Eating food to gain health, is unrealistic so thats out the window. So I wonder how I'll be able to, stock up on healing powders.
How so? I mean healing as fast as stimpacks do is already unrealistic, but if a well-nourished and mal-nourished person both sustain injuries, you can bet the well-nourished guy will heal up quicker.
At any rate, Legion playthroughs are fun. No chems (Stimpacks, RadAway, Rad-X, any drug type), food for healing, avoid implants and specialize in melee/unarmed. Guns and energy weapons, contrary to popular belief, are allowed, they're simply not the focal points of the character build. This playthrough is fun because it basically requires the player to hunt to gain healing items (Gecko steak, bighorner steak), it adds all new difficulty to irradiated areas while giving anti-RAD perks purpose and melee/unarmed is actually incredibly strong once perked up. My only suggestion is that you DEFINITELY need good STR and Endurance. This is a not a playstyle for a low-endurance character especially, because you'll need several endurance-based perks to survive some of the challenges one faces without chems and implants. Endurance provides higher Rad resistence, poison resistance, allows your rads to naturally go away (basically essential perks for this playthrough OR you avoid radiation like the plague) and provides you with more health and a way to regenerate health over time.