Me After Weight Loss.

Some of you might be interested in watching this video that I made in 2011, shortly after the start of my website, DietHobby.

All during these past 5 years, I’ve been consistently, day-after-day, putting in  a ton of Focus and Effort on working to achieve my ultimate goal of maintaining my weight within my “normal” BMI range.

Now, I'm 5 years older;  and…despite my consistent dieting efforts….today my body is 8 pounds heavier than it was in this video, (115 lbs then, 123 lbs now).  I’m still working hard every-single-day toward bringing my weight closer to the bottom of my maintenance weight range.  The photo below clearly defines how I view my ultimate goal weight range.

The wind = my weight-loss
RESULTS.

The sails = my eating
BEHAVIOR.

I frequently experiment with various “Diets”, “Lifestyles”, and “Ways-of-Eating”.  I do this randomly, depending on what catches my interest at the time, or what I think will benefit me most at the time.

While I am participating in such an experiment,  I sometimes share small bits of my own current eating experiences, but I do not share anything about other participants.  Also, I don’t make any kind of in-depth analysis while data is coming in…. which means not until long after an experiment has been completed.

As part of my involvement with any specific diet plan, I try to keep an open mind, and I work to suspend my Judgments on the pros, the cons, and the effectiveness of the overall diet.

This past fall, I did quite a bit of experimentation with various forms of water fasting.  Although I had some minor success with alternate day 24 hour fasts; several long-term fasts, including some 3 day fasts, and one 6 day fast, I did not care for it. 

At the start of this year I decided to commit to an experiment of 90 days of some sort of consistent, Intermittent Fasting.

After a week or so, I saw that I would need to drastically change my eating plan in order to succeed at this. 

After trying a few alternatives, I decided to work at strictly following the 5-bite diet again. Eating only 2 meals a day spaced 4 to 5 hours apart, results in an 18 to 19 hour daily fast. Furthermore, the entire 5-bite diet plan is actually a “controlled fast”.  In many ways it is similar to the way I ate for the first 7 months after my weight loss surgery 24 years ago.

I first experimented briefly with the 5-bite diet in the spring of 2009, and found it interesting, but was not fond of it.  In March, 2014, I again experimented with that diet for a six month period, and continued to find it interesting, but, for various reasons, found it unsustainable for me at that time.

So,  after having made the decision to resume my 5-bite diet experiment, I began following that diet plan. I also rejoined, and paid for, a monthly membership at Dr. Lewis’ website, and am currently participating there.  

This is actually my 3rd experiment with this particular diet, and my goal this time is to do better at suspending my negative judgments while working to follow that plan exactly; while paying attention to how my body feels.  I am interested in learning what kind of weight-loss I will receive at this current time, as a result of following that eating behavior.

The 5-bite diet is  based on Dr. Alwin Lewis’ book, “Why Weight Around”. 


The 5-bite rules are simple:

1. Do not eat breakfast
2. Do not snack
3. Eat five bites of food for lunch
4. Eat five bites of food for dinner (4-5 hours apart)
5. Eat at least one bite of protein a day
6. Take a multivitamin every day.
7. Drink only water, black coffee, or black tea, diet soda, or other non-caloric drinks.

One thing I’m doing differently this time around is working to actually follow Dr. Lewis’ instructions regarding only 5 bites. 

My personal preference is to estimate out what 5 bites for me would be; serve myself that exact small portion; and then eat all of my “5-bite” serving while having lots of tiny bites until I’ve finished it.

However, Dr. Lewis’ instructions are: 

Eat any kind of food you want, ignore calories.  Only take 5 normal or small size bites each meal.  “Your hand goes to your mouth five times and you are done.”  One bite should equal about 1 swallow.  Always throw food away. 

He says that people who estimate their food portion ahead of time, instead of just actually taking 5 bites, wind up eating a lot more food. 

Failing to take only 5-bites per meal from a regular size serving, and throwing the rest away, also prevents a person from receiving the training that is needed for weight-loss maintenance.  This is because - in our present culture, servings everywhere are far too large - and people need to become accustomed to always throwing most of their food serving away.  It needs to become the normal practice of every meal.

So, this is what I’m working on as my current plan.  How long will I do it?
I don’t know.   Ideally, for the rest of my 90 day commitment to Intermittent Fasting, but for ME: it’s always one-day-at-a-time.  All I really know is that I’m going to do my best to follow that 5-bite eating plan for the rest of Today.

Here’s something some of you might find interesting.  I’ve been taking BEFORE and AFTER pictures of my 5-bite meals, and I decided to post copies of them here on DietHobby.  I’m linking them here, but you can easily find them at any time by looking under the DietHobby Heading: RESOURCES, then Photo Gallery, then 5-bite Meals.


No matter what food plan I am experimenting with, I continue to record my daily food intake in a computer food journal.  I’ve been doing this now every day for the past 11 years. 

During my past 5-bite experiments, I have found recording many tiny amounts of daily food to be tedious and time-consuming. 

This time, I have opted to create a food entry called “5-bite food”, and have assigned to it a 300 calorie value.  From what I’ve learned about the size of my normal bites, I know that this is a good estimation, and that frequently my actual total daily food intake will be lower than that amount.  So, each day on the 5-bite diet, I make that one entry.  If I eat other food, in addition to my 5-bites of food each meal, then I will individually record those extra foods as well.

My own up-front reason for my lifetime diet struggle to lose weight and maintain weight loss is ... 
to avoid spending more time as an object of the abuse that happens due to our culture’s stigmatization of fat people.

I’ve called this “vanity”, but vanity is defined as the quality of people who have too much pride in their own appearance.  Is vanity really the word that describes avoiding abuse and seeking the comfort and protection of a positive status in our current culture?

It is currently popular to say we are working to lose or maintain weight “for our health” or “to be healthy”.  The opposite of “healthy” is “sickly” or “diseased”, and of course nobody wants to be that, but MOST dieters aren’t “sickly” or “diseased” and aren’t even in much danger of becoming that.  Of course, there’s also no guarantee that losing weight will make or keep anyone “healthy”.

I don’t believe “health” is REALLY the reason that most people diet.  I think saying that we diet to be “healthy” is often just another way to sell-ourselves-out and buy-in to our culture’s diet marketing industry … and make no mistake, the medical profession is a very active participant in this billion dollar marketing industry.

All fat people know that the article below is true, and yet strangely… (or not so strangely),  a great many fat people ..and formerly fat people… pretend that their struggle to be and stay thin has little to do with their desire to avoid being a member of this stigmatized group.

Drive-by Fat Shaming

            by Ragen Chastain, danceswithfat

Today I’m not talking about the kind of drive-by fat shaming where people moo at us from their cars (though they do, sometimes they even throw eggs, and it’s super messed up.) Today I’m talking about the small incidents of fat shaming that happen daily, often as casual asides.

This post was inspired by my attempt to watch the show Jessica Jones. Roughly a million people have recommended this show to me as being  amazingly feminist and all girl power-y. With the first few minutes there is an incident of fat shaming. It is apropos of absolutely nothing, it doesn’t “advance the plot”  she is surveilling someone in her job as a private investigator, she sees a fat woman exercising in a random window and makes a nasty comment, then the show moves on.  Like the writers had 20 extra seconds so they decided to fill it with a cheap fat joke.

This is drive-by fat shaming. Just a quick reminder to everyone watching/listening that it’s hilarious and cool to make fun of fat people – even on a show that is supposed to be feminist.  I’m told that it never happens again in the show, and that many people have enjoyed the show, and I get that. Maybe I’ll keep watching, but enjoyment is going to be marred by the fact that I know that the character I’m supposed to be rooting for isn’t rooting for me, and doesn’t see us as equals.

It might seem like a small thing and, taken by itself, I suppose it is, which is why many people who read this are already trying to explain it away, justify it, or decide if they want to leave a comment to tell me I’m oversensitive.  Newsflash – it’s not this one moment – it’s the number of times this moment happens to me on a daily basis.

I’m in a hotel and Friends is on – I have to hope that it’s not a Monica-was-fat flashback episode. Big Bang Theory marathon – I can look forward to a fat joke almost every episode. I was watching the movie Secretariat – about a damn horse – and there’s a jab at fat people. I love stand-up comedy but I don’t love sitting in an audience while the person takes their time on stage to stigmatize and stereotype people who look like me.

At a show I was at, the most laughed-at joke a comic had during 15 minutes on stage was that he worked in a sporting goods store, a “kind of big lady” came in looking for a sports bra, and he said “what sport are you playing there chief.”  That was the entire joke, a fat woman came to a store that sells sportsbras to buy a sportsbra  (in a world that constantly – incorrectly –  insists that fat people have some obligation to exercise until we are thin) and the store clerk is a total dick to her. It’s so funny I forgot to laugh.

All day, every day.  Fat jokes, fat people used as “shorthand” for being lazy, un-athletic, unattractive, unmotivated, unsexy, unhealthy. Fat people as metaphor for greed, capitalism, and un-disciplined.  Television shows, movies, articles, stand-up comics, workplace wellness programs, conference speakers.  It’s a straight male friend of mine whose friends got him an “I’ll fuck the fat friend” shirt as a joke.  It’s the fact that a shirt like this is for sale. Take a few days to notice how many times you hear a negative message about fat people.

And when we speak out about it, there’s always someone who can’t wait to try to justify it, or claim that it’s not worth fighting, that we shouldn’t care, or telling us how they wouldn’t care if they were fat, which matters not at all and only serves to make the situation even worse.

Meanwhile, all these “little things” chip away at our humanity while reinforcing to others that fat people deserve to be treated poorly, which in turns leads to fat people being hired less and paid less than our thin peers, fat people being treated poorly in healthcare settings, and fat people’s treatment online bordering on criminal.

Nobody is obligated to engage in activism, nobody is obligated to speak out about these things, nobody is obligated to take offense.  But if you do notice these things, if you are offended, I want you to know that it’s not in your head – it’s not you. Fat shaming is ubiquitous, it’s incessant, and it is wrong. Wrong wrong wrongity wrong. 100% wrong, and no number of excuses, justifications, accusations of being over-sensitive, or dismissive sighs will ever make it right.  And there is nothing wrong with insisting that it needs to stop.

Isn’t it sad when
you get hurt
so much, you
can finally say
“I’m used to it.”

and so it goes.......

THIS is why...
after spending the past 71 years living within this fat biased culture, I choose to continue on with my own personal struggle for weight loss and maintenance of weight loss.