When Michael Goldstrom, 28, isn't being filmed for a TV special or doing stand-up in a NYC comedy club, he's performing Off- Broadway or running to an audition in his resident Manhattan. This busy actor's training at Columbia University and the Julliard School, along with his inherent talent, make him a real pro. A few months ago, though, Goldstrom found that his unpredictable energy level was a growing problem that even the most seasoned veteran couldn't act his way out of:

"I had started doing this play Off-Broadway called, 'The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)'. There were three of us doing this highly physical play eight times a week, and it was intense. We were onstage the entire hour and a half of the show, doing 50 different characters. It was fantastic, but it got to be exhausting. My energy level would change from day to day: Sometimes I'd wake up really groggy, other days I'd wake up with a lot of energy, and it was frustrating.

At first I looked at my sleeping patterns. I made sure to get regular amounts of sleep, but my energy was still up and down throughout the day, and sometimes it was hard to get revved up for the performance. So then I started trying common-knowledge diets, like eating little bits throughout the day, to try to keep my blood sugar even. This didn't work for me at all; my energy still went way up and way down.

I had been getting mailings from Dragon Door, and I finally noticed the Warrior Diet book . I read the table of contents, and thought, 'Alright, I'll get this book." So I got it, read it, and started the diet right away. And immediately, I mean IMMEDIATELY, I started feeling phenomenal.

I feel very alert and much lighter, and more importantly, I have a cycle of ingestion and elimination, which is never dealt with in other diets. They all talk about what you put in your body, but not about how it gets out, and how regularly it gets out. I believe that to be really important. I really sense that I have a daily detoxification and ingestion process; I mean, I really feel like I'm on a cycle with this diet, and it helps ground me.

Tastes have improved; a world of tastes that wasn't there before has opened up for me. I have an appreciation for the wide variety of foods and their colors and textures. And as an artist, this sensitivity is invaluable, because it's that kind of specificity for things that really inspires me.

I noticed that as an actor, my senses were heightened two-hundredfold when I cut back on the sugar. It was only by cutting back that I realized how aggressive that taste is, and how unnatural it is. And I had been totally unaware of that because I was taking it in so much. The Warrior Diet now affects my perceptions about everything, especially living in a place like Manhattan. Here, advertisements are crammed down your throat everywhere you turn, and everything is bright colors and billboards and Times Square; I mean, everything is like, in your face." Moving away from sugar and processed foods hasn't made the lights blink any dimmer or decreased the number of ads in the city, but it has made Goldstrom want to avoid the noisy New York clutter when possible, and when impossible, to at least take it in through more patient senses.

Goldstrom realized that the new diet was actually quite similar to the way he ate when not on a stressful performance schedule. "I realized that when I wasn't working, which as an actor can be quite often, that I tended to eat just one large meal at night, and not much during the day. It worked well for my natural system. And the Warrior Diet provided a flexible structure for this way that I had been trying to eat. It was very easy to follow and stick to.

I pretty much do the sample day that's in the book. In the morning, I have two glasses of water to clear the system, and then I have some coffee. (Everyone says, "You can have coffee?!?") During the day, I go around the corner to get these fresh vegetable juices. I hated, HATED, them before; I can't even tell you how much I used to detest them. And now, I adore and crave them. I get juices made with carrots, beets, kale, chard and apple, all in different combinations.

Sometimes I'll crave more greens, or more reds, and I completely believe what Ori says in the book about craving different colors. I think that the colors are connected to the chemical makeup of the food, and that your body craves these chemicals through sight. It's a very integrated approach to food and nutrition and desire for food.

In the evening, I generally have three-to four-course meals. I start off with a salad, and then soup. From there, I follow the advice to start off with subtler foods and more towards more aggressive ones. You know the old folk wisdom of 'save the best for last'? That makes a lot of sense when you're talking about diet, because those more aggressive-tasting foods will cover up the quality of subtler foods, like broccoli. And it makes sense to start out with a salad, because it goes through the stomach lining very easily, and leaves more room for all the other stuff. Then I'll move on to the vegetables, then meat, maybe an omelet, and some bread."

Although Goldstrom is pretty good about sticking to the diet, he admits that he does have a weakness. "I love chocolate. One of the good things about the Warrior Diet is that chocolate is allowed, and I definitely haven't cut the sugar out completely. Sometimes during the day, I'll have something like chocolate-covered almonds, but nothing too heavy. I just don't crave anything heavy during the day anymore.

My awareness of many tastes and even textures got heightened tremendously by eating natural foods. I noticed the difference in texture of a carrot from broccoli and other stuff that that I would never eat before, but now could really appreciate. I realized, taste-wise, how aggressively processed foods are designed. They really numb your taste buds. My cravings for foods really shifted, because I started to become aware of my desire for a certain texture or quality of food."

Goldstrom has always kept in good shape, most recently with a combo of martial arts, some yoga, and a little of Pavel Tsatsouline's stuff. Even so, the exercises didn't make him trimmer until he started eating the Warrior way. "The minute I started the diet, my body reacted. My body responds very quickly to changes, and in the first week I became so much leaner looking. It was really amazing. I was doing the same exercises as before, but because of what I was eating and when I was eating, I got leaner.

I've been on the diet since early March of 2002. Everyone's like, 'You're still doing it?' and I'm like, 'You bet!' I absolutely plan to stick with the Warrior Diet . It's a lifestyle for me now."

Learn more about Michael Goldstrom at www.goldstrom.com .