I have been doing alternate day calorie restriction, and while I have been losing weight still, I just can't keep doing it, at least not the way I have been. What I refuse to do is quietly re-gain the weight. I must find something that works and allows me to keep losing.
I have noticed that lunch goes fine with the ADCR diet. I can satisfy hunger pangs with a really low calorie meal. It's dinner that gives me the problem. After a super-light dinner I find myself with very low energy in the evening and then an inability to think about anything other than food. With the school year in swing, I need those productive hours.
It all came to a head when my wife noticed I could barely focus on what she was saying. She said, really insisted, I needed to eat. So, I broke my rules and ate a sandwich. I hate breaking rules, but I think system needs to be changed, at least for me.
One diet that has worked for me is restricting my calories to under 1,200 a day 6-days a week and then having Sunday as a "free day." I lost 12.5 pounds in 3 months that way. I lost at a quicker rate with the Slow Carb diet, but it just doesn't fit my life right now.
Also I observed that the calorie restriction diet went fine for the most part, but created extreme cravings in my 4th month. That is something I will have to watch out for later on.
So here's what I've been doing for about a week:
I am eating really light lunches, very similar to those I had when I was trying ADCR, which, with skipping breakfast, would mean I would go 24 hour periods (dinner to dinner) on something like 200-300 calories. The extra hundred calories will be consumed at 4:00 pm in the form of extra light tasting olive oil, as proscribe by the Shangri-La Diet. This leaves me up to 900 calories to eat at dinner. All I have to do is not go insane, and I can meet that. I let myself eat any type of food, and I often opt for something light and supplement it with a cheese sandwich with mustard on it.
Here are my morning weigh-ins since I hit the milestone of breaking 190 pounds:
8/3 189.2 (Sunday free day!)
8/4 191.9
8/5 194.1
8/6 189.2
8/7 190.1 (gave up on ADRC)
8/8 189.2
8/9 192
8/10 190.6 (Sunday free day!)
8/11 193.3
8/12 191.8
8/13 190.1
8/14 188.2
8/15 187.4
8/16 187.2
So, this every day restricted calorie diet seems to be a solid way to go. I made the point to my wife that the Slow Carb diet and ADRC might have trained my body to start using fat more, and I know for a fact that ADRC helped me to develop the patience to deal with mild hunger, so I am in no way writing this post to disparage those diets. They just weren't systems I could use during the long-haul of a school year.
