The theory of human diet is in chaos.

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A daily diet., diet, Intermittent diet, Intermittent fasting

In the booklet I’ve been working on called Love Your Life, there are going to be a few pages on food and dieting. It seemed appropriate to read the latest literature on that subject, but it turned out to be a trip down Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole. Weird science, pseudo-science, real researchers with vast real-world experience mixed with obviously self-serving money grubbers seeking a fast buck. The money involved in the diet industry is enormous. It’s claimed that Americans spend more than 60 billion dollars annually on various forms of dieting to control weight. Even with all that money being spent, it is obvious that the public is gaining weight and at present two out of three here in the US are overweight. Worldwide there are pockets of famine, but overall one out of three humans is overweight. If there were an easy diet plan that was well known, then it seems obvious that everyone would soon know about that diet and do it. Reading a few current diet books makes the problem perfectly obvious. There is a flood of confusion creating an ocean of chaos.

It appears that every book has a theory of everything about proper diet, but each book will have another book directly opposed to it. There was one point of agreement and it seemed to be that sugar was a key promoter of obesity and early death. Of course, that is instantly proven wrong by almost every food producer. Of course, they make lots of money inserting sugar into their products and people buy those products. Obviously, beverages and candy have lots of sugar, but so do supposedly healthy breakfast cereal and the “vegetable” tomato catsup.

I have never been obese but a year ago my BMI was 27, which is above the cutoff for overweight at BMI 25. I was eating close to the Standard American Diet (SAD) minus meat, soda pop and sugared breakfast cereal, so Debbie and I after some reading decided to try the intermittent fasting diet. We have a long history of playing a game of following a new diet for the first ten days per month followed by a gradual tapering off for the rest of the month. The glycemic index diet seemed to work okay but I like white bread too much for it to be a lifelong lifestyle.

The way we have done our intermittent fasting is to eat three times per day but to narrow the time that we eat. We began that method by not eating anything after 8 PM nor before 8 AM. That was easy, but it got us into the habit of observing the clock before we ate. After a month we moved the times to 7 PM and 10 AM, and after another month to 6 PM to Noon. That left us with a six-hour window for eating and an eighteen hour fast.

As it turned out our stomachs realized that they were eating to the full every day and so they never signaled us that they were hungry. We usually go for a fifteen-minute walk before we “breakfast” at noon and we never feel hungry during that pleasant walking time together. I usually feel full all afternoon and am never hungry in the evening or in the morning.

The theory of human diet may be in chaos but after about ten months of more serious dieting, we are both down nineteen pounds and I am near my ideal BMI of 23.4.

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Set your goals so you get a positive feedback.

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How to measure success., Intermittent fasting, The intermittent diet

Both Debbie and I have been totally successful in dieting for the month of January, but she hasn’t had the good feelings of success that I have had, even though we have been eating the same things. The difference between our diet strategies is that she has been watching her weight and I have been watching the clock and the calendar. She is basing her feelings of success on the scale intermittently dropping toward her five-pound reduction goal and I have been basing my feelings on my successful compliance of not eating between 8 PM at night and 12 noon the next day. We are both doing the same diet, which has been called intermittent fasting, and the only difference is how we measure our progress. At the beginning of our diet, on January 1st 2017, it was more or less a New Year’s Resolution kind of thing, but those are notoriously poor for long-term compliance, so we didn’t want to name it that.

There has been some buzz in the media about the intermittent fasting diet, and over the years we have tried many diets for fun and pleasure. We have done a new diet some months using the strategy of doing it strictly for a week, following it carefully for another week, trying to think of it as an easy habit for another week and finally ignoring it as a preplanned diet for the last week of the month. We then chose a new diet for the next month. Of all of the diets we tried, the low glycemic index seemed to be the easiest to follow and sustain. It was mostly cutting down on all the forms of pasta and bread and wheat products, all of which I like, so it was a bit unpleasant for me. Unfortunately, after finishing the month of diet I drifted back to eating those things I like, so ultimately I am probably near the body weight my intestinal biome chooses for me.

It is now 11:38 AM as I write this post and typing is distracting enough that I don’t feel any hunger, but as I write this and check my stomach I do feel a little hungry. It isn’t unpleasant but ordinarily, having noticed this bit of hunger, I might go eat a small handful of chocolate covered almonds, probably about six of them, and then get back to whatever I was doing. Right now I’m going to go drink a glass of water … I just drank about six ounces of cold water and I don’t feel hungry at this moment.

On February 1st, having been 100% successful with the intermittent fasting diet, we decided to do one more month of it. There is one tiny addition that we are doing, and that is adding an 8-ounce glass of water just before we start eating our sit-down meals, lunch and dinner. Some people say it fills up the stomach a little and turns off the desire to keep eating a little sooner. Okay, that seems to be true, and it’s really easy to do. It’s time to go drop a bagel in the toaster. … 12:23 That will be a bagel with cream cheese, sunflower butter, raspberry jam, and a half-cup of yogurt … It went down nicely as my typical breakfast. We will have lunch about 2 PM.

This post is an example of setting a goal in a way to get a positive feedback.

My top ten new options for New Year’s Resolutions

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Adapt quickly to changes, Be kind, Buy higher quality coffee, Buy more books, Intermittent fasting, Keep blogging, New Year's Resolutions, Prepare for Virtual Reality, Spend more money, Take walks every day, Watch the political situation

It’s three days to New Year’s Day and the time to think about resolutions, and as I like to pre-plan things a little, to look into the future as far as possible, now is the time to blog about it. Losing weight is reported to be the most common New Year’s Resolution, but few people succeed with keeping to it even for a month. My recommendation from personal experience is to do the intermittent fasting diet. It is the easiest diet I have ever done because I don’t have to watch what I eat, and only keep my resolution as to the timing of when I eat.

Debbie and I bought a fancy new scale a couple of weeks ago that’s accurate to one-tenth of a pound, and with the help of electricity coursing through our bodies it calculates all sorts of things and sends the results to our computer. We started an intermittent-fasting diet where we only eat between the hours of 8 AM and 8 PM, but that proved to be too easy, so we upped the ante a little and now only eat between 12 noon and 8 PM. That has worked out well. It is easy to do because the only time to even think that we are dieting is when getting a little hungry right before lunch. It’s easy for me to do this diet at that time because I am usually busy and away from food or snacks. The fancy new scale creates a running chart which claims we have each lost three pounds. So, we will continue our New Year’s resolution of doing this intermittent fasting diet for a month and through January. It should be easy to continue because that is already what we are comfortable doing.

Another common resolution is to spend less money on frivolities like eating out, coffee shops, books, and clothes. Actually, I’m so cheap I’m going to reverse that one and choose to spend a little more. I haven’t even gone thrift store shopping for well over a year, although Debbie bought me some new Crocs shoes for Christmas and some really nice wool socks for my recent birthday.

A lot of people claim they are going to take up some exercise and get healthy, but we have taken a minimum of two twenty-minute walks per day for decades. My blood pressure is near perfect most of the time, and everyone claims I look much younger than my eighty-one-year-old body. So, it’s not much of a resolution to keep doing what I have been doing.

Some people I know get into some educational things, like learning a foreign language, but that’s a waste of brain cells and energy resources. I find it’s more satisfying doing productive things that create meaning for others or writing a blog. It’s like choosing to spend time being intentionally kind to others by being helpful to them finding their own way. Many people choose to feel love toward others, but I feel that internalized love goes nowhere, and externalized love in the form of kindness helps everyone, including myself, feel much better because it is real.

One unusual New Year’s Resolution, well not so much a resolution as a goal, is to pay close attention to the accelerating trends of technology. To some degree, that means getting ahead of today’s newest gadgets. Something like Moore’s law is impacting many technical things and our whole society seems to be in the flex point for some of them to take off. Perhaps it will be virtual reality (VR). That didn’t seem to quite make the technical quality level this Christmas to be super successful, but the power of computers continues to double and that will soon put VR into easy technical reach. Entertainment is such a big part of modern culture that a satisfying VR system may wash away TV, movies, smartphones and much of the current fascination with computers. With good VR you may soon be in closer contact with people and generated beings that the new social media will feel and be much more intimate and immersive than a present smartphone in your hand.

Another resolution is to try to respond appropriately to our new political situations. Things may change rapidly and those who adapt to the new realities quickly may do well, but those who won’t or can’t change will probably do poorly.

Those are the top resolutions for my coming year.