An Old Man's Diet that Works!

[kapenanemo]

Let's make this very clear.

I can't diet.

It is too rigorous to count calories, even carbs and the constant worry about the next meal.

Then I figured it out.

I needed to eat like my dogs.

One meal a day. In the evening.

I let myself eat as much as I wanted to. Steak, pasta, ice cream and cake desserts, soft drinks, . . .  Whatever I wanted, As much as I wanted!

The only rule was I could only eat during a two hour window around normal dinner time. But I could eat as much as I wanted.

Does it work?

Yes.

Is it bad for your health? Not if you are healthy to start with.

After all, we should be fasting between our normal meals. All my plan does is extend the fasting period to 22 hours each day.

In the morning you start with a pot of green tea, or coffee if you can handle the jolt.

Drink lots of water during the day.

To get  your body into the regimen, pretend you are mounting a one person protest against some immoral force or other.

For instance.

You are protesting the keeping of fireants in exhibition ant hills as unfair to ants who should be free to come and go on their own.

If you can tough it out for the first five days, it is a breeze after that.

But during those five days, you can't touch any food  before or after the dinner window.

An interesting thing will happen along about ten days to two weeks.

You will just naturally not eat as much in the evening meal window.

When I find myself getting hungry on the diet, I go for a walk and drink some water.

My only problem is Social pressures.

Most of us are so conditioned to eating as a means of being sociable, we just try to nibble to keep in good graces with our peers. This diet avoids that pit fall. A little bit of camel mucous ends up with you eating the whole camel! So just don't join them at those meals.

Don't start this plan until you have cleaned out your car and purse of all the emergency snacks. Then  start living like a dog.

Active and busy until they put the food out at dinner.

You can loose weight, if you keep a leash on yourself.

[KJScarp]

Yikes!  Intermittent Fasting (IF) has its benefits, but I can't imagine trying to get all of my 2000 calories in one meal!  Besides, my dog gets fed twice a day

[kapenanemo]

You said it all in one sentence.

I can't imagine getting all my 2,000 calories in one meal.

You can't.

And that means?

You are healthy, hungry and lean.

[KJScarp]

One should never be hungry while on a diet.  If you are, it's because you have cut your calorie budget to an unhealthy level.  My BMR is 1850 calories.  If I were in a coma, I would need that amount JUST TO LIVE.  To maintain my current weight, I need to eat no more than 2500 calories.

What you are describing is disordered eating.

[kapenanemo]

With all due respect, from my 73 years of hanging out on Earth, what you said is stuff and nonsense.

Look, hunger is a basic bodily stimulous. Nothing more.

It doesn't denote bad health.

Hunger tells you to eat

I spent more than a few hours as a younger man in the military where hunger was just a normal part of the job.

Hunger doesn't mean you are going to die.

And hunger will recede when it isn't paid attention to.

Generally in as little as 1/2 an hour, normal hunger will dissipate and you will be none the worse for wear.

There is only one thing I can think of that depriving the average human being from for more than a minute could lead to bad health. Air.

Next comes water, after three days, you will start to get sick from dehydration.

Then comes food. but most folks could fast for days and weeks with  no harm other than to their pocket book when they have to go buy smaller clothes.

I believe that people who advise folks on a diet that they shouldn't feel hungry are setting them up for defeat. Hunger is our friend. Nothing so good as a good belly growl to indicate you are on the right track. And if you don't like the sound of it, drink a glass of water.

[KJScarp]

Everything you just said screams disordered eating. 

When I get hungry, my body is telling me that it's time to eat.  Not time to ignore the signs of hunger, not time to drink a glass of water.  It's time to fuel my body with food.

I agree with you that hunger is a normal bodily function, however I disagree with your premise that when you feel that stimulus you should ignore it, or drink some water to make it go away.  I eat a meal consisting of good quality foods that fuel my body.  Several hours later, my stomach growls, indicating hunger.  I eat another meal, or a small snack, consisting of good quallity foods.  Hunger goes away and I am fine until the next meal.  THAT is how the body is set up to function.

If you are getting hungry or a growling stomach at times other than scheduled meal times then you are not eating the appropriate foods, or you are not eating the appropriate amounts of food, during your meals.

"Hunger is our friend. Nothing so good as a good belly growl to indicate you are on the right track. And if you don't like the sound of it, drink a glass of water."

I never understood the premise that for one to be successful at weight loss, one must endure hunger as some sort of misplaced badge of honor.  My god, you sound like one of those starving girls on the pro-ana sites.

[kapenanemo]

Self discipline isn't disordered eating.

Who is in control in your body?

You or your stomach?

I come from a farming and military background.

We quickly learn the job or mission is more important than our momentary comfort.

So we tend to go when necessary for long periods of time with little or no food and minimal amounts of water.

It isn't hard nor unhealthy.

Nor an aberation.

Each person has an inner being, we as a society know it exists and can be trained.

Even the weakest of us knows its not acceptable to relieve ourselves in the public street. We simply control our body until its an appropriate time and place.

If we can do that, then it isn't beyond the pale for a person to tell themselves, I simply will not eat more than one meal a day. For two hours of the twenty four you get to gorge.

For the next 22 you don't.

Think about it for a moment.

How long after you eat a big meal  does it take before you get hungry?

Three to Six hours, More?

What if after you've eaten and sat around watching TV until midnight, or whenever you then go to bed.

You've already aced the first period with no hunger.

You sleep for eight or so hours.

Say 4 hours of TV and 8 sleeping.

You've knocked off 12 hours of the 22.

Only ten to go.

You get up, take care of your waking ritual and then have your coffee or tea, as much unsugared or creamed as you want.

You stomach will give you a pass for another two to three hours.

You've done 15 hours without discomfort.

That only leave 7 hours of ignoring your hunger.

The first 1/2 hour to an hour is the worst.

Your stomach will do everything to assure you its about to chew on your back bone for food. It won't.  Then the hunger goes away. Now its a mind game.

You have to get your head off of food.

Work or exercise is the key.

Before you realize it, it is dinner time!

Now my question for you is this.

Are you able to control your body for 6 to 8 hours, or does it control you?

I know for certain that if you hang in there by the end of five days, you will wonder how the day passed so quickly and you will be stretching it further.

The important thing is that the one meal you eat is a good balanced one.

Some time in the second week you will find you aren't eating as much as you did that first night. Your stomach will be shrunken down to a reasonable size.

Try it.

After all, your doctor already requires that you fast for a minimum of 12 hours before having your blood drawn to be tested for diabetes, cholesterol and all the other ills of over eating doesn't he/she?

If you've ever had a colonoscopy,  well that will empty you out good.

If it was bad for you not to eat, why would doctors do that?

Hmm I wonder?

[KJScarp]

This is the last post I'm going to make on this subject, and I'm only doing so for the benefit of someone who comes here, so that they will not think that what you are suggesting is even remotely healthy.  You admit that you do not eat all day.  You admit that when you *do* eat, that you do not eat all of your required calories.  You insist that you refrain from eating, even when  your body is screaming at you for food.  You are tanking your metabolism into the ground.

Intermittent fasting is a viable weight loss tool.  What you are doing is not intermittent fasting.  You are over-restricting calories, and denying your body food.  All under the guise of self-discipline.  Self-discipline is not denying yourself food for the entire day, or failing to eat your calorie budget.  Self-discipline is saying no when someone offers you a cookie, or choosing to eat extra vegetables instead of reaching for an extra serving of dessert.

So please do not suggest to people who are here to get healthy that what you are doing is safe.  It's not.

[StefK]

There has been quite a lot of research done on intermittent fasting and it is perfectly healthy! Just read Dr. Krista Varadi's clinical research papers and you will see. Actually, it is quite the opposite: eating 5 times a day is absolutely nonsense! When you go back to the times of humans being hunters and gatherers then eating just one meal a day was the norm and long periods od fasting was normal!

Fasting periods have the advantage that your body can concentrate on repairing itself instead of dealing with tons of food! Before you just dismiss intermittent fasting do your research!

Stef.

[KJScarp]

---

@StefK wrote:
There has been quite a lot of research done on intermittent fasting and it is perfectly healthy! Just read Dr. Krista Varadi's clinical research papers and you will see. Actually, it is quite the opposite: eating 5 times a day is absolutely nonsense! When you go back to the times of humans being hunters and gatherers then eating just one meal a day was the norm and long periods od fasting was normal!

Fasting periods have the advantage that your body can concentrate on repairing itself instead of dealing with tons of food! Before you just dismiss intermittent fasting do your research!

Stef.

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For the comprehension challenged reading this board, let me repeat what I posted before:

"Intermittent fasting is a viable weight loss tool.  What you are doing is not intermittent fasting."

Before I stopped working, I practiced IF.  It entailed eating during a period of 6-8 hours, and I ate *all* of my calorie allotment during that time.  Or, on occasion, I would do alternate day IF, by cutting back on calories for that one day, twice a week, and then eat normally for the remainder of the week.  At no point was it done to prove to my body that I could let my hunger go until it was screaming to eat it's backbone, as does the OP.  IF *does not* entail restricting all of your food intake to a 2 hour period a day, and then calorie restricting during that same period.  The OP's goal is to continue to restrict his calories during each 2 hour meal period so that his stomach shrinks.

[Dominique]

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@StefK wrote:
There has been quite a lot of research done on intermittent fasting and it is perfectly healthy!

---

Actually, not everyone agrees:

"The IF research is still in its infancy — indeed, it may be 5-10 years before it reaches critical mass and becomes a mainstream nutritional idea — but in certain quarters, the benefits of intermittent fasting have reached almost mythical proportions."

Source: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting/summary

I recommend reading the entire book (available as a PDF for free), it gives a well-balanced picture of intermittent fasting. It's written by people who advocate frequent eating, but who went through the trouble of trying intermittent fasting on themselves for a longer period of time and wrote about their experience.

[kapenanemo]

Self discipline for a period of up to eight waking hours a day each day  is all it takes.

Don't try to twist what I say into some sort of torturous aceticistic wild unfounded experiment.

What I am doing for myself and recommending to anyone who wants a simple diet plan is to use your body to work for you.

The purpose of my suggested diet plan is to help the folks like me loss weight in a simple no frills way.

We know the technique works.

People who perform hard physical work have proven that you can go all day without eating, have a decent well balanced meal and not suffer while you loose weight. In their case this is often a forced regime due to the location of the work and the location of the food.

Go check out a copy of  a film called; "The Bridge over the River Kwai."

In their help wanted ads they didn't ask for Sidney Greenstreet to play Colonel Bogey or any member of the cast..

I have walked from one end ot that bridge to the other and back.

It took long days of hard work without snack breaks to build.

Farmers like myself are a good example of how you can be away from food all day, working without any serious discomfort, then return in the evening have a good meal, go to bed and repeat day in and day out.

I was hungry just from the exercise that day, and I had to wait until I got back to town to eat.

Some 21st century folks make a full distance hike from Georgia to New England on the Appalachian Trail and to do it have to abide by the same regime. Eating is an interruption of their progress. When reporters from the big city interview them they find that they are skinny, well muscled, and don't need much food.

Here is what you know about your body.

1. You know you can satiate yourself in a short period of time, and your stomach will carry that food load as it processes it. As one person in this conversation noted, he would be too full to eat his total daily allotment of calories.

That's the point and a good healthy thing.

2. If  you schedule yourself, to relax and sleep a few hours after the meal, because you are full, you extend any question of needing to eat out to 12 hours after your meal.

3. In the wake up time, you can get away with just a no calorie beverage and your body will give you a pass of several hours.

So, then the question is do you snack, eat a meal or ignore your hunger?

I recommend ignoring the hunger, wait a few hours for dinner. You won't die, nor get scurvy or rickets.

You tried to twist my words to make it out to be some sort of CIA Abu Greb event. It isn't.

It is just saying "I am in control here, not my stomach."

I defy you to show me one serious study which shows that eating a good healthy meal every day is bad for you.

We live in a very permissive society, which is heavily marketed to break down our individual will power and self discipline to where we have an National obesity problem. Every store you enter, including the pharmacy, computer store, and the hardware store has a candy display next to the checkout counter!

We like to blame the retailers for leading us into Temptation.

It all those nasty people at McDonalds, Wendy's, or Target, or Walmart for putting the food out there where we can buy it and get fat. It is too easy to say its Safeway's fault that I am like I am.

The people like myself who have taken up these Fitbit monitors understand it isn't anyone else's fault that we are overweight.

It is ours. Each of us as an individual.

I don't want to fight with you about whether it works or not, or whether its healthy or not.

You are fixed in your righteousness and you will be just as right at the end of the day no matter what I say.

I'm just saying I have found an easy simplel effective way to control myself while I "play" with my activity monitor. And offering the idea to anyone who thinks they'd like to try it too.

It works.

[StefK]

Read Dr. Krista Varadi's book: The Every Other Day Diet,which is based on clinical trials done for the past ten (!) years a d you will see that the OP's approach to 22:2 is not crazy.
Also read Dr. Michael Morsley's book, also based on trials called the Fast Diet.
If you eat above your BMR, it does not matter whether you eat all your calories in one go or not. As long as you stay under your TDE and above your BMR you should lose weight and it should not harm you.
Stef.

[kapenanemo]

thanks, I will.

That other fellow is a missionary for the complicated dieting route.

He's not wrong. He just doesn't accept there are other ways to the fair.

[gerrymcd]

All of the 'recommendations' by experts are based on the 'average' person -- what works and doesn't work for 'most of us'.  Its like the BMI measurment, it works for a lot of people, but not for all (or even remotely close to all).  So, its wrong to think we all can eat the same way and get predictable outcomes.  I'm sure your eating pattern would be 'difficult' for most people to sustain (compared to calorie counting 5 small meals a day).  But, I wouldn't call your approach 'disfunctional' or even close to it.  

When I was a kid my parents never ate breakfast - a cup of tea was sufficient.  For lunch they had a small sandwich.  Their main meal was dinner - a big dinner.  And then perhaps some tea and a slice of toast later in the evening.  85% of their calories were consumed in one meal.  Both lived very healthy lives into their late 80s.   

So, your approach -- whilst not one I could follow easily -- is very similar to how my parents lived.

[Farmerbutton]

Wow! That was an interesting thread to read. Here is what I've done with IF in the past: 1200 calories a day beginning at 11:30 am and ending at 7:30 pm. It worked. I read this post looking for help because once I started using the Fitbit, it gave me more calories to use, so the weight stopped coming off. The logical thing is to take it off; however, I love the tools. Anyway, I think the IF worked because I wasn't sleeping right after eating and I wasn't eating until my body needed to. Yep, it's primal.

[cammy_c]

Or you could just eat healthy, whole foods and get all the macro- and micronutrients your body needs to function properly...  IF will get you somewhere after two weeks, but when you start eating normal again you're just going to yoyo back to where you were. There's no way people would be willing to do this their whole life, right? Nothing beats a balanced diet. Sorry.

[kapenanemo]

Sounds like you know what's best.
I have no dog in this fight.
Accept and try my suggestion and maybe it works for you.
Arguing that I'm nuts and ignoring it certainly won't !

Moderator edit:  removed personal information

[msfarkee]

Traditional  'diets' of breakfast, lunch, dinner plus snacks  or eating 5 or 6 times a day don't work for me either.      I don't do what OP does  but

I  am experimenting with  2 meals ,  one small and one big,  no snacks.   No breakfast unless I happen to want something that early.      I don't have to follow this religiously --some days are different than others.     I like a large, more substantial meal at night with alot of calories--it seems to help me not binge on food right before I go to bed  but I don't eat all my calories in that one meal.

 I have read that newer studies debunk the ideas that you must have

breakfast or eat small meals throughout the day.  Also it doesn't matter whether you eat right before you go to bed or not.  

google diet myths  also

well.blogs.nytimes.com     (Myths Surrounding Breakfast and Losing Weight  Sept 2013)

As with alot of things there are studies that say one thing and others that support  the opposite.   So one may say it is important to  eat breakfast because  it  revs up your metabolism, fuels your body or whatever and another says it doesn't matter when you eat your calories -- let personal preference be your guide.

It has been drilled into people for so long to eat a certain way that it is difficult to entertain the idea that 

what works for them and perhaps the majority of people may not be  right  for everybody.  

  If  CICO (calories in, calories out)  is correct then eating one meal or 10 shouldn't matter   as long as you have a calorie deficit.   Personal preference is very important if  it allows you to stick to your 'plan'.    Or am I missing something here? 

Obviously you need a certain amount of calories  and certain nutrients  to be healthy and a level of activity that is greater  than the calories you consume .  Then  you have to be able sustain your new diet or lifestyle to maintain your loss. (this is the hardest part by far).   What works for one may not be for everybody-- just don't do something that damages your health (not enough calories or nutrients)  or you can't maintain.  

[divedragon]

the feeling of hunger is not necessarily a sign its time to eat other than from the fact its reacting to what it is used to.  Hunger, energy, fat storage/usage, etc are governed by as many as 40 different hormones in your body.  Some react to trends you put it through such as eating at the same time everyday - it grows to expect it and signals its time to eat.  Ignorning the hunger in the short term will change that expected pattern and the hunger signal dissapates.  You can google a lot of resources to explain the science, but it also seems our bodies may actually be designed for fasting rather than our cultural adaptation to eating all the time. 

I'm an intermittent faster and I'm loosing a lot of body fat and I'm not feeling weak or otherwise deminished by the experience.  In fact, I do my exercise in the fasted state that includes weight lifting and I'm seeing excellent gains in strength.  As to calling this protocol an eating disorder I would counter that eating when you're hungry that results in getting fat is more of a disorder.