The 8-Hour Diet (19 page)

If I had my druthers, I’d just as soon skip breakfast most days, hit the gym at noon, and break my fast between 1 and 2. That extends my eating period to 9 or 10 o’clock, perfect for an on-the-move guy living in a big city. But, given 24 hours notice of that 8 a.m. breakfast with a potential advertiser in
Men’s Health
or an even earlier morning-show appearance, I can cheat a new schedule into place. I’ll start my 8-Hour feast early and conclude with a late-afternoon megasnack. Same 8-Hour Diet, just a different 8-hour period.

But if I stop eating in the late afternoon, that leaves a lot of hours during the evening in which I might be tempted by those Domino’s ads they run on
Monday Night Football
. To make this schedule easier, I’ll arrange my evening around a workout, a movie with a friend (sans popcorn), a late writing or work session—anything that will keep my mind active while my jaw is taking a break.

The key goal here: Preserve as much of the 16-hour fast as possible, because that’s the mechanism that burns through your glycogen supply and triggers fat burning and the rest of the health effects. Other than that, the timing is entirely up to you. Whatever works best for you is
best for you. And that includes the ultimate cheat: just blowing it off for the day. The scientists who study this meal plan don’t call it “intermittent fasting” for nothing. The benefits come if you observe it a few times a week, or if those studies of Mormons are to be believed, even once a month. So consider this a flex-time diet: Observe it when you can, ditch it when you can’t.

Look at the reality of what I’m asking you to do on the 8-Hour Diet. You need to string together 16 consecutive hours in which you’re putting down the fork and picking up weight-loss and health benefits (same thing). There’s hardly any way you can go on this plan without sleeping through most of it, L’il Abner style. The health benefits are yours to keep, simply for not eating while you sleep. It’s like checking your bank balance to find that the week’s paycheck went in via automatic deposit.

And that also means you’ve just got two 4-hour periods—one in the morning, one in the evening—to occupy yourself with something other than answering the dinner bell. If I’ve done my job in writing this book, you’ll be armed with literally hundreds of strategies for achieving exactly that.

James B. Johnson, MD, a plastic surgeon at Louisiana State University Medical Center, is one of the most active early researchers into intermittent fasting. He has observed dozens of people on an every-other-day eating plan and has come to know the ins and outs of their challenges and rewards.

Says Dr. Johnson: “It’s important to have a procedure to follow when the pressure to eat seems to be too great. Sit down, close your eyes, take four deep breaths, inhale and exhale slowly, visualize enjoying yourself. Get outside, engage someone else, help your children with their homework, or engage in some repetitive simple task.”

Another really effective way to maximize your fat burn: Go to bed a little earlier. The sleep/weight loss connection is undeniable
(see “
Sleep Your Way Younger, Slimmer, and Healthier
” for evidence that won’t put you to sleep, but you’ll wish it did). And going to bed earlier will avoid another problem: “If you’re in too deprived a caloric state, you secrete a hormone called orexin, which keeps you awake,” notes Dr. Johnson. Hitting the hay earlier can short-circuit this issue, but if you need to stay up later, he offers this advice: “Save 100 to 200 calories for bedtime to help you fall asleep.”

Is there a better cheat than milk and cookies before bedding down? It’s a doctor-approved bedtime snack, after all!

Okay, this “cheating” strategy isn’t exactly on the same level as “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” I know. But of all the sneaky strategies I employ to remain true to the 8-Hour Diet, exercise may be the most effective. Why?

Three reasons:

Sweat is a perfect distraction.
Really, the worst thing you can do during a food craving is: nothing. Idle hands are the Devil Dogs’ workshop; left unoccupied, they’re soon dropping coins into the vending machine and tearing open the cookie box. For me, a growling stomach is a command to get on my feet and head for the gym. I know that, once I start my workout, my body will overrule my belly until the last repetition is through.

Success is an endorphin rush.
I edit fitness articles for a living, so I’ve completed workouts in all sorts of conditions—including a lot of times when I’ve started out thinking, “This is going to stink, and I wish I were doing almost anything else.” But you know what? At a certain point, an exercise session develops a momentum of its own—equal parts excitement that you’re working hard, gladness that now that you’ve started this will soon be over, plus a little hormonal reward. You’ve heard of the endorphin rush? It’s your body’s way of telling you that
you’re doing the right thing for yourself. Yes, there’s satisfaction biting into a fresh scone from Starbucks. But the rush of a workout well concluded makes that pale by comparison.

Movement tells a complaining belly to shut up.
When you’re exercising, blood is diverted from your internal organs to your muscles and extremities, the parts of the body you’re challenging during a work-out. It takes a while, postexertion, for blood and energy supplies to return to the gut, where they’d be needed if you were going to digest a meal. Hence, your appetite diminishes while you’re in workout-recovery mode.

So, now do you see why I call exercise a cheat? And you don’t have to dedicate an hour, a half hour, or even a quarter of an hour to get the benefits. In
Chapter 10
, I’ll show you more than a dozen 8-Minute Work-outs that range from a simple power walk to a full-body, no-weights toning routine. In fact, simply by getting up and being active at the first sign of a craving, you’re bamboozling your belly while building muscle and endurance.

Who said cheaters never prosper?

• A JUICY STEAK,
  medium rare, with mushrooms in wine sauce
  
• BBQ CHICKEN,
  with crusty skin, and side dish of baked beans
  
• A BACON, EGG, AND CHEESE BURRITO,
  with salsa dribbled on top
  
• A HAM STEAK,
  with warm pineapple
  
• A CHEESEBURGER,
  grilled and gooey
  

What do all of these have in common, aside from being a) awesomely delicious and b) almost always verboten in standard diet plans?

They all provide a healthy dose of protein to use for fuel, which will help your body replace the fat it’s burning with the lean, strong muscle that will give your body a top-to-bottom toning.

On the 8-Hour Diet, your body is selectively burning body fat for energy. But it’s also going to burn the carbs, fats, and protein you eat during your 8-hour feeding fest. Your goal is to have a little protein left over after your body has burned off all your food intake, so it can maintain and even build more lean muscle.

“If you go on a protein-sufficient but energy-insufficient diet, then you preserve lean tissue and have all these benefits,” says Marc Hellerstein, MD, PhD, professor of human nutrition in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and Toxicology at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources. In other words, you’re signaling your body to selectively burn fat, but you’re also letting it know that you want it to preserve, and even build, lean muscle. “This isn’t about missing meals, this is about going on a very structured way of eating that convinces the body that you are in a state of caloric insufficiency and that the body needs to respond [by burning fat].”

The perfect time to consume that protein: at your first meal of the day, especially if you did an 8-Minute Workout in the morning. Your body will be craving the building blocks of muscle repair.

• A PLATE OF PASTA,
  with grated Parmesan
  
• CRUSTY PIZZA,
  with plum tomatoes and garlic
  
• STIR-FRIED RICE
  and vegetables
  
• AN EAR OF BUTTER-SLATHERED CORN ON THE COB
  —no, two!
  

All of those meals sound so delicious and carb-tastic, Atkins enthusiasts are weeping into their cottage cheese. But those carb-rich treats will also make it profoundly easier to adhere to, and enjoy, the 8-Hour Diet. A 2011 study in the journal
Obesity
found that consuming most of your carbs at dinner leads to greater weight loss, a reduction in waist size, and a reduction in body fat percentage, compared to spreading your carbs across feedings.

Isn’t that awesome? Finally, a diet plan that tells you to eat carbs, instead of just swatting the pasta fork out of your quivering paw.

Interestingly, the
Obesity
study focused on Muslims, who were observing a daylight fast during the month of Ramadan, as I mentioned before. Researchers wanted to see how fasting influenced the body’s production of leptin, the “No thanks, I’m full” hormone. And they found that, if you’re going to eat carbs, nighttime is the right time.

According to the study: “[Eating carbs at night] induced a single daily insulin secretion in the evening, thus it was predicted that the diet would lead to higher concentrations of leptin starting 6 to 8 hours later, i.e., in the morning and throughout the day. This may lead to enhanced satiety during daylight hours and improve dietary adherence.”

After 180 days, more than two-thirds of the group that carbed out in the evening felt their appetites were under control; only 19 percent of dieters who spread out carb consumption through the day said the same. The nighttime carb eaters weren’t jonesing for food in the afternoon; a third of the all-day carb eaters were.

Another important thing about this study: Even though the nighttime carb eaters were on a weight-loss program, they didn’t have jackedup hunger levels. Their eating schedule seems to have spared them that.

It’s beginning to look like a reliable clock might be more important to weight loss than a reliable scale.

By the time I started writing this book, I’d already read dozens of accounts from people who’d experimented with intermittent fasting. To a man and a woman, they said that during their eating periods, they literally had trouble including all the foods they’d like to eat. In fact, their hunger was so well satisfied, they just couldn’t look at another ____ [fill in blank with your favorite food temptation here].

I know exactly what they’re talking about. In fact, I tuck into my fast-breaking meal—whatever time of the day it falls in—with gusto.
Ditto the other major meal I have during my 8-hour eating time. But there’s only so much one stomach can hold, so I make sure I plan my foods carefully.

Hence the steady supply of oranges and dark chocolate almonds—or apples with peanut butter, or parma ham and Swiss cheese—that I make sure to have on hand during my fasting days. No doubt, you have your own list. If not, chef Matt Goulding—my coauthor on the
Eat This, Not That!
and
Cook This, Not That!
books—will be happy to set you up. (Check out the next chapter for your 8-Hour feast.)

But the principle here is simple: If you schedule your indulgences during your 8 hours of eating, as I do, you will be that much less likely to be thinking about them during the 16-hour break you’ll take from the food trough. Denial for a lifetime is difficult. Waiting until your next feasting time—not so hard.

Wait: How can I guarantee that your next meal is going to be delicious? I don’t have any idea what you’re going to eat!

Well, I can guarantee it, and that’s not psychic, it’s science. According to Donald Leopold, MD, a professor of otolaryngology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, our tasting organs—your tongue, yes, but your nose, too—evolved largely to distinguish good food from harmful food. So when you slide that first mouthful past your lips, you savor every aspect of it: scent, temperature, texture, flavor. You perceive it as an aesthetic experience, but your body is merely trying to distinguish deliciousness from disaster. Once it declares a food safe, it checks out. (That’s why the first time you taste a new gourmet entrée will always be slightly better than the next time.)

Now, project that tasting process out to a full day of eating—from 8 a.m., say, until 11 p.m. It’s probably a lot like what you’re doing now—a
whole lot of mindless eating. Since your body has become so habituated to these foods, the same ones you scarf down day after day, it no longer feels the need to investigate, and register, the flavor as fully.

But when you take a break from eating and come back to the table for the 8-Hour Diet, your senses are heightened. Your taste buds work hard, bringing all the flavors to the fore, and all your meals taste better than ever.

When was the last time anybody said that about dining on a diet?

T
he 8-Hour Diet is so simple and effective because it doesn’t in any way restrict the foods you eat, or the amounts you eat. Indeed, nothing’s off-limits, and I encourage you to eat until you’re satiated. The more satisfied you are with what you’re eating, the easier it will be to enjoy your eating time and manage your noneating time.

Which is why hearty, delicious food is so important to the success of this program. If you’re going to trek across the desert, there damn well better be a refreshing oasis at the other end. That’s why I’ve asked chef and
New York Times
bestselling author Matt Goulding to put together some of the most delicious, nutritious, satisfying recipes you’ll ever taste. And many of them can be prepared in 8 minutes or less.