Hello! I'm trying a new way of eating...

[Zomble]

Hi! I'm back on the forum, having gained back the 6st I lost on LighterLife.:break_diet: I did try to maintain it, but it just didn't seem possible once I was back with food. So I have decided not to diet, but to adopt a new way of eating.

For the last week, I've just been having one meal a day. It's not for everyone (dh would faint if he went more than three hours without food) but so far I have found it fine and strangely liberating. I am 53 and have almost always been overweight. I've always felt that I eat too much just to be sociable and because 'it's a mealtime'. Now I don't have kids at home I am doing what I want, and I am enjoying not being around food during the day, yet able to eat what I like in the evening. Of course the evening meal has to be sensible - I won't lose weight if I have sticky toffee pudding every night (apologies for pudding porn)! But I reckon I am eating what I normally do, and drinking wine sometimes too.

It's easier to stick to during the week, while I am at work, which shows that at home I often eat out of boredom, or just habit. I also don't really feel hungry - just pleasantly empty. Before I started this I used to feel stuffed a lot of the time, and have terrible indigestion. I do feel a bit cold sometimes, but I also have more free time since I'm not involved with mealtimes. And, of course, it's cheap!

This first week I've lost 2.5kg, which is great, but the proof of the pudding (sorry - there I go again!) will be in the long-term weight loss and ultimately whether I can maintain a new weight this way.

So far I've discovered that this system is followed by Cliff Richard, Liz Hurley, Prince Charles and Des O'Connor. Well! If it's good enough for that list of lovelies...

It would be great to know anybody else's experience with this. I need to lose 6st / 38kg, but I have no timescale. It isn't a diet.

 

[Lorrs]

Good luck with it! I haven't done it myself but I do remember reading that it wasn't all that uncommon for the romans and other early civilisations to go by 1 meal per day, usually in the evening once the days work was complete and the body had time to digest the food at leisure. I think mealtimes just become a habit, my friends partner usually ate one meal per day and just didn't think about food until he came home from work. Now he lives with her she gives him breakfast, lunch to take to work and dinner in the evening and he says he seems to be hungry all the time now. Methinks appetite is mostly in the mind!

 

[sirena]

Just joined – this is my very first post – so I hope I’m doing it right.

Anyway, I’ve heard of this (but the meal is around 11:00 am) and I wish you the very best of luck. For me, the problem isn’t losing – it’s keeping it off. Almost all diets work but what happens when I go back to eating ( or overeating, in my case) as normal.

Can you keep this up for the long term (like forever?)? How do you maintain any weight loss?

 

[Zomble]

Well, my plan is to keep this up forever, because, just as you say, the problem is keeping weight off. It's very difficult to stop a diet and go back to 'normal' eating, certainly for me, so I need to find some way of eating 'normally' which gives me the control I don't normally have. I love having an evening meal with my family, or going out to a restaurant, or having a dinner party. But if I do this as well as eating breakfast and lunch I just pile the weight on, even if I eat very little. I normally eat just two slices of toast for breakfast, and soup for lunch when I'm at work, but even giving up this little bit has resulted in a good weight loss this week. I think I have a pretty slow metabolism, as I don't feel hunger eating this way. Also, I'm not good at doing things in moderation. So if I totally avoid food for most of the day there is no temptation, and if I only have a few hours in which to eat normally I have a better chance of controlling it... that's my theory anyway, so I'll keep you posted in case anybody fancies trying it!

Of course it isn't a named 'diet', because nobody makes any money out of it! They have tried in America of course, calling it 'The Warrior Diet' or 'Intermittent Fasting', and of course some 'guru' has written a book, but do we really need someone to tell us how to stop eating so often?

When I lived in Africa lots of the Africans ate one meal, usually in the early evening, so it isn't that weird, really.

Maybe there's somebody out there who has tried this before...?

 

[jennifer121]

Hey Zomble,
Someone i know has done this for years,she finds it the only way to cope with overweight and it really works for her,she exists on coffee during the day and eats only food between 6 and 8 pm,has what ever she wants at dinner,plus a pudding...keep us posted...jen

 

[Zomble]

Well, hello again after almost exactly two years, during which I have left my job and moved to a new country, and have a whole new way of life. The 'eating one meal a day' plan did work for me, and I kept gradually losing weight until I spent about 6 months travelling and stopped controlling what I ate, so now here I am back again, and whaddya know, Intermittent Fasting is all over the news!

My new life involves lots of entertaining, so I am planning to eat when necessary, and not otherwise. In practice, this will mean no breakfast (no problem for me) no lunch if I can avoid it, and dinner every night. In IF terms, this is 22/2 fasting. Like Jen's friend, this is a way of life for me, not a temporary diet. I won't necessarily do it every day, just most days. I don't plan to forgo wine, or chocolate, or anything else if I want it, otherwise I will not keep this up. I'm also not going to weigh myself because a) my scales are terribly unreliable and b) if I weigh myself I can get miserable or over-excited. But I will know I am losing weight by my clothes and how I feel. So is anyone out there doing something like this? If so, let's support each other and see how we get on.

I'm currently at the end of the first week. I was really tired in the afternoon the first two days, but not any more. I hardly notice I'm not eating - certainly not hungry. So now off to a cocktail party! Is it a good or bad thing that after 22 hours fasting a glass of wine goes straight to your head? I know the answer to that really...