Eat every other day Diet
It’s amazing what some of us will go through to lose weight and still enjoy food. In my case, it may border on self-medication, but it’s probably more of an Oprah book club moment than a topic for a big article. So back to the big article. As I was saying, being able to eat every other day on a diet would be better for some of us than working hard day after day on watercress soup, but is eating only every other day harmful? Will you lose weight just eating every other day? These are some questions that come to mind.
Fitness and nutrition author Jon Benson wrote about his experience of eating every other day:
“Today I went to eat a New York style pizza here in Austin, Texas. Do I feel ‘guilty’? No way…in fact, I’m going to feel THINNER tomorrow. What the heck? I had to prepare my body for this. A bit of a metabolic hack, of course. You can’t just “eat pizza” and lose weight… I wish you could! But my personal fat loss system doesn’t just “allow” pizza (and all my other favorite foods) … DEMANDS that I eat it.”
So it seems to work for some people.
Eat only every other day?
If you simply decide to eat every other day and expect to lose weight, you probably won’t. I know I’ve tried it. Yes, I started to lose weight, but I was very hungry on my fasting days and overeating on my eating days. I got the feeling that I could run to Pizza Hut to eat every other day. Then I started cheating on my fasting days, rationalizing it by telling myself that I would do it just this once. In the end, a diet of eating every other day made my situation worse.
What about eat-stop-eat?
This is a diet where you choose two 24-hour periods a week to fast. I tried this too and got the same results as eating every other day. In fact, eating every other day initially gave me better results and didn’t cost me the $49 that the eat-stop-eat eBooks did it. Now don’t get me wrong. The Eat-Stop-Eat eBook is a great eBook. It was my fault that I didn’t follow what he said. It’s a great diet guide that my brother’s wife follows with wonderful results. I just rationalized too much.
The diet of eating every other day!
Jon Benson, who we quoted earlier, actually developed his system for eating every other day in a diet guide called The Eat Every Other Day Diet or EODD To abreviate. Its name is more poetic license than an actual description of the system. Jon took the idea of eating every other day and applied the concept of caloric cycling and consulted with nutrition experts and came up with a system.
How did the EODD system work for me?
Under this system, he eats a lean protein diet punctuated with “feeding days” where, if you’ll excuse the shaking, he’s stuffed. You never actually fast. It’s funny how this system actually worked for me. I never starved due to fasting and always had my “Feeding Day” to look forward to. By using the EODD I could also schedule my “meal days” to coincide with holiday meals, picnics, and date nights with my wife.
Although eat every two days didn’t work very well for me because I just didn’t have the willpower to eat only every other day, it led me into a caloric cycling system (EODD) which works for me. I believe losing weight is more a matter of finding a system that works for you than finding a system that works for everyone. Tea EODD The diet works for me, but maybe the Eat-Stop-Eat system will work for you. How do you know until you try? Don’t look at your failures as defeats, they are simply part of the research you are doing to find a diet system that works for you.
