The Easiest Weight Loss Diet In The World
You can do it, in a healthy and sustainable way, with the simple protocol I’m going to lay out below.
It’s flexible, allows you to still enjoy food and eat
large meals. You can still eat out socially, enjoy higher calorie foods,
and even treat yourself to dessert.
You can also lose weight very quickly, even while the diet
feels almost effortless. If you want to quickly lose body fat in a
relatively short period of time (2-4 weeks), without doing a crash diet,
then this plan will work well for you.
The best thing about it is that it’s so stupidly simple, you cannot go wrong.
The 1 Meal A Day Diet
I call it the 1 Meal A Day Diet.
It’s a variation of intermittent fasting. Which is a
protocol where you extend the period of time you are not eating between
the last meal of one day, and the first meal of the next day.
In most intermittent fasting plans, you will not eat for about 16 hours, usually breaking the fast with lunch the following day.
These diets are starting to become very popular, and have
been shown to work very well. They are easy to follow and offer a large
amount of flexibility.
As an added bonus, fasting actually frees up additional
fat oxidation, so you use more fat for energy while increasing insulin
sensitivity, meaning you better partition nutrients for energy and usage
in the muscles – instead of storing them as fat.
In the 1 Meal A Day plan, you simply wait until dinner for your first and only meal.
This gives you a huge amount of freedom to eat as much as you wish in this 1 meal.
You can eat out, eat socially, without restraint. This is
particularly satisfying if you have a large appetite and traditional
diets leave you feeling unsatisfied at the end of a meal.
You can hardly go wrong because you will simply not be able to eat enough calories to overeat in one meal, without getting full.
Aren’t You Hungry All Day?
I know what you’re thinking. Won’t I be hungry all day long if I don’t eat anything?
Like any intermittent fasting protocol, there is an
adjustment period, where your body is getting used to not eating every
couple of hours.
Once this adjustment is over, it is really quite easy.
I’ve done a number of extended fasts, where I don’t eat
for multiple days on the trot, and after the first day, it actually
becomes much easier. You simply stop feeling hungry.
It’s a great learning experience, to discover that most
hunger you feel is simply conditioned because you’re used to eating at
that time of day.
If you normally eat breakfast, you will tend to wake up
and feel hungry. After not eating breakfast for a few days; you stop
being hungry at breakfast time.
The same holds true for meals later in the day. I find it
useful to think of breakfast in its literal meaning – ‘breaking the
fast’, rather than a meal you eat in the morning before work.
Is It Safe?
Unless you have a pre-existing medical condition, there
should be no reason it is unsafe or unhealthy to compress your feeding
window.
We do just fine for 12-16 hours of not eating while we’re
asleep. Many religions have to fast as part of their yearly celebrations
and face no ill effects.
This protocol is essentially what one would do during Ramadan if you were observing.
When we evolved as hunter-gatherers it would be completely normal to alternate between periods of feast and famine.
After a successful hunt, we could stuff ourselves with
abundant food. Indeed, we probably had to, as they didn’t have
refrigerators in caves.
Then it might be days until another successful hunt, where you could perhaps subsist on a few berries if that.
Human beings are perfectly evolved for extended periods of fasting.
Our hunger signally has mostly been conditioned due to
having abundant food, and regimented meal times created alongside the
8-hour work day.
How Do I Do It?
I recommend you ease into the 1 Meal A Day Diet because you will feel hungry if you’re not used to fasting.
Start by just delaying your breakfast a couple of hours.
Build up to skipping it all together. Then start delaying lunch, and
eventually work up to just eating dinner.
What you will find is that you get hungry around the time you’ve typically been eating in the recent past.
To stave off hunger, ensure you drink plenty of water, and
you can also have black coffee or tea. Both of which will suppress
hunger. Sparkling water often helps repress hunger too.
When you get to eat just 1 meal a day you don’t need to
count or track your calories, but that isn’t a free reign to eat
anything you want. At least not every day.
You do still have the same nutritional needs, so you need to focus on meeting those with healthy, whole foods.
Ensure you’re getting enough protein, and all the vitamins
and minerals you need, some healthy fats, and you will be well covered.
Does This Work Long Term?
You could do this long term, but most people would fair
better with 2-3 meals per day. You can still delay the feeding window
and just have late lunch and dinner.
This is what I typically recommend for maintenance. While the 1 Meal A Day Diet is for weight loss.
I’ve been following it for a few weeks and it’s very easy
to follow, but depending on your appetite you might not be able to eat
enough calories and nutrients to cover your needs with just 1 meal.
In this case, you should use it for 2-4 weeks to lose weight, and then switch back to 2-3 meals per day.
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