A week ago, my wife and I embarked on an alternate-day diet, a regime of intermittent fasting: 500 calories one day, no restrictions the next. It's now been one week since the first fasting day.
We now have a spreadsheet of over 100 foods that we think we may eat on fast days. The first shock is that our vitamin pills and other supplements constitute about five percent of our fast-day total calorie intake! And my coffee -- already cut back from before -- is another ten percent. My "light" breakfast has used up half the day! Apparently, once our weight targets are achieved, we can close to triple the fast-day totals. But for now, it's looking a little more challenging than I'd anticipated. Had I really once gone five days with no food at all in my crazy college days?
We had started the diet with a "half assed" day, followed by a full fast, and by the end of the first full day, I had 78 calories left for dinner. Two ounces of plain canned tuna and five capers later, and supper's over. With lots of time left for evening activities!
As my friends had reported, we had no desire to binge the day following a fast day. If anything, we ate less to start, although we had to eat more often during the morning. For the first few days, I felt a curious urge to binge at the end of a full day. I have no idea why that would be!
Meshing the diet with our work, exercise and social calendars has proven to be one of the more challenging aspects. My wife is part of a large management team, and lunch-time meetings are common. It's hard to sit and chew sugar-free gum -- three calories per chiclet -- when the Indian buffet -- calories unknown -- is laid out in front of you!
For our first week, Saturday was a scheduled fast day. But after starting the day with some exercise, followed by shopping expeditions and spring yard-work, we crashed completely long before it was time for our 100-calorie supper. We quickly adjusted the schedule for the following week so that we could eat well most of the weekend, as well as the days we exercised most heavily. We spent Saturday evening sprawled on the living room rug, dreaming of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
At the end of one week, I've achieved six percent of my target weight loss. Despite the challenges, I'm beginning to feel this is workable. I'm taking comfort in field reports that the fast days get easier. We're looking forward to those feted higher-calorie fast days, once we achieve our targets -- about 10% weight loss.
Resources:
Calorie Restriction (Wikipedia)
Why I want to live longer and stay healthy. (Yes, that's me too.)
The series:
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