So here is a really simple diet hack for you that works for breakfast. Now, I’m not going to go into the whole Breakfast vs. No Breakfast argument because, well…it’s silly and a waste of time.

Instead I’d like to suggest the following:

BEFORE you have breakfast, or even start planning your breakfast, have a tall glass of water. Don’t ‘pound it back’ – just drink it at a normal speed.

This will give you time to A) figure out if you are actually hungry and B) Figure out If you actually even want to eat breakfast.

It will also make sure you are not confusing thirst for hunger.

This simple hack can save you hundreds of calories over the day, since the one thing that all the breakfast research DOES agree on is that eating a big breakfast leads to a higher total calorie intake at the end of the day…Of course people like to play with the stats and tell you that eating a bigger breakfast means you eat less for the rest of the day..but they are just playing with numbers .. Yes a big breakfast may mean you eat a little less at other meals, but consider if a 2,000 calorie breakfast makes you eat 150 less calories at lunch and 100 less calories at dinner, chances are it also STILL caused you to grossly overeat for that day. But I digress.

This hack is simple – Start your day with a glass of water. Give it 5 or 10 minutes and then decide if you are hungry.  And, if you are hungry figure out what you want to eat.

All to often, I’ve been almost FINISHED by breakfast before I realized that I wasn’t really hungry in the first place – I was thirsty and going through the habit of eating in the morning.

BP

PS- Since it’s thanksgiving in the US right now, this Diet Hack will probably be very useful to a lot of people!

Instead of Nutrition, we talked Economics (One of John’s Interests).

Whenever I get the chance to talk economics with anyone who is knowledgeable I’m always blown away – mostly because it’s an area where I have next to no education.

Of course, eventually we turned it back to nutrition, covering the major economic philosophies, using nutrition and weight loss as analogies (I learn best through analogies)

Now, I’ll get John to post on the some of the concepts we discussed, but for now I want to turn back to one of my favorites

Body fat as debt.

Now, I’ve talked about this before (here and here) mostly because it’s a concept I really find fascinating.

Being overweight is exactly like being in debt.

You ate to much, and eventually you have to ‘pay it back’, otherwise…it’ll drown you.

With money debt, you either have to start earning more or start spending less.

With Fat you either have to start burning more or start eating less.

And with both (debt or fat) it’s usually the latter than gets you out of trouble. (but striving for both is good practice)

But here’s the dead truth.

Losing fat and getting out of debt are both simple – not easy by any means, but simple.

Now I’m not a fan of the spend money to get out of debt plan, nor am I a fan of the eat more to lose fat plan. Both seem ridiculous and fueled by ulterior motives (ie someone else’s profits). Instead, I’m a plan of the more realistic money-in, money-out or calorie in calorie out approach.

Sure It takes longer than you want it to, and It will be uncomfortable. It will also take large changes in lifestyle in order to be successful.  Quite frankly, you will not be able to do things that your friends can do. But if you embrace it for what it is (a lifestyle change that involves some self control), then the  process is manageable, but you do have to make it a lifestyle.

After all, if you are overweight then you have simply eaten a little more than you need to at times. If you are in debt you have simply spent a little more than you should have a few times. So you ‘owe’ back.

In debt you owe money. In fat, you owe calories.

And here’s the truth in both situations -

If you stick with it – make it a lifestyle – you’ll get results.

And when you do, people will talk – they’ll wonder how you did it. They’ll look for the ‘secret’. They certainly wont want to admit that what you did was sacrifice (but just a little bit)  in order to look the way you want to look, or to be out of debt and finally have some cash freedom.

In money terms – you didn’t buy the 62 inch flat screen TV…you stuck with your old TV, and now you are reaping the rewards.

And here’s some good news.

If you get out of money debt, you all of a sudden have a little extra cash to play with – so life gets a little easier.

If you get out of fat debt, you all of a sudden have a little calorie wiggle room to play with – so maintaining get’s easier.

But in both cases, this only applies if you make it a lifestyle.

Now with this analogy it becomes easy to think your way through weight loss fraud.

Just like ‘get out of debt’ schemes..if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

You can’t spend your way out of debt, you can’t eat yourself out of being fat.

It’s a matter of aknowleding you need a budget.

And when it comes to your eating budget – Spend your Cals on the important things and the things that make you happy, just don’t blow your budget and you’ll eventually lose weight.

That’s all on this topic for tonight, but tomorrow I’ll tell you how fruits and veggies are like extreme couponing!

BP

No,  it’s not fasting (that’s not really a ‘Diet hack’ – it’s more of a lifestyle)

Actually, it’s scotch.

Yep, good ol’ Scottish Whiskey (Irish is pretty darn good too, but I digress)

So you’re probably wondering how a ounce of the good stuff (neat of course) can be a diet hack?

Simple..

It’ll save you calories…. lots of them.

An ounce of scotch has about 70 Calories. That’s less than a glass of wine (120 ish) and a bottle of beer (140 ish)…but that’s not the ‘Hack’.

The “Hack” is in the social graces of Scotch.

Let’s say you go out for drinks with your friends…guys order beer, the girls order wine and you order a scotch.

Right away, you’ll probably get some looks… mostly because people have this weird idea that an ounce of Scotch has a TON more alcohol in it then a bottle of beer or a glass of wine (which is false, they are all equal).

And this is where the ‘hack’ comes in.

You can ‘nurse’ a glass of scotch for an hour and no one will say anything.

(I’ve never been in the situation where I’ve been nursing a scotch and someone has asked me if I was ‘on a diet’)

In a social setting, for some reason Scotch trumps people’s crazy need to push you to keep up with them when they drink.

So your friends can be 3 beers into the night, or a half bottle of wine..and you can still be nursing your first ounce of alcohol, and no one will say anything.

In a hypothetical situation where you’ve had two ounces of scotch, while your buddy has had 6 beers, you’ve saved yourself well over 500 calories…and a whole bunch of bloating and probably a really crappy morning..

Bottom line – Obviously you could just have a water, but with this diet hack you get to enjoy a Scotch, nice and slow…the way you should enjoy it (Without ice of course)…you drink about 70 Calories while your friends drink hundreds of calories in their beer, wine and assorted mix drinks (Oh and you still get the anti-inflammatory actions of alcohol too, just without any of the extra calories).

In settings like weddings, or awkward family reunions, this could save you hundreds of unneeded calories, while still allowing you to be ‘social’.

Again, The obvious ultimate hack is water, but if you’re going to drink, you may as well drink the good stuff (just remember to drink it slow).

Drink Stop Drink

BP

PS- No this is not an excuse to allow alcohol when you are fasting!

Basically a top rate at which we can burn though calories?

Probably not, but don’t worry..I did for you!

(Full discussion in the members section)

BP

The little treats here or there that can derail months of work.

And the underestimations of calories in a food, well…that’s just UNBELIEVABLY AGGRAVATING!

Over the summer we had a Baskin Robbins move into our neighborhood.

As a treat, my family would go once a week for ice-cream. Sometimes twice a week of the grandparents were around.

I’m a chocolate mint kinda guy, so I normally get the chocolate mint ice-cream in a waffle cone – about 500 calories…but occasionally, I’d order the chocolate milk shake.

I figured, “It’s a treat, besides it’s probably about 750 calories, I can handle that”

You can imagine how mad I was when I saw this:

1300 Calories!

Almost Double what I thought.

Brutal.

Luckily, I wasn’t trying to lose weight this summer, so it wasn’t a giant deal, but this is where the “I didn’t change a thing, but gained weight” stories come from – forgetting or underestimating the calorie content of foods.

Eating responsibly means being aware.

You can still have chocolate milk shakes from Baskin Robbins if you are trying to lose weight, you just need to be aware that the darn thing has 1300 Calories.

Being aware – it’s the key to weight loss.

BP

PS – The secret to losing weight while still occasionally having a large chocolate milkshake? Share it with a friend!

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Realistically, if we include the metabolic cost of keeping the muscle alive, AND the cost of moving that extra weight around, we see that a pound of muscle really helps you burn an optimistic 5 extra calories per day.

Now the point of this post isn’t to downplay the importance of resistance training or even building muscle. As there is an entirely different way to look at this phenomena.

While adding 10 pounds of muscle only increases your daily calorie burning by about 50 Calories (again, just an estimate) it will do wonders for the way your body looks. So there is still a benefit to adding muscle.

And while I like the idea of adding muscle, I think the difference becomes really significant when we start talking about LOSING muscle.

As we age we become less active. This isn’t unavoidable, but seems to be a relatively excepted fact.

If we are less active and using our muscles less, they will shrink (use it or lose it applies to just about everything within your body, from intelligence to muscle mass)

If you had 155 pounds of LBM while you were in your thirties, but have 130 pounds of LBM in your sixties, that missing 25 pounds can create quite the difference.

Just by HAVING less muscle you would be using 125 less calories per day, not to mention the fact that you are less active (the reason you lost the muscle in the first place).

So bottom line – Weight training and building/maintaining muscle are NOT the metabolism boosting miracle they have been made out to be, but they are still a VITAL part of your weight loss plan.

Eat less and maybe eat less often. Lift more and move more often. This is a pretty effective recipe for weight loss success.

BP

Brad, I am on the fence about your program. I have been low-carbing it for a while now with some great results. However I am starting to feel a little limited in what I can eat. It would be nice to have the occasional taco or dessert! Are you saying all calories are the same? Meaning if i switch to ESE and add some carbs to my diet, and still lift, my weight and body comp shouldn’t change b/c of the calorie reduction? Thanks!

My Answer:

A calorie is a calorie. 100%. After all, a Calorie is a unit of measurement. So just as an inch of anything can only ever be an inch long, one calorie from any food is still one calorie.

Now, all macronutrients are not created equal (proteins, fats and carbs do have different effects on the body) but this does not have anything to do with the measurement of calorie (By the way..I think this whole calorie nonsense would disappear if we finally adopted the Joule as the standard measurement of energy..but that’s another story all together).

So to answer your question, I am confident that you can switch to an eat stop eat lifestyle (as long as you are still lifting), increase your carb intake (within reason) and not see a change in your body composition, as long as you do not increase the amount of energy you are consuming.

Regarding your carbohydrate intake, remember even if you moderately increase your carbs on the days you ARE eating, on the 1 or 2 24-hour periods when you are fasting, your carobydrate intake will be ZERO. So most likely it will all balance out.

I do think that macronutrients play an important role in health, and the majority of us could benefit from eating a little less Carbohydrates, but in the end, my opinion is that it’s your ability to eat a wide variety of foods that will bring the best health, and the ability to reduce calorie intake that will bring the best weight loss (add in resistance training if you want to make sure the weight lost if body fat).

BP

PS- In the last month I have heard from a die-hard paleo person, a vegetarian, a fruititarian, and a pasta addict, and they have all found benefits with Eat Stop Eat. Bottom line – Eat Stop Eat doesn’t discriminate, it can help people of all diet-beliefs lose weight and feel great!