In September of '09, I made a decision to start losing weight and in general become more healthy. This is a decision I had made before in my life, but this time I planned to make it stick. So far this is going pretty well, and while I have had a few plateaus in the months since, as the title of this post indicates, I am still down nearly 50 pounds 10 months later. Having certainly gained some muscle in this time as well, I am confident that I have lost at least 60 pounds of fat.
The catalyst for this particular session of weight loss was a competition. Inspired by programs like The Biggest Loser, several of the members of the poker chip enthusiast website chiptalk.net decided to have a weight loss challenge. I had participated in events like this before, and have always found them to be a very good motivation to keep me disciplined. I knew already what my exercise program would be - kettlebells of course! But the question I had was what to do about my diet. In the past I have done low carb Atkins-type diets and been successful - for a while. I know several people who were fans of point-counting strategy weight loss plans and briefly considered trying that out myself. In the end I ended up going with the one strategy I was absolutely sure would work. I called it "Eat Less and Exercise More". I cut down on portion sizes - no more seconds on anything - and cut out desserts as well. Additionally, no more drinking of calories. Other than my coffees, nearly everything I drink is low cal or calorie free.
These changes produced weight loss, and no doubt they would for anyone in need of dropping some fat. However, it is actually pretty difficult to never have a second helping or overeat in any way. Especially when there is lots of food available, like at a party or even at my job, the urge to head back to the food table and have "just one more slice" is quite tempting, at least for me. After a few weeks on the "just eat less" diet, I found a book that revolutionized my relationship with food and my pattern of eating.
The book is called Eat Stop Eat, by Brad Pilon, and is based on the idea of flexible intermittent fasting. Essentially you eat normally (which should be as healthily as possible) and once or twice a week you take a break from eating and fast for 24 hours. That really is the whole plan. You could take that one sentence and go with it and never actually read the book! I did buy it however and thoroughly enjoyed it. Fasting has many health benefits, losing fat is just one of them. Having read the book really helps when people try to tell me that "fasting is going to slow your metabolism" or "that's bad for you, you HAVE to eat breakfast" or something like that. I plan to cover some of the myths about eating in future blog posts, actually. Eat Stop Eat works because by cutting out 48 hours worth of eating from your week (four meals total, plus all snacks you would have eaten during your fasts), you are eating less. After all, that is the reason why any diet works, whatever the method used, the effective diets have you eating less than you ate before. By using the Eat Stop Eat method, I didn't have to feel like I was denying myself every single day. Also, the discipline of fasting helped me to recognize all the reasons I ate, whether it was because I was hungry, bored, or just because it was "time to". This may not be true for everyone, but after following Eat Stop Eat for nine months, I find not eating at all to be much easier than trying to stop myself from eating too much. Later posts will cover more about this, including what to eat on the days when you're not fasting, but I definitely recommend you check out Eat Stop Eat if you find yourself stuck on your fat loss journey.
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