The 8-Hour Diet (12 page)

Caloric restriction means routinely consuming a fraction of the normal food and energy intake to maintain your health; if the standard diet for a woman is 1,800 calories, restrictors would take in 1,100 or so. It’s also known as the “perpetual suffering” diet and is very hard to stick to. Disordered eating refers to an out-of-control pattern of bingeing and starving, often under psychological duress; bulimia and anorexia nervosa are examples. Eating disorders are emotionally and psychologically driven and wouldn’t be “caused” by intermittent fasting, which is, by its nature, a controlled pattern of eating. Disordered eaters have no control over their eating patterns; that’s why they need to seek psychological counseling to regain control.

Everyone should have a primary-care physician who knows their general eating and exercise patterns. Before you undertake any major change, it makes sense to talk to your doctor first. That’s especially true if you have a blood-sugar disorder—diabetes or pre-diabetes, for instance—in which case you can run into trouble if you are restricting food intake or altering your eating patterns.

For the rest of us, however, there is always sufficient glycogen stored in the liver to meet immediate energy needs; if you do burn through that, the body switches to burning fat.

The key to sticking with the fast when you’re hungry: distraction. Don’t sit still, obsessing about food. Get on your feet. Take a walk. Visit a coworker for a chat about some big project you’re working on. Watch a funny video on YouTube. Then watch another. Go for a workout. Run an errand. Most hunger pangs last 10 minutes at most, so occupy your body and mind for that length of time, and often the hunger will simply pass. (Check out
Chapter 9
for a hundred such strategies for curbing cravings.) Also keep in mind: You’ll get better at this as the weeks go by, so stick with it now, and you’ll master it soon enough!

Go for it.

The 8-Hour Diet is all about the real world. So during your week off, see if you can keep to it on a modified basis, say 10 hours of eating, 14 of fasting. Do your best while you’re off the wagon, then clamber back on as soon as possible. In fact, this diet is very flexible; if you stick with it most of the time, you’ll receive benefits most of the time as well. The closer you are to 8/16, the better it’ll work. But it’s not a failure if you aren’t quite up to that mark.

First of all, congratulations. You’re starting from a better place than the rest of us omnivores. Simply adapt the eight Powerfoods as needed. Obviously, you won’t be eating meat, so use your best protein swaps to meet that category. Ditto the bean-curd variations (soy milk) for dairy, if you’re not doing the cow thing. Otherwise, you’re good to go green and still get lean.

T
he worst thing about the diet-book industry: If you go with the most popular eating plan of the moment, you’ll be changing your diet as often as most teenagers change their socks. In with the Lemonade Diet, out with the Brown Fat Revolution. But wait, here comes the Cookie Diet. If only there were a Glass of Milk Diet to go along with it!

In a funny way, that’s exactly the point I want to make here: Synergy can work. In fact, the best, most popular weight-loss plans out there—the Atkins Diet, the Paleo Diet, the South Beach Diet, Wheat Belly, and my own Abs Diet and Eat This, Not That! franchises—have gained fans for really good reasons: They make sense, they work, and people can stick with them. But new research emerges, eating habits change, and readers often find they have to abandon what works for them in order to follow the new science.

Until now, that is.

The 8-Hour Diet can actually make any of these topflight plans even better. How? Look at it this way: Each of the plans mentioned above proposes a sensible eating program based on solid science. But none of them takes advantage of the profound biological mechanisms that kick in with intermittent fasting. So, what if you inserted a bestselling diet into an 8-hour eating plan? You’ll get the best of both worlds—and they’re both populated by skinny, healthy people!

Here’s how you can work it.

THE ATKINS DIET, IN A NUTSHELL:
Shun carbs, vegetables, and fruits and welcome back all the animal fats and proteins you’d been taught to avoid.

THE DOWNSIDES:
Yes, you can even get sick of bacon, plus you miss out on the valuable mitochondria-repairing antioxidants you get from fruit, vegetables, and whole grains. (Sadly, you won’t be able to “eat your 8” if you’re following Atkins.)

THE 8-HOUR ANGLE:
While I don’t recommend it fully, if you do follow Atkins, you’ll find that the 8-Hour Diet will turbocharge its effects. And there’s a double benefit here: 1) The protein and fats prescribed by Dr. Atkins (may he rest in hog heaven) have a built-in satiety effect, so they’ll sustain you during your fasting period; and 2) some researchers worry about increased heart-disease and stroke risk on an all-meat diet. Well, voilà, the cardio- and brain-protective benefits of the 8-Hour Diet just might save you from an Atkins attack. So if you eat every part of the pig but the oink, your 8-hour eating schedule just might protect you in the long run.

THE PALEO DIET, IN A NUTSHELL:
Never eat anything our caveman forebears wouldn’t have eaten back in Paleolithic times. Out with the processed foods, grains, legumes, and carbs, in with the brontosaurus burgers (sans roll), tree nuts, fruits, whole vegetables, line-caught fish, and lean meats.

THE DOWNSIDES:
All that focus on excluding what our caveman fore-bears didn’t eat leaves out a whole bunch of delicious and beneficial foods they might have benefited from, including low-fat dairy, beans, and whole grains. Cavemen didn’t have painless dentistry either, so it’s not like progress is always a bad thing.

THE 8-HOUR ANGLE:
Again, let’s scrunch down all that good, prehistoric eating into 8 hours and leave all the sugar and refined carbs to
soon-to-be extinct, unenlightened modern men and women. (Grunt if you like that.) But you can also build in an “I ate my 8!” angle here, so you have the benefit of whole grains and dairy while not straying too far off the Paleo plan. The best part: Adding those two categories neatly rounds out the caveman menu, which means you’ll be able to stay on the diet while other knuckle-draggers fall by the wayside. And the longer you stick with any diet, the more likely you are to lock in its benefits.

THE SOUTH BEACH DIET, IN A NUTSHELL:
The South Beach Diet’s
Dr. Agatston is a world-renowned cardiologist, so his goal has been not just weight loss, but heart health as well. He seized on some aspects of his colleague Dr. Atkin’s plan and civilized it considerably. It was no longer just bacon for bacon’s sake, but rather, that South Beach cuts carbs radically and replaces them with a wholesome foods plan that includes healthy grains, fruits, and vegetables and broadens the protein appeal to fatty fishes and dairy. This was Atkins for Miami models, and the masses descended upon it.

THE LIMITATIONS:
There isn’t much to disagree with, although an exercise program should be a part of any South Beach weight-loss plan.

THE 8-HOUR ANGLE:
Dr. Agatston’s delicious and healthful food recommendations look even better on an 8-hour eating schedule, because now you have both sides of the boat rowing in the same direction: Four food oars pulling toward great nutrition for health and weight-loss benefits, four fasting oars pulling for the brain, heart, and cancer-fighting benefits. And it adds up to eight! What’s more, you’ll have a megadose of insulin management: Both the South Beach Diet and the 8-Hour eating plan can profoundly affect the way your body processes blood sugar, so this is an antidiabetes double play, as well.

WHEAT BELLY, IN A NUTSHELL:
If I were a carb, I’d be getting nervous. For as hard as Drs. Atkins and Agatston were on carbs, Dr. William Davis is all that and no bag of chips. He banished carbs from Planet You and has been shrinking equators across the land ever since.
Wheat Belly
recommends plenty of nuts and vegetables, but also plenty of fat, to keep the stomach growling to a minimum.

THE LIMITATIONS:
As with Atkins, even healthy grains like oatmeal are banished from the island, as well as other healthy foods (like fruit, legumes and beans, and gluten-free grains).

THE 8-HOUR ANGLE:
Cutting out wheat has a lot of benefits, and once you read what Dr. Davis has to say about the genetic game of Twister that scientists have played with the grain’s DNA, you’ll happily pass on the bread basket.
Wheat Belly
focuses on reducing insulin resistance and diabetes risk, benefits that you’ll optimize if you follow the plan in combination with the 8-Hour Diet. Bonus for all of you who are concerned about celiac disease: Intermittent fasting has been shown to be a potent way to battle autoimmune disorders, and celiac has many autoimmune characteristics.

THE NEW ABS DIET, IN A NUTSHELL:
I created this program, too, so forgive me if I indulge it like a parent. It’s hard to see its flaws when it’s of your own flesh—and less of it, at that. Build your diet around the ABS DIET POWER foods (Almonds, Beans, Spinach, Dairy, Instant oatmeal, Eggs, Turkey, Peanut butter, Olive oil, Whole grains, Extra-protein powder, Raspberries—and like foods), supplement your meals with high-protein smoothies, and build your workouts around muscle-building fat burners. You hit your middle from both sides and slim your way to a six-pack.

THE LIMITATIONS:
The nutrition and exercise principles in the
New
Abs Diet
are as sound as the day I wrote them, but the new research about the importance of when you eat—as opposed to just what you eat—was only beginning to percolate to the surface.

8-HOUR ABS:
Doesn’t that sound awesome? And it’s not a dream, either. In fact, the fat-burning properties of the feast and fast cycle, combined with the high-protein smoothie recipes and workouts, might generate more six-packs than the Budweiser plant in St. Louis. Pick one up!

EAT THIS, NOT THAT! IN A NUTSHELL:
Not a diet plan at all,
Eat This, Not That!
has helped people lose 10, 20, 30—sometimes up to 100 pounds—just by eating the same foods, but healthier, lower-calorie versions of them. The idea is that you can keep going to Wendy’s for lunch, keep grabbing dinner at Red Robin, and keep enjoying takeout from Domino’s or from the convenience section of your supermarket, but by knowing which products to buy, you can strip away pounds automatically.

THE LIMITATIONS:
While stripping away fat and calories by eating healthier restaurant fare is great, what’s even better is cooking at home with fresh, nutrition-packed ingredients. (Fortunately, there are three
Cook This, Not That!
books to choose from!)

THE 8-HOUR ANGLE:
Actually,
Eat This, Not That!
is the perfect accompaniment to the 8-Hour Diet. If you shorten the time frame in which you eat, convenience becomes a top priority.

A
diet that lets me eat all my favorite foods? What’s the catch? Well, I want you to keep eating your favorite foods—but I
also
want you to eat these eight super-foods, foods so potent in their nutritional punch that they’ll ensure your body is perfectly fueled.

The 8-Hour Diet is the only scientifically proven weight-loss plan that allows you to eat as much as you want of whatever you want. It’s one of the most exciting nutritional
development since the Aztecs figured out how to make the first chocolate out of cacao beans.

In fact, the only challenge to the 8-Hour Diet is finding time to eat lots of delicious food. (Heck, you should probably put your favorite barbecue joint on speed dial—just so you can satisfy your most gluttonous cravings at the touch of a button!)

But while eating as much as you want of whatever you want is a pretty exciting promise, it doesn’t mean you can start living exclusively on Cherry Coke and Doritos. Your body still has some basic nutritional requirements that can’t be fully satisfied by the dollar menu at Wendy’s. You need good-for-you fats for looking and feeling healthy; you need fiber to keep you full and satisfied; you need vitamins to ward off disease and minerals to pump your blood and move your muscles. And you need variety to make your taste buds happy!

How can you ensure that you’re getting all the nutrients your body craves—even while indulging your desire for takeout, fast food, and dessert? To this end, I’ve identified the 8-Hour Powerfoods—eight food categories, each of which comes with its own treasure trove of nutrients. Simply by eating one serving from each of these categories every day—instead of or
in addition to
anything else you’d like to eat!—you’ll ensure perfect nutrition and maximum health. In other words, go nuts at 5 Guys Burgers and Fries tomorrow afternoon, but make sure your next meal or snack contains these nutritional all-stars.