I am ashamed to admit that I will be turning 31 in September and am at my heaviest weight ever. I've noticed that the worse I feel about my weight...the more weight I end up putting on. Emotional eating anyone?!
So I have decided with my all or nothing attitude when it comes to dieting I need to teach myself some SERIOUS self control.
This brings me to the 5 bite diet. Fad diet? Yes. Long term solution? No. Does it teach enormous self control, conscientious eating, and portion control (*one of my main maladaptive eating behaviors)? Absolutely!
Here are the basics
* Skip Breakfast
* Eat 5 bites of anything for Lunch
* Eat 5 bites of anything for Dinner
* Make 1 bite per day a protein
* No snacking
* Unlimited zero calorie beverages
* Take one multivitamin daily
Sounds a little crazy, but biologically the fat stored in our bodies is meant to supply us with nutrition in times of famine...herein lies the problem, many of us never use up our fat reserves and instead continue to stuff ourselves past the point of comfort adding to the already ample reserve.
In effect - this is mental gastric bypass. It works on the same principle as weight loss surgery without undergoing major surgical alteration to our bodies. It also is an option for those of us who wish to lose weight but do not qualify for weight loss surgery because of the minimum 100lbs. overweight requirements.
Within the first three days, your body will naturally resize to accommodate the smaller amount of food and begin to regularly pull nutrients and fat from the reserves in our body. This is a fast weight loss solution and one that you can slowly adapt for maintenance purposes. Once the goal weight is achieved, you simply begin adding a bite of food at each meal until your weight stabilizes. At this point you are taking in enough calories and nutrients to maintain the health of your body without adding unnecessarily to your bodies fat reserve again.
The biggest problem I see with this diet is the emphasis I eating 5 bites of WHATEVER you want. In fact, many people are calling this the snickers bar diet because they can eat a snickers bar (5 bites on average per bar) and still lose weight. Now, this is ridiculous! Obviously you want your bites to count nutritionally, but knowing that I can still have a bite of dessert or candy and still successfully lose weight definitely takes away a lot of the guilt in enjoying my favorite foods regardless of their nutritional status.
I have to say that I am really liking the concept of this diet and I'm excited to see what my results will be.
I'll let you all know how my first day went tomorrow 😉