For most of my adult life, I weighed approximately the same as I did in high school, indicating my regular lifestyle routine (mainly, diet and exercise) were stable and healthy. I was usually good about watching what I ate, but I also was exceptionally active, playing sports, commuting by bicycle, and so on. Things changed when I got married, got a full-time desk job, and had kids, though. Suddenly, my free time evaporated, my stress levels rose, and I began eating more junk food, and more frequently.
Unsurprisingly, over the years my body weight gradually ticked up. With every ten-pound threshold I crossed, I vowed I would do something to get back to my 'high school days'; but I always ended up coming up with excuses. Once my weight hit thirty pounds above my high school days, though, I had finally had enough: I would diet, and it would be different.
With past attempts at dieting I had gotten frustrated with the slow pace of things. I had slightly decreased my caloric intake and slightly increased my mobility, but the effects on my waistline were agonizingly slow, leading me give up prematurely. This time, I would push it up a notch, cutting out sugar and processed foods almost entirely, and cooking healthier foods in healthier ways while also increasing my exercise frequency. Most crucially, I would only eat when I was hungry, I would not eat anything after six o'clock, and I would adopt the Japanese rule of hara hachi bun (腹八分)--that is, eating until your stomach is eighty percent full.
On the first day I grilled meat, steamed vegetables, and replaced condiments with healthier substitutes. For imbibing, besides copious amounts of water, I limited myself to one cup of coffee mixed with milk daily. Surprisingly, I wasn't hungry the rest of the day, and so, I didn't eat again. I woke up the next day and wasn't immediately hungry either. Around late morning I cooked a similar meal, and I was surprised again that I wasn't that hungry the rest of the day. And so, I again didn't eat the rest of the day. This happened the next day, the day after, and the day after that. By eating simply and healthily, and doing so only when I was truly hungry (staying hydrated helped with this, as I recall my biology professor in college asserting that many people mistake hunger for thirst), I naturally settled on eating only once per day, with no snacks in the interregnum either.
I had often heard of intermittent fasting being a useful dieting technique, and I wondered if eating one meal per day (at approximately the same time--around late morning or noon) qualified as such. Apparently, it is, and it is known as OMAD (one meal a day). This triggered a memory from a high school literature class, where we were assigned to read the transcendentalist book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. For some reason, as a high schooler, it had stuck out to me that Thoreau had recommended eating just one meal a day. At the time, it seemed an impossible lifestyle (and perhaps it is for an active and growing adolescent), but now as an adult, I was living it:
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. -- Henry David Thoreau (Walden [1854])
After one week of this, I anxiously stepped on the scale: I had lost nine pounds! Most surprising to me, though, is that not only did I never really feel hunger but that my everyday energy levels were fine. When jogging, I admittedly felt a little tired, but as I was exercising for weight loss rather than training for competition, this was not a concern. In fact, pushing through made it even more satisfying to finish.
I know the drastic weight loss of the first week is likely a consequence of it being the first week, and therefore I expect the rate of weight loss to slow down in subsequent weeks. As such, I am not sure how long I will keep up this routine--perhaps until I reach my target weight. And I am sure it will be a struggle in more social times of the year, surrounded by friends and family in celebratory meals. Regardless, I am heartened that I have evidence such a lifestyle change is possible and effective; and I am delighted that the journey jarred a reminiscence of a high school literature class as I seek to return to my high school body weight.
