Some things that help me stay on track each day when I'm dieting
- Coffee with milk but no food
- Late breakfast/brunch
- A late lunch/afternoon snack that leaves me with enough calories for dinner.
- Trying to leave myself 800ish calories for dinner most days, especially when I'm starting out.
- Eating healthy early so i can have "Cheat meals" like an 800 calorie burrito with black beans/no rice from chipotle
- No unplanned cheat days. Parcells used to say if you give a man an excuse he will take it
- One item per meal. A burger and fries. No. A burger OR fries, sure.
- Fiber and protein. Yes they're healthy but also both super filling.
- Remembering my goals. Theres a reason I'm doing this and I don't want to f it up.
It's too complicated to be honest. "Dieting" in a traditional sense and daily calorie counting/weighing is a type of self flogging.
OMAD/IF
One Meal A Day/Intermittent Fasting
You start with a 12/12, then you progress with one more hour of fasting over time. So for example, you fast for 12 hours a day, nothing but water or green tea ( caffeinated or decaf, it's up to you, but nothing else in it, if it's hot weather, you can cold steep it and add ice) Your eating window is then 12 hours.
Then in two weeks, add in another hour. 13/11
Every two weeks you keep adding in another hour of fasting.
Until you get to 20/4.
Then you oscillate between 20/4 and 22/2.
It's always better to have evening dinner as your "One Meal" Why? Because it allows you to eat dinner with your family and not disrupt your family lifestyle. Not eating breakfast or lunch together in the modern family is not that unusual. Also for someone single like krista4, it allows her to socialize in the evenings with her friends or her fellow criminal conspirators like the human traffickers and not disrupt her cycle.
Getting one big meal allows you to deal with your cravings. You can eat cleaner and should eat cleaner. But if you have cravings and want a double bacon cheeseburger with fries, you can. ( Though it will be the only thing you eat all day because of the calorie load) And if you have that craving for a week, then you can get that craving out of your system. You can have a week of double bacon cheeseburgers with fries as your only food. If krista4 wants the slave labor in her basement, chained to the wall and forced to watch Brie Larson's Oscar winning performance looped on big screen all day, who packs her cocaine shipments and makes her pizza in that 20 thousand dollar industrial pizza oven to make her keto pizza every night, then so be it.
I say oscillate between a 2 and 4 hour eating window because a four hour window is long enough to socialize and eat. No one goes out at night and eats for four hours straight. That's enough time to sit down and have dinner and talk and have some dessert and get it all out of the system. The two hour window is for when you are by yourself, it won't take 4 hours to eat a double bacon cheese burger and fries. ( Will it? )
What are the psychological benefits/coping mechanisms?
You get to deal with your cravings, not try to suppress them. At some point, you will get sick of double bacon cheeseburgers
You stay to a calorie count, to some approximation
You get to have a larger meal that you find satisfying.
A larger meal in the evening will help you calm down and help you sleep
You have something to look forward to at night. "Dieting" is brutal because you don't have anything but the constant cycle of wanting, denying, breaking the willpower and self flogging. If I wanted that kind of happy horse #### for myself all the time, I would have gotten married.
What are the physiological health benefits?
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-health-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting
Doing it in the evening gives you a head start, you sleep at night (probably getting 2-3 hours head start since no one really eats a big meal and then sleeps in the next 15 minutes) which is anywhere from 6-8 hours for most people. You skip breakfast but many people are used to that. And then you skip lunch. The 12/12 is really a two meal a day system to start. You keep a late lunch and a dinner. You transition to One Meal A Day.
What about training?
It's best to do your training right when you get up. For me it's 4am every day. Or in the evening right before your big One Meal where it can also serve as a post recovery meal.
How do you structure the One Meal. Eat a stew to start. Get all your vegetables and macro nutrients inside of you. Stew allows you to hide things that taste horrible on their own. For example, if you want some apple cider vinegar and turmeric for health, you can pour a little in the stew. A vegetable and meat stew is pretty damn healthy for you and won't take a major calorie load to do it. As I mentioned before, I stick to a bean stew. Then eat something you actually will generally enjoy. Have an omelette with cheese and bacon if you want. Even have some ice cream. The stew to start will give you a simple one pot filling meal that will limit you eating too much junk. Some people have late night cravings. OK, have some more stew. More vegetables, water, spices, chicken or beef and beans isn't going to kill you.
Mostly, it's simple. It's a lot easier because you aren't generally tracking calories down to the letter. I have 2000 calories. Or I have 1800 calories. Or whatever it is, as long as it fits in that big box, you are OK.
Strength training is critical because it's good for long term health. But also if you build up your muscle mass, whatever that will be for that person, you can increase your caloric intake. See those body builders on those videos? Look at what they eat. They eat so much they are actually tired of eating most days. You don't need to train and eat like that, but over a course of the rest of your life, another 200 calories a day in food that you can take in and maintain a decent body weight because you have the muscle mass to support it is a big deal.
Notice I trend with everything I'm saying in this thread? Simple, inexpensive, a practical logistical pathway to do it, confronting the practical nature of human behavior, dealing with how people functionally live, building a system where you can stack consistency.
Bean stew in an Instant Pot that feeds you all week.
Kettlebell training you can do in your living room each night as you watch your Sopranos.
OMAD/IF so you can actually feel satisfied when you do eat.
I have been OMAD/IF my entire life. Most of it was unintentional. You think they were talking about this in the 80s when I was cruising around in a Porsche 944 Turbo taking down big scores in business while pulling quality and dropping loads? I was too busy to eat normally. But then again there's nothing normal about raw unfiltered natural dominance.
Simple is better because simple is sustainable. You want to change your lifestyle, not diet. You want to develop positive habits not batter yourself with cravings and self flogging. You can't be me. The world would break if there were unlimited 3000 percent beefeaters running around causing havoc in the world. But you can get moderately close. Getting close is a damn good life.
. I love to ski, and ski hard. That sucks when you’re out of shape. Keep it up people!!
Hope everyone else is doing well!
everything in my lower leg hurts. solution? drink some beers. 
