Discovered this thread a few days ago. Really good stuff and ideas here. Made me think a lot. I had came up with a similar concept years ago. I was only thinking about training and not about eating for that concept however at the time.
For context, I am an engineer and specialize in continuous improvement/process improvement. Monitoring progress comes down to metrics. Simplicity of processes is also a must to improve.
At that time, I was monitoring my training with a bunch of metrics like max bench, squat, deadlift, press and power clean; max reps of push ups, dips and pull ups; best 400m, mile and 5K time on running. Etc.
It was a bunch of metrics and as we know, testing it takes a lot of energy that could be spent on training. It was not simple. I came to the conclusion that by monitoring only my strength from ground to overhead and my 5K time, I would have everything I needed to know if I am heading in the right directions. By monitoring max strength on something that covers so much muscle and monitoring conditioning with a simple metric, I knew that if I was going in the right direction on both, I would be more muscular and leaner. For a few years then, I would always ask myself if what I did (in the gym, while running or in the kitchen) was going to improve my strength from ground to overhead and/or if it was going to help my 5K running time.
I could expand on it big time. To be strong on ground to overhead movement, it helps to have muscle, strength and power but also some kind of basic mobility. I really like the choice on Chaos Is The Plan to focus on ground to overhead for many reasons. For running, the 5K was the right metric according to me because you need to work on running technique, speed, anaerobic conditioning, aerobic conditioning, you can’t be to heavy so it gives some balance to the other metric that is max strength. Running is also a basic human movement. Just being strong on ground to overhead allow you to be fat but if you have to be fast on a 5K you can’t. You adress this on your plan with diet. By the way, I like the way you adressed diet and it looks appealing but living in Canada, I really don’t know how I could afford to eat like that. Prices of groceries here are insane especially for meat!
To honor this thread, I trained mostly ground to overhead yesterday for fun which I had neglect in recent past (swings, power snatch, snatch grip high pull, overhead squat and press). I rediscoverd muscles in the back of my body and all around the soulders. I feel awesome today and feels that by working on this again would allow me to reclaim my humanity!
So, to finish, it got me thinking big time, I had tought about something similar in the past and feels like this thread has reignited something in me. Thanks and keep up with your awesome writings!