Tuesday 18 December 2012

Warrior Diet

Holidailies 2012
These past couple of months I have been experimenting with fasting. Prior to that I have been experimenting with eating healthier and for over a couple of years I have experimented with a no-added-sugar and no-alcohol diet. The net result is that I have felt good on the whole. I still have my blips such as the other day with one depression after another I couldn't stop eating and wangled a whole cheesecake down my gullet in a 12-hour period plus sundry other items. 

Yesterday I started the Warrior diet. Rather unwisely without any preparation but I felt it was right for me just to jump right on in as that sometimes suits me. In any case, there was one very major hurdle for me to overcome and that was my attitude to breakfast: I love it and feel it is the key to everything yet the Warrior diet consists of no eating or consumption of any calories over a 19 hour period and then to have a five hour window every day, about the same sort of time and preferably in the evening when all food consumption takes place and you eat all that you would normally eat in a day. Therefore, no breakfast if one wants to interpret it that way. I weighed up eating my lovely breakfast on my own to family meals with my beloved and there is no competition.

What is more, when I started yesterday, I had a busy and late day at work knowing that I would have an active work day involving physical work. My previous experiments in fasting days actually meant one had a breakfast and then fasted until the next day apart from a little miso soup. So going without breakfast was new on me and what a revelation. I not only survived, it was actually alright. I managed all my physical work, I didn't feel tired and apart from some prattish thing I was doing much later on (after I had broken my fast at 5.15pm with a breakfast I took in with me to work) was actually quite sharp enough.

After the "breakfast" I was extremely full on the smaller meal in my presumably smaller tum which was a bit worrying by the time I was home and Mr Doris was cooking us a lovely meal and I didn't feel quite so hungry. Nevertheless I ate as it is still very important to have all your calorie intake each day but only within the eating window. And then there is the next key point for me - never to eat late in the evening and here I am doing just that. Throughout the day I drank black tea, green tea or water to keep hydration up.

Day two today and I do not have a late day at work so I can modify my food window to say, from 2pm to 7pm, or 3pm to 8pm. I have quite a bit of running around to do so that will be interesting to see how I manage. This is all experimental. In recent times I have read some ideas about the body going into repair mode during fasting rather than growth mode and that fasting only has to be the equivalent of a good night sleep plus a bit more. There are all sorts of fasting such as IF Intermittent Fasting and Alternate Day Fasting and so forth which I am researching too.

Since I am going to be fifty years old soon, I have been doing all sorts to try and get myself into better shape for the future. Not just physically, but also health wise and mentally. I have no desire to become one of the walking dead, just fitter and healthier. It will be good to see what role this may play.

2 comments:

Anji said...

I don't think that I could give up my breafast. We're always told that skipping breakfast means scoffing rubbish later in the day, so I was surprised you managed so well without it. This is very interesting...

Up until recent years in France the main meal was eaten at midday, which I think was the secret to such slim French women. Nowadays the sandwich and fast food culture has taken over and we see more overweight people.

The good side is that the designers are now designing chic clothes for all sizes!

Hope you'll continue posting how you get on.

Doris said...

For me it is not true - I am not scoffing. In fact I have gotten to a sense of calm. Sure there are moments when I feel strong pangs but I just got on with what I was doing and those pangs went. And I drank a lot of weak black tea.

Day 2 pretty much done and if anything, I am having to look for things to eat during my 5 hour window otherwise I would be content to eat much less which is not such a good thing in the scheme of things as I do not want what muscle I have to waste away!

Interesting to hear how even the French are being affected by changing diets.