Day 81

GOALS

• Goal date:                     March 26, 2011
• Weight goal:                 206.0 pounds
• Total Inches goal:         120.9 inches

 Today's Weight:        210.4 

 Yesterday's Weight:    210.4 

 +Gain/-Loss:           - 0.0 

Please leave a comment below if you

visit here. Thank you!

Somewhat predictably, eating a few handfuls of walnuts (about 300 claories worth, maybe more) right before bedtime put the kibosh on the day's weight loss. Gotta stop doing that! Also, beginning to wonder about the source of those cravings... I wonder if Slim's red beans was made with roux - that would mean I was eating flour (off-plan). Or maybe when I stay up more than 4 hours after eating (like when I eat before 7pm, like last night) I just get hungry... I'm going to have to watch that. Anyway...

I skipped breakfast today. I was rushed this morning because I had to take my car in for servicing. Plus, I just wasn't hungry; I think all those stored calories from less than 6 years ago are still sticking to me.

For years, I have been a member of the "breakfast-is-the-most-important-meal-of-the-day" club. Recently, I have been re-thinking this. The evidence support that idea focuses on the need for the body to replenish energy stores on a regular basis.

If you finish dinner by 7:30pm, and eat breakfast before 8am (I typically eat at 7:30am), then the 12-hour gap has left you nutritionally depleted, and probably functioning sub-optimally. The rest of the story is pretty interesting, though. It has been found that people who skip breakfast get irritable by mid-morning, and prone to snacking on unhealthy (sugary) foods; that they are so hungry at lunch-time they frequently make bad choices for lunch. These three things seem to be held up as the reasons behind the statistical fact that people who eat breakfast are more likely to maintain a healthy weight. That's the case for eating breakfast. About a third of that makes perfect sense in my case. The two other parts, not so much, at least, not in my case.

Whether I eat breakfast or not, I don't make those same bad snack and lunch choices; in part, because during the work-week they aren't available to me, in part because I actually can exercise the required self-control during the day. So what happens if you're maintaining a good diet, you have good nutrition, and then skip breakfast? I couldn't find ANY data on this.

Also, my 'guide' (the chapters on weight loss in Tim Ferris' book, "The 4-hour Body" by the way) suggests that if you don't eat breakfast within an hour of waking (ideally, within a 1/2-hour) you are impeding your weight loss. I never do that. (I have my reasons, and they're pretty good ones).

In my case, I generally skip breakfast (and sometimes lunch) after a calorie surplus the day before (like after my free day, when I deliberately splurge dietarily, and consume excess calories) or when I have eaten very late in the evening. During these times, I am in no danger of running short on fuel for my morning activities and, so far, on this diet, I am never hungry.

In fact, this way of eating - feast, followed by fast - imitates the more typical style of pre-agricultural human eating - which is to say, the way people ate for hundreds of thousands (arguably, millions?) of years, the style of eating that marked the history of humans until relatively recent times. I'm just saying...

Here's the chart for today:

... and today's food:

Breakfast  

Skipped!

Lunch

 Roast turkey off the bone, lentils, and balsamic vinaigrette over  Spring Mix greens,

Dinner

Chili (grass-fed beef, black beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, spice), over broccoli and cauliflower with a  hard-boiled egg,

As always, please leave a comment if you read this blog post.