Like other nutritional scientists, when I write up my studies for publication in journals, I almost never use the word calorie. Instead, I say energy, because that’s what a calorie is: the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. Yes, a calorie is a measurable unit of heat, of energy, of fuel. If you ingest more calories than your body can burn, you store them (usually as fat)—and you gain weight. If you ingest fewer calories than your body needs to function, your body burns calories—and you lose weight.
Calories are the merciless mathematics of a food, of a meal—of a slim life, or a lifetime struggle with weight. And so we count calories, using books and apps and food labels and menus. And we miscalculate calories, gobbling up a low-fat food to shed pounds while overlooking the fact that it’s sometimes loaded with high-calorie sweeteners. And we debate calories; a handful of experts claim that calories in some macronutrients like carbs burn differently than calories in others like protein or fat, spawning endless variations of low-carb/high-protein or high-carb/low-protein diets.
I think all those diets are high fad/low results. As a scientist who has devoted her professional life to studying calorie restriction, I can tell you with 100% certainty that if you eat food that contains less energy (calories) than your body requires, you will burn stored energy (calories) and lose weight. That’s a scientific fact, like the law of gravity. Call it the Law of Calorie.
The Every-Other-Day Diet helps you obey the Law of Calorie in a completely new way. The Every-Other-Day Diet doesn’t ask you to know and track the exact amount of calories in every food and beverage you ingest. (Good luck with that.) The Every-Other-Day Diet doesn’t ask you to deprive yourself of calories every day, leaving you feeling hungry and frustrated. The Every-Other-Day Diet has one simple-to-follow, calorie-based rule:
Eat 500 calories one day (Diet Day)—and eat whatever level of calories you want the next day (Feast Day).
This chapter presents the practical details of Diet Day: how to successfully go through the day with minimum (or no) hunger and maximum chill. Want to start burning calories and losing weight? There’s no time like Diet Day.
When you’re not on a diet—when your every-day pattern of eating is aimed at maintaining weight—you probably consume somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 calories a day. (The US government’s Recommended Daily Allowance [RDA] for calories is 1,600 to 2,400 calories for women, depending on age and activity; and 2,000 to 3,000 for men.)
When you go on a diet—when you want to burn more calories than you consume and shed pounds—you submit to the eating pattern nutritional scientists call calorie restriction, usually limiting your daily intake to 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day. Some dieters, however, decide to consume even fewer calories. Why?
Maybe they’re extremely obese, with 100 or more pounds to lose. Maybe they want to lose weight very quickly. And so they go on a very low-calorie diet (VLCD), with a daily intake of about 800 calories.
And then there’s the Every-Other-Day Diet, where, on Diet Day, you consume 500 calories. Is that doable? Is that even safe? Yes and yes. Surprisingly, 500 calories can provide a lot of hearty eating: one (or even two) satisfying meals a day, along with a snack. Find that statement hard to believe? Just check out the yummy recipes and meal suggestions in chapters 4 and 5. You’ll soon find that Diet Day is very doable and very delicious.
Some folks feel hungry on Diet Day for the first week or two of EOD dieting. (Later in this chapter you’ll find plenty of tips to help you get through the hunger pangs of those first few weeks.) But my studies show that the hunger quickly resolves: the folks in my studies report they don’t feel hungry on Diet Day after two weeks or so on the diet. Hunger just goes away.
Bottom line: The experiences of hundreds of EOD dieters show that one day of modified fasting isn’t all that hard—particularly when it’s followed by a day of all-out dietary delight.
As I discussed in chapter 1, my first scientific studies on alternate-day fasting for weight loss—the genesis of the Every-Other-Day Diet—were on mice. These studies tested many different levels of alternate-day calorie restriction, trying to determine the perfect level for healthy weight loss. I tried 75% of normal caloric intake; 50%; even 0%—a total fast. And the winner was 25%.
At 25%, the mice had the maximal amount of weight loss with the minimal level of muscle loss. In other words, they lost fat but not muscle. And retaining muscle while dieting is a must for health and long-term weight maintenance. Also, 25% of calories also produced the best improvements in risk factors for heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Subsequently, my studies on people have confirmed that 25% is the perfect percentage for every-other-day dieting: 500 calories, if you normally eat 2,000 calories a day. At that percentage, you lose weight quickly, steadily, and healthfully. Obviously, 25% of normal caloric intake is a different number for different people. If you’re a 6'3" man weighing 205 pounds, the normal level of calories you burn is a lot different than if you’re a 5'2" woman weighing 150 pounds; the bigger the person, the more calories needed to maintain weight. In my scientific studies with groups of people, we carefully determine 25% of normal caloric intake for each study participant, using a precise formula and double-checking it with a sophisticated medical test.
Unfortunately, I can’t offer you that kind of individualized determination of 25% of your normal caloric intake; it’s just not possible outside of a highly controlled scientific experiment. But here’s the good news: an individualized version of the EOD Diet is not required for it to work. Why not? Because my studies have allowed me to determine a consistent average caloric intake on Diet Day: 480 calories for women and 520 calories for men. You don’t need a degree in mathematics to figure out the average of those two numbers is 500. Which means that
Tip 1: Weigh Yourself Every Day
How often should you check your weight when you’re on the Every-Other-Day Diet? In my studies, we encouraged the participants to weigh themselves every day, and to average the weight of the most recent Diet Day and Feast Day. For example, if you weigh yourself the morning of Diet Day and you weigh 148 pounds and you weigh yourself the morning of Feast Day and you weigh 150 pounds, your current weight is 149 pounds.
Why do I think you should weigh yourself every day? Maybe you’ve heard that you shouldn’t get on the scale every morning, because it can be discouraging to discover you haven’t lost much weight, or that it keeps your focus on short-term success rather than on permanent weight loss. But that’s not what scientific studies show. They are pro-scale. Here are some very revealing results:
After one month of weighing, participants had 3 extra pounds of weight loss.1 When researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute studied 100 obese people over six months, they found that people lost 1 pound more for every 11 days they self-weighed. In other words, if you weigh yourself every day for a month, you lose about 3 pounds more than folks who don’t. In fact, the folks who self-weighed were 10 times more likely to lose at least 5% of their body weight during the six months of the study. “Self-weighing may be a strategy to enhance… weight-loss programs,” wrote the researchers in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. I agree!
When those same researchers reviewed 12 studies on self-weighing and weight loss, they found that 11 of the studies showed that self-weighing was linked to more weight loss and better weight maintenance, and also to not becoming overweight in the first place.
Daily weighing doubles weight loss. In a two-year study of more than 1,200 obese people conducted by scientists at the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in Wisconsin and reported in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, those who weighed themselves daily lost more than twice as much weight as those who weighed themselves monthly.2
People average 347 fewer calories per day when they weigh themselves that day. A team of scientists from the University of North Carolina studied 91 overweight people for six months, in an experiment focused on self-weighing.3 Those who weighed themselves daily ate an average of 347 fewer calories per day than those who weighed themselves weekly. They also lost a lot more weight—17 pounds compared to four-fifths of a pound! The researchers also noted that the study participants who weighed themselves just about every day liked doing so. I think you will, too, as your scale gives you the most important and positive feedback of all: You are steadily losing the weight you want to lose! But weighing yourself daily is important not only for losing weight. It’s also important for maintaining weight loss.
If people didn’t weigh themselves regularly, 4.5 times more weight was regained. Researchers in the Department of Psychology at Drexel University conducted a one-year study on 3,000 people who had lost 30 pounds and kept it off for one year and reported their findings in Obesity in 2007.4 At the start of the study, 36% said they weighed themselves at least once a day, and those who did so had the lowest body mass index (BMI, a standard measurement of body fat). They also scored highest on psychological tests measuring the ability to make rational choices about eating.
A year later, the researchers found that the change in the rate of self-weighing after the start of the study—whether or not the participants weighed themselves with lesser or greater frequency during the year of the study—was an exact match for the amount of weight regained:
“Consistent self-weighing may help individuals maintain their successful weight loss by allowing them to catch weight gains before they escalate, and make behavior changes to prevent additional weight gain,” concluded the researchers in Obesity.
That’s certainly my experience and my coauthor Bill’s also. When I was cutting back on calories to lose weight after my pregnancy, I found that self-weighing helped me cheat less. I’d think, “Yes, I want that extra scoop of ice cream, but I have to face the scale tomorrow!” Bill is also a big fan of daily self-weighing, saying it’s a big reason why he still weighs what he weighed in college. When the numbers on his scale start to go up, he makes sure his calorie intake goes down. In his role as a health coach, he counsels his clients to do the same.
Daily weighing is valuable. In another study, researchers at the University of Minnesota tracked more than 3,000 people over two years—some in a weight-loss program and some in a weight-maintenance program. Those who self-weighed the most during those two years had the largest weight loss in the weight-loss program, and the smallest weight gain in the maintenance program.5
“Daily weighing is valuable to individuals trying to lose weight or prevent weight gain,” wrote the researchers in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine. “Daily self-weighing should be emphasized in clinical and public health messages about weight control.” (That’s why I’m emphasizing it here!)
When should you weigh yourself? Do it at the same time every day, because weight varies during the day. First thing in the morning—before you’ve had anything to eat or drink—is ideal.
Tip 2: Eat Lunch or Dinner (but Not Breakfast)
All the participants in my studies on the Every-Other-Day Diet have eaten lunch as their Diet Day meal. It’s not that I think eating at noon is somehow crucial to losing weight. Rather, using the same Diet Day meal from study to study has allowed me to compare the results of all my various studies, instead of introducing another scientific variable (mealtime) that would make those comparisons more problematic.
If you want to match the methodology of my studies—if you want the highest level of confidence that the pattern of eating you’re using is the same pattern scientifically shown to produce steady, significant weight loss—then eat lunch on Diet Day.
However, it’s quite likely that the success of EOD dieting isn’t tied to eating lunch. It’s tied to a modified fast on Diet Day and unlimited eating on Feast Day. So if you prefer to eat dinner on Diet Day—enjoying dinnertime with your spouse, family, or friends—go right ahead. But I do strongly advise against eating breakfast as your main meal on Diet Day, because you may find yourself so hungry by dinnertime that you won’t be able to limit yourself to 500 calories for the day. I’m currently conducting a study using lunch or dinner as the meal on Diet Day, to see if people eating a lunch-only or dinner-only pattern have the same level of weight loss. Once again, stay tuned!
Tip 3: Count Your Calories—Not!
One of the wonderful features of the Every-Other-Day Diet is that it’s incredibly easy to follow: all you do is eat 500 calories on Diet Day and whatever you want on Feast Day. I’ve never talked to a single person who really likes calorie counting, even with the new smartphone apps that make the process a little easier, like Lose It! or MyFitness Pal.
Counting calories makes it seem like a calculator is a utensil you have to use at every meal, like mealtime is a contest where you’re both competitor and scorekeeper, and you’re always about to be (and feel) defeated. In short, it’s an annoying mealtime chore you’d rather not do. You want to enjoy food, not tabulate it.
Well, the recipes and guidance in this book guarantee that you’ll never have to do any complex calorie counting while you’re on the Every-Other-Day Diet. Because we’ve done all the counting for you, in advance.
There are typically two times you take in calories on Diet Day: at your lunch or dinner (about 400 calories), and when you eat your snack (about 100 calories). And there are two ways you can go about your Diet Day meals.
You can make your own food, in which case chapter 4 will be hugely helpful. It provides 28 days of 400-calorie lunches, 28 days of 400-calorie dinners, and 28 days of 100-calorie snacks—and those 84 recipes can provides months of easeful Diet Days.
Say, for example, that your New Year’s resolution is to lose 20 pounds, and you start the Every-Other-Day Diet on January 2. In January, you’ll have 15 Diet Days; in February, you’ll have 14. If you choose lunch as your Diet Day meal, the lunch recipes in chapter 4 will guide you through two months of dieting. If you decide to switch to dinner for Diet Days in March and April, the recipes will guide you through nearly two more months of Diet Days.
In other words, there are enough recipes in chapter 4 for nearly four months of Diet Days, without ever having to count a single calorie or eat the same recipe twice. And because those recipes are simple (no recipe has more than seven ingredients); speedy (cooking and preparation times are always under 30 minutes); and tasty, you’re in for a couple of months of easeful (and even fun) Diet Days.
Or you can always opt to microwave an entrée from chapter 5. Many of today’s frozen entrées are twenty-first-century wonders of culinary ingenuity, delivering maximum flavor and nutrition. They’re also perfect for super-easy EOD dieting, since the label tells you exactly how many calories they contain. In chapter 5, we’ve listed dozens of frozen entrées that are 400 calories or less. And we’ve provided the Two-Month Diet Day Meal Plan, which organizes the entrées into a varied and appetizing pace of Diet Day meals. If you want to diet for longer than two months on frozen entrées, just repeat the plan.
Many participants in my studies prefer the ease and simplicity of using frozen entrées for their Diet Day meal, and you might feel the same way. You won’t have to think twice (or even once) about calories, and preparation takes hardly any time at all.
Tip 4: Make a Plan for the Day—and Stick with It
What’s the biggest mistake my study participants made on Diet Day? Not knowing exactly what they were going to eat when mealtime rolled around. Because if you’re hungry, you’re likely to eat more than 500 calories.
There’s an easy way to avoid that mistake: choose your lunch or dinner (and snack) for Diet Day the night before and rest easy that you’ll have a very successful Diet Day tomorrow.
Tip 5: Don’t Eat Mini-Meals
Over my years of research into EOD dieting, I’ve been asked by many study participants if they could divide the calories of their Diet Day meal into several low-calorie mini-meals. That way, they reasoned, they could eat throughout the day and feel less hungry. My answer is always no. And I have a very good reason for saying no: I want my study participants to actually lose weight!
The problem with eating mini-meals on Diet Day—for example, three 150-calorie meals—is that most of us tend to underestimate calories. What you think is 150 calories is probably 200, 250, or more. So instead of eating the 400-calorie Diet Day meal and a 100-calorie Diet Day snack, you might eat three mini-meals of 200, 250, or 300 calories, eat a lot more than 500 calories on Diet Day, and slow the pace and amount of weight loss. But if you eat only one meal a day, you have only one opportunity to miscalculate calories. And if you do err one time a day—maybe consuming 100 excess calories—it’s not such a big deal.
However, there’s an exception to this rule. When you prepare and eat a lunch or dinner recipe from chapter 4, or a frozen entrée from chapter 5, you know the exact amount of calories you’re consuming because we’ve totaled the calories in the recipe, or they’re right there on the label of the frozen foods or packaged snacks. So feel free to eat the meal any way you like: all at once; half for lunch and half for dinner; or even in thirds. I don’t think this strategy is ideal, because it doesn’t reflect what worked in my studies. But if you’re absolutely certain your intake is under 500 calories, you’re still on the Every-Other-Day Diet.
Tip 6: Don’t Skimp on the Fat
Most diets require you to change not only the amount of food you’re eating, but also the type of food. If you’re on a Paleo Diet, you can’t eat grains, beans, or dairy products. If you’re on Atkins, you cut carbs. With a plant-based or vegan diet, red meat, fish, dairy, and eggs are forbidden. If you’re on the Ornish Diet, you restrict fat. If you’ve decided to hang out in The Zone, you juggle macronutrients, carefully calibrating every meal to include 40% “good” carbs, 30% fat, and 30% protein. And the latest fashion in dieting—reflected in plans like the 17-Day Diet and the Dukan Diet—restricts foods in complex stages, phases, and cycles that require a complete change in eating habits every few weeks.
The Every-Other-Day Diet doesn’t make complicated dietary demands. On Diet Day, you can stick with your current pattern of eating, whatever it is. You don’t have to restock your refrigerator and pantry and eat in ways you’ve never eaten before. Diet Day is about eating fewer calories—not some strange mix of macronutrients, or a confusing menu of “allowed” and “forbidden” foods.
Bottom line: You can eat anything you want on Diet Day—as long as you eat only 500 calories. And by anything, I mean anything—including high-fat foods.
I don’t like to see EOD dieters suffer from the problem my coauthor Bill and I have dubbed lipidophobia: fear of dietary fat. In fact, I’d like to encourage you to eat high-fat foods on Diet Day. I know that sounds like weight-loss heresy. But it’s the proven approach to maximizing success on the EOD diet. You’ll recall from chapter 1, some of my studies have explored whether eating high- or low-fat food on Diet Day plays any role in how much weight you lose. In one of those studies, I divided participants into two groups: one group ate high-fat foods on Diet Day and the other ate low-fat foods. The folks on the high-fat diet (45% fat, 15% protein, 40% carbohydrates) had the following results:
I had a theory about the pound-shedding, fat-shedding power of high fat: I thought the low-fat group felt deprived and cheated on Diet Day. And when my colleagues and I analyzed the data, we found out that was the case; the folks eating low-fat foods on Diet Day cheated nearly twice as often as the folks eating high-fat foods.
So go ahead and enjoy high-fat foods—both on Diet Day and on Feast Day. They’re delicious and satisfying and, as research suggests, even good for you! Below are some examples of high-fat foods and their benefits.
More fish oil, longer life. A study from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that older people with high blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids—the DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) primarily found in fish oil—had a 27% lower risk of death from any cause, mostly because fewer of them died from heart disease, which kills so many people.8 In fact, people with the highest blood levels of omega-3 fats at age 65 lived an average of 2.2 years longer than people with the lowest levels. Yet many of the adherents of low-fat, plant-based diets specifically tell you not to eat EPA- and DHA-rich fatty fish.
Olive oil and nuts—two high-fat foods—prevent heart attack and stroke. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Spanish researchers divided more than 7,000 people at high risk for heart disease into three groups: two groups ate a Mediterranean diet rich in either olive oil or nuts. The fat-rich diets lowered the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death from heart disease by 30% compared to a low-fat diet—a benefit so impressive the researchers stopped the study, because they couldn’t ethically keep the third group on a diet that didn’t include high-fat foods.9
Saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease. Saturated fat is found mainly in meat and dairy products, and we’ve been told again and again that it trashes our arteries, triggering heart attacks and strokes, and that everybody should eat less. Is that good advice? Not according to a study from scientists at the Oakland Research Institute in California, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.10 The researchers analyzed data from 21 other studies, involving more than 340,000 people. They found “no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease or cardiovascular disease.”
On a smaller scale, several of my studies have shown that people who ate high-fat foods on Diet Day had improvements in their risk factors for cardiovascular disease that matched the improvements in people who ate low-fat foods. In other words, high-fat wasn’t hurting them, but weight loss was helping them!
It’s high time we stop being afraid of high-fat foods; that’s why they’re an enjoyable element of the Every-Other-Day Diet.
Tip 7: If You’re Eating Out on Diet Day, Check the Menu Before You Go!
Of course, at some point, you’re going to find yourself eating out on Diet Day, which is a little bit like tiptoeing through a minefield where the mines are calories that could blow up your diet. It’s risky! For that reason, I strongly recommend you try to avoid it as much as possible, but if you do eat out, here is my top tip: plan ahead.
If you’re going to eat out at a fast-food restaurant like McDonald’s or Burger King or a casual-dining restaurant like Applebee’s, Friday’s, or Chili’s, before you go, go online and check the calorie counts of items on the menu that you like, to see what’s a match for the calorie limit of Diet Day.
For example, Applebee’s lists some entrées as under 550 calories, not bad for your meal on Diet Day (if you haven’t had a snack). They include the Roast Garlic Sirloin, the Napa Chicken and Portobellos, and Zesty Roma Chicken and Shrimp. Other entrées are endorsed by Weight Watchers.
You can assume that just about everything else on the menu—including the appetizers—is over 500 calories. Way over. For example, open the “Nutritional Info” PDF at the Applebee’s site (www.applebees.com), and you’ll discover that many appetizers are 1,200 or more calories—and not a single appetizer is even close to 500 calories. Have a bowl of Baked Potato Soup—a dish you might assume is relatively low-calorie—and you’ve downed 470 calories. The Green Goddess Wedge Salad is 560 calories. I’m not criticizing Applebee’s; I’m just using it as an example to show you how tricky it is to eat out on Diet Day.
My essential message is this: Know the calories in any dish you’re ordering by first finding out the calorie level online. And don’t order any dish or meal if you’re guessing its calorie level. Chances are, you’re guessing wrong.
When it comes to fast-food restaurants, the number of meals that can work on Diet Day may surprise you. For example, McDonald’s claims that 80% of the items on its menu are under 400 calories—a good fit for Diet Day. And their claim is true. A Filet-O-Fish is 390 calories. A Cheeseburger is 300 calories. Six Chicken McNuggets are 280 calories. And a Premium Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken is 190 calories.
So if you’re determined to eat at McDonald’s on Diet Day (or at any other fast-food restaurant), you McCan! Just go online first, figure out what you want, check the calories, and stick to your calorie-smart choices when you’re at the restaurant.
Tip 8: Make the Most of Your Snack on Diet Day
The typical Diet Day includes a 400-calorie meal (either lunch or dinner) and a 100-calorie snack. If you eat a Diet Day lunch or dinner that is less than 400 calories, you can eat a snack that is more than 100 calories. Or if you choose a frozen entrée that is around 300 calories—and there are many such entrées in the meal plan in chapter 5—you can eat two 100-calorie snacks.
What kind of snack should you eat? In chapter 4, you’ll find delicious recipes for twenty-eight 100-calorie snacks, like Berry Smoothie Pops, Greek Yogurt Parfait, and Chocolate Stack. In chapter 5, you’ll find an extensive list of packaged snack foods that range from 50 to 160 calories, supplementing the calories in your lunch or dinner entrée on Diet Day to add up to 500 calories for the day.
When should you have your snack? The participants in my studies have eaten their Diet Day snack any time of day (or night): first thing in the morning, midmorning, midafternoon, early evening, before bed—even in the middle of the night! What’s best is what’s best for you—eat your snack when you want it the most and enjoy it the most.
During the first two weeks or so of the EOD Diet—when you’re still feeling hungry on Diet Day—eat your snack at the time of day you’re hungriest. In other words, use it to reduce hunger. After two weeks on the Every-Other-Day Diet, when hunger on Diet Day has pretty much disappeared, eat the snack for enjoyment and energy, at the time of day when you find you’re most refreshed and renewed by having something to eat.
Aside from your personal preferences, nutritional science provides a few guidelines about the best time of day to snack for weight loss.
Afternoon is better than midmorning. Researchers at the University of Illinois studied 123 overweight women who were in a one-year weight-loss program. Those who snacked in the afternoon lost 7% more weight than those who snacked midmorning, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.11
Nighttime might not be the right time. Women who snacked at night burned 12% less fat than people who snacked during the daytime, reported Japanese researchers. “Eating at night… increases the risk of obesity,” they wrote in the American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.12
My research shows that people feel hungry on Diet Day for about the first two to three weeks of the Every-Other-Day Diet, and then hunger pretty much disappears. How do you deal with your hunger on Diet Day during those first few weeks? EOD dieters say a couple of strategies work best.
1. Drink a Glass (or Two) of Water
The folks in my studies consistently tell me that when they’re hungry on Diet Day, nothing works as well to mute their appetite as drinking a glass (or two) of water. They drink 8, 10, 12, or 16 ounces, and in just a few minutes their hunger level noticeably declines.
These EOD dieters are finding out for themselves what scientists have been discovering over the past couple of years: study after study is showing the power of water to diminish appetite.
Here are some of the recent findings supporting the power of a glass of water to wash away Diet Day discomfort and help you shed pounds.
Drink water before a meal and feel fuller and less hungry. Researchers at Virginia Tech studied 50 people, dividing them into two groups: half drank 17 ounces (one-half liter) of water 30 minutes before lunch, and half didn’t. Those who drank water ate an average of 58 fewer calories at lunchtime and also felt less hungry and more full.17
In a similar study from the same researchers, people who drank a half liter of water 30 minutes before breakfast ate 74 fewer calories in the meal.18
“Drinking water reduces sensations of hunger and increases satiety, the sensation of feeling full,” says Brenda Davy, PhD, RD, the leader of these studies and an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition, Foods and Exercise at Virginia Tech.
Drink more water, burn more calories. Drinking one-half liter of water triggers the body to increase calorie burning by 24% over the next hour, reported German researchers in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.19
These researchers aren’t talking about drinking a glass of cold water, thereby speeding up metabolism as your body tries to reheat itself. Any temperature of drinking water causes an increase in calorie-burning, because a glass of water stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, increasing metabolic rate.
Drink more water, lose more weight. Researchers at Virginia Tech studied 40 people: 20 were instructed to drink 16 ounces of water before every meal and record their daily water intake; the other 20 didn’t pay any extra attention to their daily hydration. After one year, the group that was attentive to water intake lost 87% more weight.20
Bottom line: Hydrate! Drink 16 ounces (2 cups) of water whenever you feel hungry, 30 minutes or so before your Diet Day meal, and 30 minutes or so before your Diet Day snack. Another good strategy: carry a water bottle with you and drink as often as possible throughout the day.
2. Skip the Diet Soda and Avoid Artificial Sweeteners—They Might Make You Hungrier
Because water is so effective at reducing hunger and aiding weight loss, you might think any no-calorie beverage can do the same, like no-calorie diet sodas, diet energy drinks, and diet sports drinks. These artificially sweetened beverages can be a good strategy for some people, but I’m not a big fan of drinking diet sodas or other artificially sweetened beverages on Diet Day, for a few reasons:
More diet sodas result in more eating. A study in the journal Appetite showed that people who drink two or more artificially sweetened drinks per day have a harder time controlling their appetite and have a tendency to overeat.21 And scientists think they may know why. Researchers in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine scanned the brains of 26 people while they used an artificial sweetener and found that being exposed to a sweet taste without ingesting any calories may cause the brain to generate cravings for more sweet foods! I’m not surprised by these results. In my studies, about 4 out of 5 participants get a surge of hunger after drinking a diet soda.
Drinking three diet sodas a day doubles your risk of obesity. In a seven-year study from the University of Texas Health Science Center involving more than 3,600 people, those who drank three or more artificially sweetened beverages per day were nearly twice as likely to become overweight or obese. “These findings raise the question,” wrote the researchers in Obesity, whether artificially sweetened beverages “might be fueling—rather than fighting—our escalating obesity epidemic.”22
Artificial sweeteners can lead to disease. Other studies link diet sodas to disease. Compared to people who don’t drink diet soda, those who drink diet soda had
So my advice is to limit artificial sweeteners wherever you can. However, if occasionally you want to drink beverages with a no-calorie sweetener, I recommend ones with either saccharin (like Sweet ’N Low), which has a long record of safety; or stevia, made from the leaves of the stevia plant, a sweet-tasting herb in the chrysanthemum family.
A health professional whom Bill interviews regularly asked his staff to conduct a taste test of stevia products; they picked Body Ecology and SweetLeaf as the best-tasting brands. Bill’s wife, who uses stevia exclusively as a sweetener, favors NuNaturals’ NuStevia. Many other people choose the popular brands Pure Via and Truvía. And there are many others. Try different brands and see which one tastes best to you.
Why don’t we recommend aspartame (Equal; NutraSweet) or sucralose (Splenda)? Because those are the two sweeteners used in most diet sodas, beverages increasingly linked to health problems, as we just discussed. As we were writing this book, a new study in Diabetes Care from researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle showed that ingesting Splenda spiked blood sugar and insulin levels in obese people.27
3. A Cup of Joe or Tea a Day Can Keep the Hunger Away
A cup of black coffee or a cup of tea are both good ways to cut hunger without adding calories. And they both have their own hunger-controlling, weight-busting benefits. When overweight and obese people drank a cup of strong coffee with breakfast, they ate less at lunch and throughout the day, reported researchers in Obesity.28
More coffee, more weight loss. In a 12-year study of nearly 58,000 people, those who increased their coffee consumption during the study gained less weight, reported researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health.29 When researchers analyzed 11 studies on green tea and dieting, they similarly found that people who drank tea lost up to 3.3 more pounds than people who didn’t.
Catechins and caffeine: low hunger, high fullness. Bill’s book The Natural Fat-Loss Pharmacy devotes an entire chapter to the appetite-taming, pound-preventing power of tea—black, green, and white (oolong) tea—with green tea leading the way. The secret ingredient in tea: catechins, powerful plant compounds with a wide range of health-giving effects, like lowering the risk of heart disease and cancer. A beverage containing green tea catechins and caffeine (along with fiber) “created the lowest hunger and the highest fullness ratings and the lowest energy [calorie] intake at the next meal,” reported researchers in the journal Appetite.30
Tea trims body fat. Habitual tea drinkers (15 ounces daily) have 20% less body fat than people who don’t drink tea, according to a study in Obesity Research.
Catechins help people burn more calories and fat. Drinking a catechin-rich tea throughout the day triggered 12% more fat-burning than drinking water, according to a study in the Journal of Nutrition. In another study, obese dieters who took a supplement with green tea catechins burned 43 more calories per day—and lost 7.3 more pounds after 12 weeks, compared to dieters who didn’t take the green tea supplement.
Catechins help you do better weight maintenance. Getting more green tea catechins in the diet helped people “significantly maintain body weight after a period of weight loss,” reported Dutch researchers in the International Journal of Obesity.31
Bottom line: Coffee and/or tea, particularly green tea, are great choices for no-calorie drinks on Diet Day. And they’re good for you, too. Recent studies link regular coffee drinking to a wide range of health benefits, including less risk of type 2 diabetes, gallbladder disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and liver cancer. One 13-year study of more than 52,000 people showed that regular coffee drinkers even had lower “all-cause mortality”—during the study, they died less frequently from any cause, compared to people who didn’t drink coffee.32
Green tea also has a positive effect on health: studies link green tea and its catechins to lower risk for heart disease, and lower risk for many types of cancer, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
But take care with the cream and sugar. If you want to add a little milk and sugar to your coffee or tea, go right ahead, but you’ll have to count calories. For example, a tablespoon of skim milk has 6 calories; a tablespoon of whole milk, 9; and a tablespoon of half-and-half, 20. A packet of sugar adds 11 calories. If you have four cups of coffee on Diet Day with a touch of whole milk and a packet of sugar, you’re adding 80 calories—in effect, your four cups of coffee have become your daily snack.
4. Chew Up Your Hunger with Sugar-Free Gum
One of the best ways to stave off hunger on Diet Day, say my study participants, is to chew gum. It keeps your mouth busy. And it seems to “fool” your body into thinking you’re eating something. Check out these studies about the effects of gum chewing:
People feel less hungry and burn more calories. In his book Breakthroughs in Natural Healing 2011, Bill reported on two studies showing that chewing sugar-free gum can help you feel less hungry, so you eat fewer calories and burn more. The first study was conducted by Kathleen Melanson, PhD, RD, an associate professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Rhode Island. The 35 participants in the two-day study chewed sugar-free gum on only one of the two days in three 20-minute sessions of “relaxed, natural” chewing: one session before breakfast, and two sessions between breakfast and lunch. The results? On the day of gum-chewing, participants felt less hungry, consumed an average of 68 fewer calories at lunch, and didn’t consume more calories later in the day. The participants also burned about 5% more calories during the gum-chewing sessions. And they felt more upbeat on the day they chewed gum: they had more energy, and it seemed to take less energy to accomplish tasks.
“Gum chewing may be a useful addition to a weight-management program,” concluded Dr. Melanson, who reported her research at an annual meeting of the Obesity Society. “Gum-chewing might cut hunger and calorie intake in two ways,” Dr. Melanson told Bill. “The sensations in the mouth might send ‘I’m full’ signals to the brain’s appetite center. And nerves in the muscles of the jaw that are stimulated by gum chewing might send those signals, too.
“If you’re attempting to lose weight, give gum-chewing a try to see if it works to help you feel less hungry and cut calories,” she continued. “Use sugar-free gum as one tool in your weight-loss toolbox.”
Seven smart times to chew gum. Another study on gum-chewing in overweight people was reported at the same meeting by Leah Whigham, PhD, a nutrition scientist at the government’s Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center in North Dakota.
Dr. Whigham and her colleagues found that overweight people who typically needed a lot of “cognitive restraint” in order to control their eating habits—people who had to remind themselves again and again not to eat, so they wouldn’t mindlessly snack or eat when they weren’t hungry—ate fewer daily calories when they chewed gum six times a day for 15 minutes each time.
Dr. Whigham suggests chewing sugar-free gum at the following times:
More gum-chewing, less hunger, less appetite, and less craving for sweets. In a four-day study, researchers in England asked 60 people to eat lunch and then rate their hunger, appetite, and craving for sweet and salty snacks every hour for three hours. On two days of the study, the participants chewed gum for 15 minutes every hour, for a total of 45 minutes of chewing over the three hours. On the other two days, they didn’t chew gum. “Chewing gum for at least 45 minutes significantly suppressed hunger, appetite and craving for snacks and promoted fullness,” wrote the researchers in Appetite.33 “This study,” they continued, demonstrated the “benefit of chewing gum… to those seeking an aid to appetite control.”
More chewing, less stress. Chewing gum can also help you resist stress. In a study conducted by researchers in the United Kingdom, people who chewed gum daily for two weeks had less “perceived stress” and felt they could get more work done, compared to people who didn’t chew gum.34
In a similar study, in Current Medical Research and Opinion, people said that stressful emotions (not feeling relaxed, feeling tense) increased when they didn’t chew gum.35
And in a study by Australian researchers, chewing gum reduced anxiety and stress, reduced the production of the stress hormone cortisol, and increased alertness.36
As you read in chapter 1, I’ve conducted studies to determine if people could exercise comfortably on the EOD Diet. The results: study participants exercised without problems, whether they worked out on Diet Day, Feast Day, or on both. But there was one caveat: Exercising late in the day on Diet Day wasn’t a good idea. People who tried to do so felt ravenous after their workout, but they’d already consumed 400 of their 500 daily calories, or all 500.
There are three good times to exercise on Diet Day:
In other words, exercise before a meal.
You’ll find much more about EOD dieting and exercise in chapter 6, “Every-Other-Day Dieting and Exercise.”
Let’s face it: you’re probably going to cheat now and then. You’re only human!
So, don’t worry about it! The participants in my studies who lose the most weight are “adherent” on Diet Day (that is, they don’t cheat) on 8 or 9 days out of 10. In other words, they occasionally cheat—and it’s no big deal. After all, sometimes your Diet Day is going to fall on a special occasion, like a holiday, birthday party, or another time when you want to join in the fun.
Go ahead and do it! For example, if Diet Day falls on Thanksgiving, eat Thanksgiving dinner, even if the day before Thanksgiving was a Feast Day. The day after Thanksgiving can be Diet Day.
It’s fine if once or twice a month Diet Day doesn’t work out. If you eat 500 calories on 8 or 9 out of 10 Diet Days, you will lose weight. The trick is, if you go off the EOD Diet, just go back on it again the next Diet Day. Cheat on Tuesday; get back on the diet on Thursday. Another possible strategy: if you blow it on Diet Day, relax, turn it into Feast Day, and do Diet Day tomorrow. But…
Don’t beat yourself up—you’re just hurting yourself.
Don’t feel like a failure—you’re on the science-proven way to weight-loss success!
Don’t binge if you go off the diet on Diet Day—because you can eat whatever you want (and as much as you want) on Feast Day.
Relax—and just go back on the diet.
The best feature of Diet Day is that it’s so easy. You’re not counting calories or following complex rules—you just eat one low-calorie meal and one snack. There are easy ways to tame Diet Day hunger, which only lasts for the first two weeks or so of the diet, after which you hardly notice it. And maybe the best feature of Diet Day is that it’s followed by Feast Day, a day of unrestricted eating. Yes, a day of unlimited eating pleasure is actually part of a diet. To learn all about Feast Day, just turn the page.