One of the things I choose to do here at DietHobby is give an occasional review of a diet and/or diet book which I’ve read and have found unusual or interesting enough to personally experiment with (although usually only after I make personal and individual modifications to the basic plan). This is one such review.  

 Snack Yourself Slim (2008) was written by Richard Warburg, a lawyer, assisted by Tessa Lorant who is a published author and knitting expert. This diet book is based on the rather unique premise of having tiny snacks every hour instead of meals.

Warburg shares a personal eating plan that he developed and used successfully. He asserts that it is a known fact that the body craves satiety through smaller, more frequent meals. His lifestyle approach is to eat a very small amount of something every hour that you are awake.

Here is his diet plan. Every hour that you are awake you eat approximately 80 to 100 calories of any food. If you arise at 7 a.m. and are awake until 10 p.m. for those 15 hours you would consume about 1200 to 1500 calories. Warburg says that such a plan is destined for success since the body’s caloric needs can be determined through scientific charts which show a person’s daily caloric needs, based upon gender, height, weight, and exertion level.

As an example, the charts say that a six-foot, 40-year-old man, weighing approximately 200 pounds with a moderate physical activity level (five exercise sessions a week), would need about 2800 calories a day to maintain his current weight. Since 3500 calories equals one pound of fat, reducing daily intake to a 2000 calories would equate to nearly a pound of fat being reduced every four days.

Snack Yourself Slim encourages such a hypothetical man to eliminate another 500 calories from that amount for even quicker weight loss.

Based on the conventional wisdom of calories-in calories-out, it would appear that this could be a successful means of weight loss. Warburg cites his own success with the plan, as well as the success of a few of his friends who have used it. The main drawback of the plan, appears to be that it would require giving up eating all normal size meals. For most occupations and lifestyles, this could be rather difficult to accomplish.

Warburg claims no medical expertise, and his knowledge about body functions appears to be based on his own armchair reading about various dieting methods. Current conventional wisdom is calories-in-calories-out, and he seems to understand that basic concept, however he makes the statement that all calories are NOT created equal because “you can have as many as you like in protein form – the body simply excretes those you don’t need”. This inaccurate statement indicates that Warburg is unfamiliar with the concept of gluconeogensis which is the process whereby the body turns extra protein into glucose, which then … if unused… gets stored as fat. Based on this rather egregious error, I would advise a reader not to heavily rely on Warburg’s sketchy interpretation of how insulin and his diet work together.

I have previously reviewed the book “The No S Diet” (2008), which is a 3 meal zero snacking plan. I am very fond of the Habit concepts of the author, Reinhard Engles, and in March 2008, I began experimenting with the No S diet. I was unsuccessful at establishing a 3 meal, 0 snacking habit, probably due to the fact that my entire 60+ year lifetime involves a strong established habit involving small meals with snacking at random throughout the day. However, I am still strongly attracted to the diet and to Reinhard’s habit concepts, and I enjoy and recommend his No S forum which frequently contains the comments of some interesting, intelligent, and courteous people.

With that personal background, I ran across “Snack Yourself Slim”, in mid-2009; I purchased and read the book, intrigued by the idea of All snacks, 0 meals which is actually a reverse pattern of The No S Diet, and a diet concept I’d never tried.

My only experimentation with this diet was for about 10 days in early May, 2009, just a few days after returning from a long vacation in Boston. During that 10 days, I ate …what for me were maintenance calories … divided into approximately 11 to13 snack eating sessions. My average weight went down approximately 1 lb during that 2 week period, but this appeared to be merely due to normal flucuation. I found that I missed meals, plus I was strongly motivated to quickly drop a few lbs of vacation weight, so I quit that all-snacking-zero-meal-plan to experiment with other diet plans.

I have no strong feelings about the personal effectiveness of the diet, either way. Recently I’ve became interested in doing a second experiment with it, and I now have a plan to do that. If I follow through with such a plan, and I have results that I find interesting, I will share those in some later article.

                                                       
A fresh start?

Recently I've been thinking about the concept of a "fresh start" as it relates to dieting, weight-loss, and maintenance of weight-loss.

My own belief is that every diet works for someone, and every possible type of eating is actually a diet… including all of the intuitive eating, "non-diets" etc. Just SAYING it isn't a diet, doesn't change it's nature. As far as I'm concerned, despite all of the factors like total amount eaten, timing of eating, or micronutrients eaten, if it's food, and if it goes into one's body, it's some type of diet.

Most people begin each new weight-loss diet, "healthy" diet, or new food plan, with some emotional energy, hope, and enthusiasm. Over time, Reality intrudes, and that energy grows dim, and sometimes fades away. At that point, many of these people "take a break" from their diet, or food plan, and return to their former eating habits. This break can be for a short time or a long time, but almost all of them will eventually decide to again alter their ongoing way of eating, telling themselves they are getting "a fresh start".

My personal choice, at present, is to change maintenance food plans frequently…but without allowing any "free" space for overeating, between plans. For the past 8 years I've recorded all of my food every day into a computer software program, no matter what food, how much food, or when that food was eaten. This has been my bottom line consistency factor.

My take is that there needs to be a balance between consistency, patience, endurance, and effort and keeping our daily experiences from getting "stale". "Stale" is the opposite of "fresh", and means tasteless or unpalatable from age; tedious from familiarity, or impaired in vigor or effectiveness.

Although we all share common factors as human beings, each of us is an individual, with genetic, cultural, and behavioral history differences. Weight-loss is hard for almost every overweight or obese person, and maintenance is even harder yet.

The science behind why we weigh what we weigh is hugely complicated. The number of physiological factors governing our ability to maintain, lose or gain weight is staggering. Leptin, leptin resistence, ghrelin, insulin, insulin resistence, and a whole host of other chemicals and chemical reactions in our bodies come into play.

Here's an interesting article I recently read in Big Fat Facts, written by a long-time weight-loss maintainer that talks about the tremendous problems involved in success with losing and maintaining weight.

The Truth About Long-Term Diet Success

An oft-quoted but rarely cited statistic is that diets fail 95 percent of the time. That figure dates back to a 1959 study of 100 people. The study was conducted by Dr. Albert Stunkard, now a researcher with the University of Pennsylvania, and Mavis McLaren-Hume. It concluded that "(m)ost obese persons will not stay in treatment, most will not lose weight, and of those who do lose weight, most will regain it." It was a brazen statement at the time, when doctors and other experts thought that treating obesity was as simple as handing a patient a "plan," and it was likely accurate. It may still be accurate, though we do not know.

Two 1992 reports from the National Institutes of Health have been quoted as corroborating this 95 percent failure rate. The executive statement of one report asserts: "Data show that many individuals regain one-third to two-thirds of intentionally lost weight within 1 year and regain the rest of the weight within 5 years." While this report stops short of stating a figure, it has been used in support of the 95 percent assertion because it references several studies with different but dismal results, some even worse than 5 percent success:

Kramer and colleagues (1989) found that less than 3 percent of subjects were at or below posttreatment weight on all followup visits.  Other researchers have documented similar findings (Graham et al., 1983; Stalanos et al., 1984). With respect to obesity treatment in adolescents, Rees (1990) reported that 85 to 95 percent of patients regain at least as much weight as they lost and Stalonas and colleagues (1984) found evidence that patients regain even more weight than the initial weight lost.

This NIH report also references the analysis of David Garner and Susan Wooley, a 51-page review of diet research and diet failure, that has also been used to support the 95 percent claim and concludes there is no "scientific justification for the continued use of dietary treatments of obesity. . . . Most participants regain the weight lost. The inevitability of this result is often obscured by the use of follow-up periods insufficient to capture the later phases of weight regain."

Many have marginalized the 95 percent figure, but few scientists have challenged it directly with original research or analysis, and that is likely because few are so motivated. The wise people who tell us that "diets don't work" have no interest in finding a different figure. This one proves their point sufficiently. The researchers funded by the pharmaceutical industries want a low benchmark to beat when they finally find the "wonder pill" that will reverse obesity in, say, 12 percent of the population as opposed to 5 percent. They'll tout it as "more than twice as effective as conventional dieting." The people who run the commercial diet programs are not interested in learning that the real rate of success might be 8% or 10%, which might mirror their own success rates compared to that 5% figure.

 The researchers at the National Weight Control Registry (a project dedicated to documenting diet success stories) have recently challenged the 5 percent figure, but they have done so by redefining "success" modestly  as "intentionally losing 10 percent of initial body weight and maintaining that loss for at least a year." They assert (though they stop short of saying they have proven) that under this new definition, the "success" rate is probably closer to 20 percent.

We must conclude that we don't know the long-term success and failure rates of diets, but what we do know is depressing. Do we really embrace the idea that just one year of maintaining 10% weight loss is success? (We would want to ask a "successful" dieter who has regained all her weight plus ten pounds, and who started that humiliating process on day 366 or shortly thereafter.) Moreover, regardless of how diet "success" is defined, even the most cynical researchers, who support weight-loss dieting for health or social purposes, agree that diets fail at least 80 or 90 percent of the time.

This fuzzy problem has implications for both scientists and everyday citizens. For scientists there is an implied challenge to define "success" using fair language that average citizens would embrace if they were to achieve it, and then test that definition and give us a real number to work with. For everyday citizens, even lacking a solid number, the knowledge that diets do "fail," by even the weakest definition, 80 percent of the time or more begs a question: would we board an airplane that had only a 20 percent chance of landing safely? 

One dieting issue to be faced is the question of whether or not blind restriction is a personally sustainable, long-term strategy.

My own experience says that it isn't, 
and there are many "dieting experts" who say that blind restriction,......
...the belief that if you're trying to manage weight you simply don't eat
nutritionally bereft, but hedonically wonderful foods, (i.e. junk foods), …
...........is one of the reason why there are so many failures in dieting.

For me, personally, thinking that I'm going to live a life where I'm not allowed to take pleasure from food, is unrealistic. I'm working toward the healthiest life that I can enjoy, not the healthiest life that I can tolerate.  This means I work toward eating the smallest amount of bad-for-you-indulgence that I need to enjoy my life, but ….for me…that amount is definitely not "none".

Thus far, all of my efforts to do otherwise have always wound up being an extremely temporary state of being. I admire people who are able to get themselves to successfully function with food in this manner, and I'm open to the possibility, but after a lifetime of dealing with overeating, obesity, and experimenting with every different form of dieting I've ever heard about, I feel fairly certain I'm never going to be one of them.

Here's an amusing video about the difficulties involved in many common food restrictions.

Losing weight needs time, patience, and consistency in eating less food than one's body uses. Maintaining weight-loss also requires time, patience, and consistency in eating ONLY the amount of food that one's body uses. The sad fact is that most people give up before they've even barely begun. There are always lots of people starting and giving up diets, and many more coming up behind them to do the same thing.

We are now so used to the instant gratification that comes in so many areas of our modern life, that a part of us can't help but expect it to also apply to the size of our bodies, so we become disenchanted when the first few days of a diet doesn't bring much by the way of a result on the appearance or size of our bodies. It has been such hard work, why hasn't it made any difference?

Dieting needs Time, Patience, and Consistent Effort, three things that are in short supply nowadays. Regrettably many people are just not inclined to participate in the long run, they want results, and they want them NOW. That's just not going to happen.

We can be successful at losing weight, and at maintaining weight-loss
…but only with Time, Patience, and Consistent Effort.

Perfectionists are those people who strain compulsively and unceasingly toward unobtainable goals.
Pressuring oneself to achieve such unrealistic goals inevitably sets the individual up for disappointment. Perfectionists tend to be harsh critics of themselves when they do not meet the standards they set for themselves.  Negative thinking surrounds perfectionism, in particular the "all-or-nothing" thinking in which a person believes that an achievement is either perfect or useless.

Perfectionism is:

* an all pervasive attitude that whatever you attempt in life must be done letter perfect with no deviation, mistakes, slip-ups or inconsistencies

* the irrational belief that you and/or your environment must be perfect

* a rigid, moralistic outlook that does not allow for humanism or imperfection

* the striving to be the best, to reach the ideal and to never make a mistake

* a habit developed from youth that keeps you constantly alert to the imperfections, failings, and weakness in yourself and others

* a level of consciousness that keeps you ever vigilant to any deviations from the norm, the guidelines or the way things are "supposed to be"

* the underlying motive present in the fear of failure and fear of rejection, i.e., if I am not perfect I will fail and/or I will be rejected by others

* a reason why you may be fearful of success, i.e., if I achieve my goal, will I be able to continue, maintain that level of achievement

* an inhibiting factor that keeps you from making a commitment to change habitual, unproductive behavior out of fear of not making the change "good enough"

* the belief that no matter what you attempt it is never "good enough" to meet your own or others' expectations

Irrational beliefs that contribute to perfectionism:

* Everything in life must be done to your level of perfection, which is often higher than anyone else's.

* It is unacceptable to make a mistake.

* If I have a failure or experience a set back in my efforts to change then I should give up.

* You must always reach the ideal no matter what.

* The ideal is what is real; unless I reach the ideal I am a failure.

* You are a loser if you cannot be perfect.

* It is what you achieve rather than who you are that is important.

* I have no value in life unless I am successful.

* There is no sense in trying to do something unless I can do it perfectly, e.g., "I don't attempt things I can't do well."

* There are so many roadblocks and pitfalls to keep me from succeeding. It is better just to give up and forget my goal.

* Unless I am "Number One," there is no sense in trying. Everyone knows what "Number Two" is. To win is the only acceptable goal.

* If you screw up in your efforts to achieve a goal, just give up. It must be too hard to achieve.

* You must always strive to reach the ideal in everything you do because it is in the achievement of the ideal that you give meaning to your life.

* Don't ever let anyone know what goal you're working on. That way they won't consider you a failure if you don't reach it.

* If you can't do it right the first time, why try to do it at all?

* There is only one way to reach a goal: the right way.

* It takes too much effort and energy to reach a goal. I save myself the aggravation and discouragement by not setting goals for myself.

* I'll never be able to change and grow the way I want to, so why try?

* I am a human being prone to error, frailty and imperfections; therefore, I won't be able to accomplish things in a perfect or ideal way. I'll just give up on achieving any of my goals or desires.

Rational behaviors needed to overcome perfectionism:

* accept self as a human being

* forgive self for mistakes or failings

* put self back on the wagon immediately after falling off

* accept that the ideal is only a guideline or goal to be worked toward, not to be achieved 100 percent

* set realistic and flexible time frames for the achievement of a goal

* develop a sense of patience and to reduce the need to "get it done yesterday"

* be easier on oneself; setting unrealistic or unreasonable goals or deadlines sets you up for failure

* recognize that the human condition is one of failings, weakness, deviations, imperfections and mistakes; it is acceptable to be human

* recognize that one's backsliding does not mean the end of the world; it is OK to pick oneself up and start all over again

* develop an ability to use "thought stopping" techniques whenever you find yourself mentally scolding yourself for not being "good enough"

* visualize reality as it will be for a human rather than for a super human

* learn to accept yourself the way you are; let go of the ideas of how you should be

* enjoy success and achievement with a healthy self-pride, and eliminate the need for self-deprecation or false humility

* learn to enjoy success without the need to second guess your ability to sustain the achievement

* reward yourself for your progress, to reinforce your efforts to change even when progress is slight or doesn't meet up to your idealistic expectations

* love yourself; to believe that you deserve good things

* to eliminate unrealistic expectations and the idea that you are infallible

* visualize yourself as "winning" even when it takes more energy, and more perseverance, than what you had planned

* let go of rigid, moralistic judgments of your performance and to develop an open, compassionate understanding for the hard times, obstacles and temptations

* be flexible in setting goals and be willing to reassess your plan from time to time to keep things realistic

* be open to the idea that you will be successful in your efforts to change, even if you are not "first," "the best," "the model," "the star pupil," "the exemplar" or "the finest"

* realize that the important thing is to be going in a positive direction

Steps to Overcome Perfectionism

Step 1: Identify your perfectionism.

Step 2: Identify a problematic behavioral pattern you want to change; then list the characteristic negative behavior traits of the pattern. For each of the negative characteristics list positive alternative behavior traits. For each of the new alternative behavior list your likelihood of achieving them 100 percent of the time. How many new behavior traits could you achieve 100 percent of the time?

Step 3: Once you have recognized that no change can be achieved 100 percent of the time, continue changing your problematic behavior patterns. If you continue to be hindered by perfectionism, return to Step 1 and begin again.