 308 calories, with 36.9 grams of protein, 24.9 grams of carbohydrates and 7.1 grams of fat. (The Ritz chips were extra)

On paper, it is a high-protein nighttime snack.

In our house, it is dessert.

That distinction matters.

This is not a diet

The longer we do Operation Bon Jovi Body, the less interested I become in the idea of being “on a diet.”

A diet sounds temporary.

It sounds like something you tolerate until you reach a certain number on the scale. You follow the rules, avoid the foods you really want and wait for the day when you can finally go back to normal.

The problem is that “normal” is often what created the need for the diet in the first place.

What Michelle and I are building is different.

We are trying to create a way of living that supports the things we want to do while still including the things we enjoy.

We want to build muscle.

I want to run ridiculous distances through the mountains.

We want to stay strong, capable and active as we get older.

We also want dessert.

The goal was never to see how much enjoyment we could remove from our lives in pursuit of a leaner body. The goal was to find routines we could repeat long enough that they stopped feeling like a program and simply became the way we live.

Our nighttime casein has become one of those routines.

From protein target to nightly ritual

We originally added casein because we were trying to hit our daily protein targets.

There are only so many chicken breasts a person wants to eat.

Casein gave us an easy way to add another substantial serving of protein at the end of the day. We use Fairlife high-protein ultra-filtered milk as the base, add the casein and then let Michelle work her magic with the flavours.

The Ninja Creami changed it from something functional into something we genuinely look forward to.

That is the important part.

A routine becomes much easier to maintain when it adds something to your day rather than constantly asking you to give something up.

The mix-ins are part of that.

Michelle has been using single-serve Fibre One bars in many of the recipes. They give us flavours like brownie or apple pie, add texture and make the portion easy to track.

Other nights, apparently, we throw Ritz chips into salted caramel ice cream.

We are not trying to create the fewest-calorie bowl technically possible. We are creating something that tastes great, fits reasonably within the day and helps us reach our protein target.

There is no guilt attached to the mix-ins. We log them. We choose them intentionally. Then we sit down and enjoy them.

Awareness, not restriction

Tracking our food has not made us afraid of food.

It has made us more aware of the choices we are making.

There is a big difference between mindlessly eating from a bag of crackers and deliberately crumbling a measured portion into a bowl of salted caramel ice cream.

The food might be the same.

The relationship with it is not.

That is what this entire project continues to teach me. Structure does not have to mean restriction. Sometimes structure is what creates freedom.

Knowing what is in the bowl means I do not have to wonder whether I have “blown the diet.”

There is no diet to blow.

There is simply the collection of choices we make over days, weeks and months.

Some choices move us closer to our goals. Some are made purely because they make life better. The best routines often manage to do both.

The shape of our life

I wrote recently that Operation Bon Jovi Body no longer feels like a project. The running, strength training, food logging and recovery routines have quietly become the shape of our days.

This is another example.

At some point, the nighttime protein shake became casein ice cream. The ice cream became increasingly elaborate. Then it became something Michelle and I looked forward to sharing every night.

That is not a nutrition hack.

It is part of our life.

And that, I think, is the difference between following a diet and building a lifestyle.

A diet asks:

“How long do I have to keep doing this?”

A lifestyle asks:

“How do I make this something I want to keep doing?”

For us, at least one part of the answer appears to be salted caramel casein ice cream with Ritz chips on top.