How would you like to lose weight, improve your health and help the planet? And fast?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, then my Zombie Apocalypse Diet might be just for you.
In only four weeks on the Zombie Apocalypse Diet, I lost 9.8 kilograms, my blood cholesterol dropped from an unhealthy 6.1 to a respectable 4.4, my waist circumference dropped from 99 to 91 centimetres, my liver function improved and my BMI came back into the healthy range.
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I'm still working out the sales pitch, but it sounds pretty good right?
It worked for me when for four weeks, I acted as if the zombie apocalypse had struck without warning no food in the shops, nothing in my fridge or cupboards. Everything I ate I had to grow, catch, or forage.
If you want to catch up on the backstory, and the rules of the challenge, the video for episode 1 (below) should answer all your questions.
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Here's a quick recap of what was on the menu during the four weeks.
There are plenty of people out there with the knowledge and skills to be completely self-sufficient in their sleep. They might even be able to put on weight.
But most people, me included, aren't that person. And that was the point I wanted to see whether a relative novice could make it if the food taps were suddenly turned off.
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As well as looking at the health impacts of such a diet and lifestyle change, I wanted to compare the environmental pros and cons of this diet with a commercially sourced one, and to see how much money would be saved.
So, here are the results:
The early health indicators of this diet appear to be pretty positive.
Waist circumference is an indicator of cardiovascular risk, and lower cholesterol can reduce the chance of complications like clogged arteries.
There are two main reasons that my weight loss was so rapid on the diet.
Firstly, eating far less food means you go into kilojoule deficit I got less energy from food than I expended, and my body started to convert stored fat to energy.
The second reason is the lack of carbohydrate-heavy foods like potatoes, legumes and even milk. My body entered a state of ketosis where it burns fat to compensate for the lack of carbs.
However, losing weight rapidly increases the risk of rebounding back to your original weight, or even gaining more weight if you take up old habits, according to GP Krystyna de Lange.
"Certainly if we look at your physical parameters and bio-chemical parameters, we have seen some positive changes," Dr de Lange said.
"[But] rapid weight loss, where you're just going into a caloric deficit isn't always the healthiest way to do it, and it is making sure that those changes are then sustainable."
The money was almost a no-brainer.
For four weeks I was paying nothing for food. And if you can keep your foraging and catching local, you'll spend hardly any money on fuel either.
In my case, I estimate I came out about $250 ahead each week on average.
Those savings mostly came down to avoiding the four horsemen of the bank-balance apocalypse takeaway lunches, coffee, booze and fuel.
Grazing cows and sheep are the biggest individual contributors to Australia's food emissions, so taking out all red meat puts you ahead from an emissions perspective.
But what about the roosters I killed and ate?
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The biggest source of emissions, as well as water use and resource consumption in the commercial farming of chickens in Australia, is the production of feed stock according to a life cycle analysis from 2017.
Typically, meat birds sold at supermarkets are grown extremely fast, and are killed at between six and eight weeks old.
In my case, the roosters, who were hatched from a neighbour's backyard eggs, were several months old and had been fed some grain in their diet.
While it could be argued that they enjoyed a higher standard of living than some of their commercially raised counterparts, it's likely that more resources went into keeping them alive longer.
The biggest environmental considerations for seafood are the sustainability of the species you're eating and how they're caught, according to agronomist Daniel Tan from the University of Sydney.
"We want to eat species that are at the bottom of the food chain, [that] there are lots of, and try to avoid the top-order predators things like sharks and tuna," Associate Professor Tan said.
That's because there are typically fewer top order predators, and they're more susceptible to overfishing.
Apart from a bonito [tuna] and flathead, all the seafood on the menu mullet, pipis, snails, prawns fit into that lower-order category.
And the fishing methods cast-netting and line fishing were pretty low-impact as well, Dr Tan said.
"If you look at a lot of trawlers out there, there is sometimes a lot of bycatch. It could be up to 50 per cent of bycatch is not eaten and is thrown back in the ocean that's a lot of waste there."
There needs to be a big warning here: firstly, some insects and arachnids are poisonous and expert identification is required.
Secondly, even non-poisonous insects in urban areas can contain pesticides and environmental poisons that make them unsafe to eat.
However, from a sustainability perspective, insects, especially when sourced locally, are extremely low impact.
Grasshoppers, termites, scorpions and crickets can all be caught and don't require any inputs like feed.
For this reason and more, insects are going to become a key protein source of the future, according to insect farmer Olympia Yarger.
"In a climate-change world we're going to need resilience in producing food. Animals don't do well when it's 45 degrees [Celsius] outside, but we can create climate-controlled environments in our cities for insects," she said.
""I'm not wanting to do away with cattle farming, that's not where I'm trying to go. But the two things can't be true at the same time: Climate change is real, but we'll be able to farm the same."
If you're anything like I was up until recently, that's not an appetising thought. But here's an inside tip: Deep-fried scorpions are delicious, grasshoppers taste like prawns, and crickets taste like cashew nuts.
Termites on the other hand, taste like...dirt.
The biggest environmental issues with our veggies and salads are land-clearing for cropping, water use, food miles, and fertiliser and pesticide use.
In my case, those factors were negated by growing the veggies in my garden or foraging them nearby, and the water I used came from tanks.
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The answer to this question is yes, with a few caveats.
I went into this challenge with an advantage. I live on a few acres with room to grow plenty of food, and access to clean water.
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And I also wasn't really facing a zombie apocalypse. I had plenty of time to prepare. Which is what most experts say we need to be doing collectively right now.
Whether we'll ever face a real zombie apocalypse is still unwritten, but climate change is making the strongest bid to throw our food systems into disarray.
Forecasts say some crops will no longer be able to be grown in Australia, and longer, harsher droughts and storms will make growing seasons less predictable.
The good news is by making changes to how we produce and consume food, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create more climate-change resilient food production.
The other good news is we don't have to do anything as drastic as being completely self-sufficient.
Experts say diversifying what we eat, sourcing local and seasonally available foods, and reducing the amount of red meat we consume can all help us avoid having to adopt a real-life zombie apocalypse diet.
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Want to lose weight, get healthy and help the planet? The Zombie Apocalypse Diet could be for you - ABC News
