The longer I do this, the harder it is to find any type of eating or non-eating low-calorie concept that I feel motivated to experiment with.

However, somehow, I always seem to find some type of diet or non-diet that gets my interest long enough for me to try it out.

Of course, I continue to consistently record all of my food intake every day in a computer food journal.  I have now done this every day for 11 years, and this is my most valuable dieting tool.

This past couple of months I've been experimenting with intermittent fasting again. 

I started by personalizing a 24 hr alternate day fast, similar to Eat Stop Eat, but designed for my own personal preferences.  I followed that for about 3 weeks, then I did one 36 hr fast, from dinner one day, skipped all food one day, ate breakfast the following day.  That seemed to work well for me, and the following week I did a 72 hr fast, where for 3 days I had water only with up to one cup of bouillon per day.  I had hoped to have a 5 to 7 day fast, but my body decided otherwise.  Day 1 was as I expected, Day 2 was far easier than I expected and on Day 3 I felt quite weak and nauseated. I woke up on Day 4 feeling ill, and ended the fast.

Although, I do like the concept of Fasting and want to run some more experiments, for a few weeks after the 72 hr fast, I was simply unwilling to fast any more, and followed my "normal" eating plan of trying to eat an average of under 1000 calories per day - eating whatever, whenever.

On Monday, Sept 14, I began another water fast, aiming for the goal of 7 days, with the understanding that I would stop when, and if, my body gave me the symptoms it did during the 3 day fast.  My fast went as expected, and this time the symptoms didn't show up until the evening of the 6th day.  My night was uncomfortable and I ended my fast at breakfast time the following day. Sunday, Sept 20. 

Today is the morning of the 3rd post-fast day.  The 1st day I broke my fast with a 6 oz can of tomato juice, then an hour or so later, 1/4 of an avocado. Several hours later my lunch was a saucer plate containing 1 1/2 oz roasted chicken, 1/2 cup green beans, and 1/4 of an avocado. Several hours later I ate 1/2 raw apple with 1 oz cheddar cheese.  I finished up the day with another 6 oz tomato juice. About a 1/2 hr after first taking food, my nausea receded and stomach cramps lessened, but all day I felt weak, tired, and crampy. I felt better the 2nd day, yesterday, but still very weak. This morning, the 3rd day, I feel normal.

Weight results of all this fasting?  My total net weight results of the month-and-a-half-before my recent 6 day fast ... which includes the return of water-weight-loss after my 3 day fast.  My best efforts resulted in about a 1 pound net weight loss. Knowledgeable medical experts are agreed that a "normal" person can only expect to lose about 1/2 pound of body fat during each day of a total water fast.  All the rest is water that will be regained after resuming food intake. My 6 day fast resulted in a 10 pound loss which I know is primarily water, and if I had the body of a "normal" person, I could expect a net loss of about 3 fat pounds.  However, probably for me the maximum fat loss will probably be more like 1/4 pound daily, which would mean I could reasonably expect about a net 1 1/2 pound loss.  This, of course, will depend on whether or not I can keep my calories consistently low during the next 3 weeks or so.  It's always emotionally hard to watch those pounds come back on daily when I am consistently and successfully eating very low-calorie, even when intellectually I know exactly why this is happening and even expect it. 

Since I am feeling "normal" today, my plan for the next several weeks is to eat according to my personalized plan for Alternate Day 24 hr Fasting.  I am a retired person at home all the time, and as a lifestyle I can't tolerate consistently missing breakfast or lunch or dinner. Lunch is my favorite meal, but I also love breakfast, and I love dinner. I also find it difficult on one day to eat all 3 meals, but then on the following day, to eat only one meal.  Here's a graph I made that explains my personalized concept, the one I find to be the easiest and most functional for me.

This plan allows me to eat lunch every day, along with breakfast on one day, and dinner on the following day. Repeat.

 
This article is mainly about WHEN I'm eating. I'm experimenting with whether, or not, lowering insulin through fasting will halt the creeping weight gain that I've been having - even with a very consistent, very low-calorie, food intake.  I've never had type 2 diabetes. I've had my blood glucose tested, but never a direct test of my insulin alone, since this isn't a test doctors do for normally healthy people.  I'm interested in Dr. Jason Fung's theories about Insulin Resistance, and about Insulin being lowered by fasting. Sometime I'll write a detailed article, but anyone interested can check out the series of fasting articles at his blog, Intensive Dietary Management.

As for WHAT I'm eating, I am working to eat an average of under 1000 calories per day; the ideal would be somewhere between 600 & 800 calories per day. I have no forbidden foods. I eat only foods that I like. At this point, the only macronutrient I pay attention to is Protein. (There are some some detailed articles in the DietHobby Archives explaining why.) My computer records tell me that, normally, my total day's food choices inadvertently wind up being close to the same percentage amounts of Protein, Carbs, and Fat - all 3 macronutrients equally.   With my calorie limits always in mind, I eat at mealtimes when I'm hungry (I'm always hungry at mealtimes), and stop when what I've served myself is gone OR when my body feels satisfied (even if I have not eaten all the food portion that I've pre-measured and allowed for myself).  I take a daily multivitamin pill and no other medication or supplements.

If anyone thinks I'm eating too few calories, before telling me that, read the more than 1,000 articles that are posted here in the DietHobby ARCHIVES.  While its okay to sympathize, I get annoyed by advice given by anyone who doesn't know ALL the details of MY personal weight struggles, AND who doesn't know at least as much as I do about the many different "medical expert" takes on diet and weight and health.

Over my lifetime I've set a great many goals,
and I reached the majority of them.
This taught me that while a Plan will help direct my path,
 the Reality of my journey will always be very different from my Plan.
Life just tends to always work that way. 

At this moment I feel like I’ve arrived at the end of the line. 

As a 5’0” tall, “reduced obese” sedentary 70 year old female, my weight continues to creep upward, no matter what macronutrients I eat or don’t eat; no matter how small I keep my portions; or how hard I work to keep my calories low.

This last calendar year I continued with my best efforts at recording every bite taken in a computer food journal, every single day.  Sometimes I ate large amounts of food, and sometimes I ate tiny amounts of food.  Sometimes I ate a “balanced diet” and sometimes I ate “low-carb; sometimes I ate “high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb”;  sometimes I worked to keep my calories around 1000 calories per day; sometimes I worked to have only two 5-bite meals of whatever.  My computer eating records show that my overall 365 day calorie average was about 780 calories per day.  That number was the total of all my big eating days combined with my small eating days, divided by 365 days. 

At this point in my life, I am elderly, and although I am in excellent health overall, I have developed a problem with my right hip which restricts my activities, and I lack the ability to do physical “exercise” except for brief periods of slow walking.  However, over the past ten years I’ve run many extensive personal experiments on how various exercise affects my own bodyweight, and the results have proven to me that however much or however little I exercise has almost no effect.  Apparently my metabolism adjusts down to keep me from dropping weight during periods when I engage in heavy exercise… however it does NOT adjust up to keep me from gaining weight when my food intake goes up whether with or without exercise.

During most of this past year, I’ve weighed in my mid-130s - which gives me a BMI in the “overweight” range.  During the past 9 years I’ve worked and worked on maintaining my large weight-loss, and tried to drop as low as possible inside the “normal” BMI range.  The middle of a “normal” BMI range is, for me, 115 pounds.  I struggled to drop and stay below that number for the first couple of my maintenance years, without success, then … while continuing consistently with my ongoing struggle at a food intake averaging around 1050 calories daily … my weight began climbing.  Instead of bouncing within a 5 pound range between 110 and 115, it bounced between 115 and 120.   Then despite a few more years of working hard to drop back to those lower numbers, my weight climbed to bounce between 120 and 125; then over more time, while eating even fewer calories, and additional exercise, my weight climbed to bounce between 125 and 130; then between 130 and 135.  This past several months, my weight has been bouncing between 135 and 140. 

There appears to be no end in sight.  This has been happening over a 9 year period. Since my activity cannot go up, and it is unlikely that I can tolerate consistently eating under a daily average of 780 calories,  it looks like an ongoing lifetime struggle will result in - at best - a gain of a few pounds each year for the rest of my life.  The good news is if I live another ten years to age 80, maybe this creeping gain will only bring me another gradual 20 pound gain, bringing me just slightly over my BMI border of obesity, allowing me to retain a total net loss of approximately 110 pounds … which would still be better than the alternatives - which are: Morbid Obesity or Death (whichever first appears).

At this point, I’ve tried just about every type of dieting, way-of-eating, lifestyle, or “non-dieting” including all types of intermittent fasting.  In fact, this past month, I did a couple of weeks of 24 hour alternate day water fasts, one 36 hour water fast, and one 72 hour water fast combined with a High-Fat/Low-Carb/Moderate-Protein eating plan.  Same results as with most extreme plans, about a 7 pound loss initially, with a slow regain back up to baseline.   Discouraging, since I’ve consistently experienced that same result dozens of times while experimenting with many different food plans.

Some food plans actually eliminate my motivation to live.  Long-term water fasting tends to make me feel ill, AND eliminating my food rewards makes me long for death. The one plan I have refused to experiment with at all is a vegan diet.  Frankly, I find my death preferable to eating Vegan, which appears to start by eliminating all animal products, continue on to extremes like minus grains, salt, oil, sugar, and no cooked foods, all interspersed with long and short periods of intermittent total water fasting.

My body is now near the end point of a lifetime of dieting, and I must admit that I’ve lost hope that it will ever normalize to "intuitively" sustain a weight under morbid obesity.

Because of my own experience, and my close observation of the experiences of many others,  I’ve come to believe that the longer a person’s body has spent well over the borderline of obesity, the less ability that body has to ever recover itself back to the natural weight tendencies it may have had at birth.  My own body appears to be an example of this truth.

I don’t think the following article applies to me personally at this stage in my life - where, if unchecked, my body will naturally lead me only back to morbid obesity, but I believe it contains good advice for young women, or for older women who have recently become overweight or borderline obese.

Be Careful, because
your Mind is Affecting your Health and Metabolism.
         By Caroline Dooner  - Over the Moon Magazine

You actually can’t control your body with external factors like diets. You just can’t.  It backfires. Your body is smarter than you. Which is why dieting, ultimately, after the occasional brief time of “working”, always fails. Your body is wired to slow down when you try to control how you eat. When you restrict – even in the tiniest way- your amazing, smart body freaks the fuck out, and slows down.

Even when we think about restricting and eating less, it slows down our metabolism, keeps the hormone ghrelin high and makes us stay hungry. This is called “mental restriction”. And it is just as bad for us as physical restriction. Physical restriction is actually eating less. Mental restriction is just thinking about eating less.

Mental restriction manifests as guilt, shame, “I shouldn’t eat this”, “I hope I don’t eat this whole thing”, “I’ll let myself eat this, but I really shouldn’t”, “I’m gonna have to make up for this later at the gym”, and on and on. You know the voice. All of those thoughts are so normal in our diet culture. We are taught that thinking that way is responsible. We think, “If I don’t feel shame over food, how will I ever be healthy? How will I ever like my body if I’m not controlling what I put in my body?”

So I am here to lovingly tell you that we were taught was wrong. Food shame is not responsible or healthy, and not only does it rob us of joy now, it actually messes with our bodies. My anti-diet journey came about because of a genuine, no-joke epiphany after ten years of obsessive diets and seeing my entire life through the lens of weight.

“What I am doing is NUTS.”

I had the strongest sense that my body and appetite would normalize if I just freaking ATE. I knew it. And thankfully, I did a good amount of reading then that totally backed up my internal guidance. I adopted what I like to call “the nourishing mentality”. In my mind I had this image of actually repairing and “reviving” my metabolism by eating.

So every time I ate, instead of thinking “Oh man, this is so bad for me. This is going to make me gain weight. Ugh this isn’t quite on my diet”… I thought: “Yessss. Nourishment. This’ll repair everything. This’ll help. This is exactly what I need. My body can handle lots of food, and is happy to have all of this.”

That shift makes a big, big, big difference. And you might think it shouldn’t. But if you read about leptin, ghrelin, and how our bodies actually react differently to eating based on what we THINK about what we are eating, it makes total sense. And what that means is… you can control your metabolism with your mind. But not the old way. Not the punitive, perfectionistic, fear-based control. Not the way that will only let you be happy if you lose weight. No, that way doesn’t work.

Instead, we are supporting our metabolism in the way the celebrates our bodies and trusts them to take the lead on this whole “food thing”. Our bodies actually work better when they are nourished and amply fed. Let’s finally get your mind on the same side as your body.

My 3 Principles investigation is still ongoing, however, today I am setting some new eating boundaries for myself ... which means I'm starting another new-diet-experiment-of-one. 

I'm not ready to share specific details of my own personal plan, but it is based on the information and recommendations provided by the Canadian kidney doctor, Dr. Jason Fung, at www. Intensive Dietary Management.

My current experiment will be different than any diet that I've previously tried, although (of course) many built-in similarities do exist between this specific diet experiment and some of my past diet experiments.

I will be continuing with my practice not to share details about a diet experiment while it is still ongoing.  So, why even share this much? Because I want to, and since this is my own personal Blog, I can.

We all have choices on how we are going to live our lives, and where we are going to place our focus.  My choice may not resemble your choice. I am a “reduced obese” person who has maintained a “normal” weight for more than 9 years, after a lifetime of Yo You Dieting. See ABOUT ME for details.

Doing this has required my constant vigilance, ongoing effort, and tremendous focus, and even though I have been more successful than 95% of everyone who has ever accomplished a large weight-loss, it is been a tremendous personal struggle, and year-after-year, despite CONSISTENT and CONSTANT effort, my weight has continued to slowly creep upward in small increments over time.

This is despite the fact that the recorded daily calorie average of my food intake has been dropping lower and lower each year.

For example, at the start of 2015, my weight was the same as it was at the start of 2014, however, the average daily calories of all of my daily food intake during the year of 2014 was only 754 calories.

In 2013, the average daily calories of all of my daily food intake was 1033. So my average daily food intake was about 280 daily calories LESS than the prior year, and during that prior year, from the start of 2013 until the start of 2014, my body gained 8 pounds while eating that 1033 calories per day.

These are my personal facts, based on numbers which I recorded as accurately as humanly possible, every single day for the past 10 years. For years I felt like Garfield in the cartoon below, but now... instead of yelling "Liar" at the scale, I mentally yell "Liar" or "You Idiot" at the 'Diet Experts' who smugly believe the B.S. and provide to us the results of bad Research, while asserting that "Science Doesn't Lie".

NOTE: that I am a 5’0” tall, 70 year old, sedentary woman with a lower than average metabolism, and according to the Mifflin formula, the AVERAGE woman with my numbers requires only 1237 daily calories to maintain her current weight.

I give you this information so you can see that my recorded calorie numbers are not as far out in left field as some of you might first suppose. You can’t accurately compare my body’s numbers with your own body’s personal calorie calculation requirements if you are larger, taller, younger, more active etc.

That said, the difference between 1237 and 754 is around 480 calories, which is a reduction of nearly 40% of the “Average” calorie requirement. Remember, THIS CALORIE AMOUNT is to MAINTAIN my current weight. . which right now is just above the BMI borderline of “normal”

The past 4 years of the DietHobby ARCHIVES contain many articles detailing and discussing my struggles to maintain my weight-loss. Very few people lose as much weight as I have lost, and only about 95% of THOSE successful people have achieved the type of maintenance success that I am currently exhibiting.

I often question how long I can continue to eat such excessively tiny amounts of food while watching my weight continually creep upward; whether I am willing to continue my current behavior for the rest of my lifetime; and I honestly don’t know. Right now, I’m just taking it one-day-at-a-time, while searching for Guidance.

I can vouch for the accuracy, and I do agree with the mindset, of the following article based on my own knowledge and personal experience.

Failed at Dieting?
Welcome to the Almost Everyone Club!
                    by Ragen Chastain, www. danceswithfat

A question that I get asked pretty often is “If dieting doesn’t work, how is it possible that it’s such a popular recommendation even by doctors?”  I’m glad that you asked!

For the last 50 years the research that has been conducted regarding long term weight loss has shown that weight loss almost never works long term.  Yet we are constantly told by the media, the government, our doctors etc. that anybody who tries hard enough can lose weight and keep it off. Plenty of studies have shown that the body has a number of physiological reactions to weight loss that are designed to regain weight and then retain that weight. 

Yet we are told that those who regain their weight have just “gone back to their old habits.” But what really happens?

So a person begins one of a thousand intentional weight loss  (also known as a “lifestyle change”) programs.  They lose weight at first, then between 2 and 5 years after the loss they gain back all of the weight plus more, despite diligently maintaining their diet behaviors (aka “lifestyle changes”). They report these happenings to their doctor only to be told that they must not have been properly counting calories, they must have overestimated their movement. Their experience, they will be told, could not possibly have happened, it is impossible because…physics!  Or they tell their doctor that they couldn’t mentally and physically continue their dieting behaviors (aka “lifestyle change”) and are told again that they just weren’t trying hard enough.

All this despite the fact that their experience is exactly what the research tells us to expect. When millions of credible first person accounts match up with what research has found, typically that’s a good time to jump out of your bathtub and run around naked yelling “Eureka, I’ve found it.”

So why is dieting such a popular recommendation?  Those who are perpetuating this “weight loss works’ culture are doing a couple of things frighteningly well.

First, they are doing a great job of obfuscating the evidence.  Remember when a study found that Weight Watchers participants lost around about 10 pounds in six months and kept off half of that for two years (giving them a 3 year efficacy buffer but who’s counting) and Karren Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer of Weight Watchers International at the time won the “I Said It With a Straight Face Award” when she told the media: “It’s nice to see this validation of what we’ve been doing.” Five pounds in two years.  Five pounds in two years.  Five freaking pounds in two freaking years?!?!?!?!?!.  But every time I say something about Weight Watchers people tell me how well it works (often, defying all logic, telling me that they’ve “done Weight Watchers 6 times and it worked every time“.)

Or the National Weight Control registry claiming to prove that weight loss works when the truth is that they would need 32,990,000 more success stories just to show a 5% success rate for dieting over the time they’ve been collecting data.  They’ve only managed to gather about 10,000 success stories since 1994, so they just moved the goal post and claimed victory at the fact that their numbers indicate that dieting works .009% of the time which means that if you walk to your Weight Watchers meeting in the rain you are three times more likely to die from a lightning strike than lose weight long term.

The second thing that they do alarmingly well is to discredit what are actually completely credible first person accounts of dieting failure.  Hundreds of thousands of people have diet failures every year.  Some of them have been convinced that they suddenly lost the ability to accurately maintain their diet behaviors, like people are saying “that’s weird, last week I could totally measure a cup of pasta but this week I forgot what a measuring cup is or how it works, so I just ate the whole package of spaghetti.”  They are told that they must be doing something wrong if they are regaining weight.  They are excoriated and discredited as “trying to justify their fatness”  (as if we need justification to exist in our bodies.)

But the diet industry and its cronies do it with shocking success.  Millions of people saying “I had the exact experience that research said was most likely” and somehow the diet industry, the government, and the medical establishment are able to discredit all of us in the eyes of the greater culture, often while continuing to profit.

This is all by way of saying that if you’ve tried dieting and ended up regaining all of your weight, or all of your weight plus more, then welcome to The Almost Everyone Club, we aren’t exclusive and we don’t have jackets (yet!) but we do have evidence and experience.  You have the right to claim and own the fact that you are indeed a credible witness to your experience, and you can refuse to allow someone else to substitute their completely  fabricated (and highly lucrative) experiences for your actual ones, and you can insist that they stop the diet roller coaster because you want to get the hell off.