I found a quote on the internet the other day that perfectly sums up how I want you to utilize Eat Stop Eat:

“Don’t spend 90% of your life trying to lose 5% of your weight”

It’s not the ‘time spent’ I’m worried about, it’s the ‘Mind-Time spent’.

With today’s sedentary lifestyle, unless you live on a farm or do physical work, you are going to have to spend some amount of time purposefully being active, and anything worth doing is worth doing well, so that time should be used as efficiently and effectively as possible to challenge your muscles.

So it’s not the time spent being active that concerns me, but the stress, the mind-space, and the preoccupation.

Fast once or twice a week for 24ish hours. Weight train 3 to 4 times per week, stay active, and avoid the nasty habit of letting health and fitness consume your life.

From my experience the people who think and talk about nutrition and fitness the most are rarely the ones in the best shape.

The people who argue and post about fitness and nutrition on twitter and youtube comments are rarely the leanest or the strongest.

And the ultra lean people I know are neither the happiest nor most content.

Remember – A large proportion of the people you see on Instagram or Facebook showing of their beautiful bodies do so for a living… and a smile can be practiced 😉

Bottom line  – There is nothing wrong with trying to better yourself, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of enjoying yourself.

Do the work needed in the gym. Practice restraint at the dinner table. Don’t eat when you’re not hungry, but don’t forget to enjoy the occasional treat.

Finally, please remember – Thinking, reading, arguing and stressing over your diet or exercise program won’t actually help you lose weight, even though it may feel like you are doing work.

If you’ve been around this community for a while you probably know how important I think measurements are. And you may have a good idea of how each measurement predicts changes in fat or muscle mass.

Now we can move on to exactly why I think this is so important.

Here we go:

Firstly, I use measurements to guide my fasting.

If your waist is over 50% of your height you can probably handle 24 hours of fasting once or twice per week.

Once your waist moves below this number you may need to shorten up your fasts to 20 hours, or maybe to fast only once per week.

The less fat you have, the less fasting you need.

However, it’s not only fat we are concerned about. Just getting skinny is a recipe for disaster. We want to lose fat, but keep or build muscle.

Luckily, we have measurements for that too 😉

If your thigh measurement or your shoulder measurements start to decrease (especially once you are below 50% waist to height), then you need to look at your workout program, protein intake and overall calorie intake… as this is indicative of muscle loss.

Remember – we want to lose fat WHILE keeping or even gaining muscle.

You can’t tell this stuff with the scale alone. But with the help of measurements you can start to get a really good idea of what’s going on with your body.

And you can adjust accordingly…

That’s really it.

You don’t need any magic, and you certainly don’t need years and years of reading science blogs to figure out health.

Your waist circumference is associated with many different hormone levels in your body, so yes, you can spend months and months reading about various isoforms of various hormones and how they affect your health, or you could spend the same amount of effort keeping your waist circumference low while optimizing your other measurements…

If your weight is going up while your shoulder and thigh measurements are going up but your waist is staying the same or going down, then you are likely gaining some muscle (Good job!)

If your weight is going up while your shoulders are staying the same or going down, and your waist measurement is increasing (along with possibly your thigh measurement) then you are likely gaining some fat.

Obviously there will be some personal fat patterns you have to account for (how much you store on your hips vs waist etc), but for the most part this is a really good guide.

Now I’m going to explain why this is so important to me:

For the majority of health research, circumferences are rarely accounted for…

So all those studies showing one diet is better than the other rarely, if ever, standardize for height, weight, waist circumference, fat mass and lean body mass.

And here’s my truth – the diet that is best for you is the one that allows you to keep your waist below 50% of your height, while keeping your muscle mass up for as long as possible while feeling as good as possible and enjoying the foods you like to eat the most.

I’ve read very convincing take downs of the idea that saturated fat causes cardiovascular disease. I’ve read fantastic articles on the benefits of carbs. I’ve read entire books on the evils of carbs. I’ve had fantastic conversations with very educated advocates of high protein diets. I’ve also spoken with people who make sound arguments for lower protein intakes.

I’ve read about the corporate corruption in research. I’ve also read about government ‘tinkering‘ in health policies….

I’ve read about ‘blue zones’ and longevity and how to live past 100…

The confounders in all of this?

Circumferences, height, weight…

Leanness and activity level make all of this so muddy, it’s blindingly frustrating.

….And you don’t have to be perfect, just try to get close. Not everyone will be able to have a waist that is less than 50% of their height, but the closer you can get, the better.

some people will EASILY get their waist below 50%, but have a tough time managing their shoulder and thigh circumference… everyone will have some sort of battle, I’m sure… But we are all aiming for a similar outcome – health in a body we are proud of.

The time between American Thanksgiving and the Superbowl weekend can be like the Bermuda Triangle for your belly.

Yet as the food seems to just “disappear” into that bottomless pit… it has to end up somewhere, right?

This extended “Holiday Zone” seems to cause your best of intentions to mysteriously disappear.

And the constant stream of social gatherings of family and friends lead to periods of overeating that you just can’t escape from.

You’ll also face hidden temptations like leftovers, stealing your children’s candy and extra drinks with friends, or your crazy uncle.

Basically, you’re at constant threat of a ‘perfect weight gain storm’

This is when you have to be diligent. However, it’s NOT the time to lock yourself away and never see friends and family – that’s not the point.

I mean heck… all the parties and stuff are fun, right?!

The point is to be able to navigate these months while still enjoying time spent with friends and family.

Step 1: Get into a groove with your fasting. Find the right days, the right start and stop times and the right length of fasting time that really jives with your current schedule.

If family events mean you have to cut a fast a little short, that is perfectly alright.

A 16 hour fast once per week is generally better than no fasts at all. So be really flexible here, get into a routine, but don’t get too upset when your routine gets thrown off by events. Be structured but adaptable.

Step 2: Get your workouts in a groove. My personal opinion is that this is the time to really strive for consistency. It’s the time to get in the gym and just do work.

If you’re not a gym person, then it’s time to find a good flow in whatever it is you do, but make sure exercise is part of your routine for the next couple of months. Again, be structured but adaptable.

Get these two steps in place, and I’ll make sure to do my best to keep you on course and we can weather this storm with as little damage as possible.

Ice cream is awesome. In fact, it’s probably my favorite dessert.

And, thanks to this little hack, I have ice cream almost every day, even when I’m trying to lean out.

Here’s the hack.

The ingredients in quality Ice-cream are DENSE — good ice-cream is made of cream, egg and sugar… Not exactly a list of ‘diet foods’

But if you pick the right ice-cream that has the right ‘overrun’ you can totally get away with an ice-cream a day.

Overrun refers to the amount of air that is whipped and then trapped in the base ice cream mixture. For example, an overrun of 100 percent would mean for every gallon of ice cream mix, you get two gallons of finished ice cream.

This is very similar to the process of whipping air into cream to make whipped cream or beating egg whites to make meringue.

Without this air, the frozen ice cream mix would basically be a flavored milk ice cube. Hard to scoop and very hard to eat.

Now, I don’t know of any ice-cream brand that lists it’s overrun percentage on its label, but luckily you don/t really need it.

Ice-cream is sold by volume, not weight, but some quick math will tell you that ‘serving’ of ice-cream can have anywhere from 150 to almost 300 calories.

As a guide, an ice cream with a high overflow — a 100 gram serving of delicious mint chocolate chip ice-cream makes for a decent sized fulfilling bowl — will contain about 150-200 Calories worth of ice-cream.

The ingredients won’t necessarily be cheaper or poorer quality, there is simply more air trapped in the mixture.

So don’t rule out ice-cream entirely just because you are trying to lose weight, just be smart about it.

Look for quality ingredients but in a container that is lighter than the rest.

Remember, small tweaks add up over time. And if you’re following the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle, you have a lot more leeway on your “Eat” days than folks trying to follow traditional diets…

“What should  I say when people disapprove of my fasting?”

It’s a question I get on a daily basis.

Now, the old me would have advised to explain all the wonderful benefits of fasting. To defend your choice with the examples of fasting all throughout history, from all different parts of the world.

But that’s not my answer anymore.

My answer is that you shouldn’t care.

At all.

You are doing this for you, not for them.

Because getting that extra fat off of your body makes you feel awesome.

And you know that most of the nutrition rules everyone else blindly follows are mostly useless (or at least their effectiveness is greatly exaggerated).

The point is that you have to OWN your goals.

If your goal is to lose weight then you really have to ignore everyone who is trying to steer you off track, by questioning your methods.

If something is working for you then you don’t need to defend it, especially to negative people who are simply trying to rain on your success, or your choice to be different.

So when it comes to weight loss and how you eat, remember, it’s your goals, your choices and your approval that you should worry about, not the goals, choices and approvals of anyone else.

So when people ask you why you are fasting, just answer

“because it’s awesome”.

When I first started writing Eat Stop Eat, I had just finished studying the benefits of short-term fasting for weight loss, and I was eager to share my new knowledge with the world.

I wanted to explain scientific literature thoroughly in order to help people understand that the obsessive-compulsive approach to dieting is unnecessary, and that fasting is a scientifically supported way of eating which can have great weight loss and health benefits.

It’s been almost three years since I started on my mission, and sometimes I wonder if I was successful in getting my message across.

More people than ever are following Eat Stop Eat and seeing wonderful weight loss results as a result of the program. But there are also a lot of people who are following Eat Stop Eat – and following a low-carb diet, cycling their calories, timing their protein, eating six times per day, and only eating protein with fat.

I didn’t mean for this to happen. I wanted to help people break free from the craziness – to “stop the insanity,” as the woman with the blonde, spiky hair used to say.

For most of us, simply eating the way we normally eat, following a resistance exercise program, and fasting according to the Eat Stop Eat method will give us dramatic weight loss results.

You only need to change these eating habits if you’re preparing for a bodybuilding competition or a fitness pageant. These kinds of events require extremely low body fat levels that can only be maintained for a few days at a time.

Simply eating responsibly is enough for most of us, however. It’s possible to get an extremely lean body without being obsessed with healthy eating.

Most of us would benefit, healthwise, from eating less sugar or more healthy fats, but you don’t have to completely avoid sugar or take 15 fish oil pills per day. Fruits and vegetables are also good for your health, but you don’t have to be a vegetarian in order to be healthy.

Other than those basic guidelines, the rest of the pill-popping, protein shake-drinking, portion-measuring, food-avoiding versions of “healthy eating” are actually toxic to your health.

It’s time to stop obsessive-compulsive eating – and time to start raging against it.

Other health experts are also becoming concerned about the negative consequences of obsessive-compulsive eating.

In his book, “Health Food Junkies,” Steven Bratman, M.D. calls obsessive-compulsive eating “Orthorexia.” Michael Pollan talks about the problem in his book, “In Defense of Food.”

It’s good that obsessive-compulsive eating is finally getting some publicity because people need to realize that what nutritionists, personal trainers and health food store employees are preaching is psychologically damaging our relationship with food.

Eating shouldn’t provoke guilt! And getting lean shouldn’t be about self-punishment and denial!

The worst nutrition mistake you can make is obsessive-compulsive eating. And to make matters worse, many “health experts” are actually supporting the idea. Just look at all the obsessive-compulsive eating diet plans that appear in the pages of magazines. Most of those plans can help you lose weight by reducing the number of calories you eat, but that doesn’t mean any of them are healthy. Eight weeks of egg whites and cauliflower isn’t good for you – neither physically nor psychologically. Your workout wasn’t worthless if you didn’t drink a protein shake as soon as you finished. If you eat a brownie, you shouldn’t feel ashamed of yourself. But that’s how those who follow obsessive-compulsive eating lifestyles make us feel.

We have enough to worry about in life. Worrying over how to eat shouldn’t be one of the things we dwell on, especially if it doesn’t even improve your health or your body.

Somehow, we’ve been taught to feel that the more complicated the diet program, the more effective it will be, but that’s not the truth. It is possible to lose weight and get a lean body without becoming a slave to the latest rules of healthy eating.

Weight loss shouldn’t cause you to lose your sanity. There is a better way, and in my opinion it’s the Eat Stop Eat Method.

Eat Stop Eat provides a simple, easy way to reduce calories, which is essential to successful, long term weight loss.

With Eat Stop Eat, you’ll find an easy way to get lean without constantly worrying about what you’re eating, a way to lose weight without giving up any of the foods you love to eat, and a way to lose weight without having to eat foods you don’t like.

To learn more about Eat Stop Eat and how to avoid obsessive-compulsive eating, CLICK HERE to get a copy of the program. An easier, leaner life is more accessible than you think.

In my opinion the the goal of weight loss isn’t 0% body fat, the goal is to like the way you look.

Now, I know 0% is ludicrous, and would have to involve the removal of your brain… but the point is body fat percentages are arbitrary.

3.8% vs 4.3% vs 8%

Really, what is in a number?

The goal of any weight loss program should be to be happy with, and proud of, your body- Not to hit some predetermined arbitrary number.

Yes, I agree that knowing these numbers helps for tracking and measuring progress etc, but they are not something to obsess over.

When I get 220 pounds guys with 6% body fat emailing me asking questions on how to lose fat with fasting I know something is up.

Like I said, the goal isn’t 0, the goal is happy…not just with the look, but with the amount of work it takes to get and maintain that look.

Not to sound to ‘life coachy’, but balance is important.

Take a breath, relax. Your weight is going to go up and it’s going to go down.

Some days you are going to look awesome in the mirror, other days it wont be as great as you would like (but it will be good).

As long as the general trend always moves you towards something you are proud of and happy with, you are doing great.

I don’t see a reason to obsess over arbitrary numbers

Please don’t let diet and nutrition become an obsession or make you neurotic.

You’ll get where you are trying to go. Give it time and enjoy the process.

“As I explained in my email, I am not sure what prompted me to buy yet another product on weight loss but I am so thoroughly confused about everything I do not know what to believe anymore.”

The amount of emails I get that share this theme is mind blowing.

It makes me angry to see that people have become so confused.

It makes me even angrier when I realize that the source of this confusion is really nothing more than marketing and sensationalism.

The sad truth is that in the weight loss industry, making money doesn’t require you to tell the truth.

In fact, what you say doesn’t have to be accurate at all, it just has to be sensational.

However, to truly make a difference and actually help people lose weight, what you say HAS TO BE CORRECT.

So I understand your confusion.

After all, every website you visit has someone peddling their book or program talking about how THEIR book is based on ‘science’ and how every one else is LYING right to your face.

And now I’m telling you that my book is based on science… So who the heck do you trust?

You look for the truth, and you find sensationalism.

Now, be warned, if you like sensationalism…if you want complexity, then Eat Stop Eat isn’t for you.

If you want SUPER complicated scientific sounding diet programs from people who are brilliant marketers that could sell you your own house then Eat Stop Eat is NOT for you.

If you are looking to be entertained with fancy stories about how ‘spot reduction is actually possible’ or how ‘you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight’ then this book is also not for you.

BUT if you want to truth about weight loss then PLEASE, let me share a story with you.

One of my favorite books has to be “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra. About halfway into this book, you can find the following quote:

“Before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers.”

This quote stops me dead in my tracks every time I read it.

It was unbelievably eye opening the first time I read it because it perfectly parallels my experience with nutrition.

With a couple small changes I could sum up my entire journey in health and nutrition with one (rather long) sentence.

“Before you study Nutrition, food is food and drink is drink; while you are studying nutrition, food is no longer food and drink is no longer drink; but once you have had enlightenment, food is once again food and drink is again drink.”

Back when I was a child, food was food and drink was drink.

Then as I started studying Nutrition for a living, food and drink became these complex chemical compositions that had these wondrous effects in the human body.

Food and Drink were now macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients and di- peptides polyphenols and volatile fatty acids, carbs, fats, essential fats, and on and on…

The more I learned the less the words food and drink meant to me, to the point where they were virtually meaningless. There was no such thing as food or drink. It was only protein, fat and carbs.

Now, after years of studying nutrition and learning I’ve realized that most of that ’stuff’ …that ‘knowledge’…is virtually useless.

It’s Health and Fitness Mind-Clutter...

And, it completely destroyed my relationship with food. So now, food is food once again and drink is drink.

It does not have magical properties. It is simply there to

A) fuel my body when I need it

And

B) to be enjoyed

This realization has helped me break free of Obsessive Compulsive Eating and has made losing weight and maintaining a body I am proud of to be easier than I ever thought possible.

So this is what I hope you learn when you read Eat Stop Eat. Food is Food and Drink is Drink.
If you want to lose weight then Eat Less.

If you want a stress free life then learn to enjoy food again. It can be this easy if you let it be.

It’s amazing where you can find inspiration (I mean really…a book on Physics?)

I’ll leave you with what I believe to be the best long lasting health advice I can give.

It has nothing to do with carbs, protein, fats, calorie cycling, hormones or anything of that nature.

It is simply:

Eat when you are hungry. Sleep when you are tired.

I shared this story once on my blog, and the feedback was phenomenal. After reading through the comments I see that a lot of people felt the same as I did.

We’ve had ENOUGH.

Enough Sensationalism, Enough marketing, and Enough confusion. (Why do we try to make it so hard?)
It’s time to de-clutter our minds and simplify our approach.

There is ZERO relationship between how many fitness guru emails we receive each day, how many fitness books we read, how many health forums we visit, and how much weight we lose or how healthy we feel.

Or as Terri put it:

“I own about 200 diet/nutrition books, and seriously, for what? What has worked for me and always has worked for me, is cutting down on calories.”

And Todd hit the nail on the head when he said:

“Over complicating is a major source of waste, anxiety, and confusion.”

Stressing over what we eat, how we workout, what to do to lose weight…all the confusion and frustration, it has to go away.

and “Chains” has the perfect solution….We all need to De-clutter.

“You know what I did immediately after reading this quote… I started unsubscribing from all the people I used to grab some nutrition and fitness information from.”

After reading Chains comment, I immediately did the same.

I “Unsubscribed” from 11 different health and fitness newsletters.

I also ‘unfriended’ the people on face book who do nothing but update their statuses with links to nutrition clutter. I even ‘unfollowed’ people who do nothing more than spam me with nutrition nonsense on twitter.

Why?

Because I Don’t Need Them to Lose Weight...

And if they are full of nutrition and fitness rhetoric and ‘eat this, not that’ lists and rules I need to follow, then all they are doing is contributing to my mind-clutter.

(And besides. If I want their advice, I’ll go visit their blogs.)

At least this way I have a choice of when and where I read there information, instead of reading 11 different and conflicting messages EVERY SINGLE MORNING!

With that said I have kept a couple newsletter subscriptions. One because he emails about his workouts, and well… I find this interesting. And another because I find him entertaining and witty, and some mornings I NEED entertaining and witty.

I encourage you to keep the newsletters, friends and twitter buddies who amuse you, entertain you or provide you with some original value.

But the rest of them, they’re gone. As Pilbara commented:
“As a wise man said to me `you are not responsible for the thoughts that come into your mind – but you are responsible for those you chose to act upon’”

Well, It’s time to start taking control of the thoughts that come into your head. And really, I’m not cutting back on true nutrition info, I’m just cutting back on my daily dose of health and fitness sales-pitches.

Look at the emails you receive every week (INCLUDING The ones from me). Keep the ones that are positive, encouraging and entertaining. Get rid of the rest.

Now, this may seem a little harsh, but consider this: While the health marketers that push these info tid-bits may or may not mean well, convincing you to focus on the minor and mostly irrelevant tasks can not only prevent you from losing weight, it can also affect your health.

Successfully losing weight seems to be one of the most difficult life- problems to solve. Yet…

 It Can be Solved with One of the Easiest Solutions…

Eating less…Spending too much of your time concentrating on the insignificant parts in an attempt to control the inner workings of your body will cause you to lose sight of the big picture – In this case the big picture is that your body is perfectly capable of burning fat and losing weight without you needing to obsess and stress over learning how this happens.

The exact details are out of your control. Obsessing about them does not change them.

But if you continually try to control the things that are out of your control with the small insignificant parts of your life, you end up spending almost all of your time obsessing about health, nutrition and fitness.

Recording your meals in a spread sheet, twittering about how ‘healthy’ your breakfast was, spending an extra 5 dollars to have a 90 cent chicken breast added to your salad at lunch and fretting over the timing of your next meal…these are all examples of obsessive compulsive eating behaviors.

Too much of this and you can end up in a very bad place:  Spending every single waking moment of your life thinking, talking and stressing over your health.

This is NOT healthy.

It’s nothing more than a mind full of insignificant health and fitness clutter.

By thinking that we can dictate how our bodies function by controlling insignificant day-to-day things we end up sacrificing the enjoyment of our lives.

And remember, we can’t control the inner workings of our bodies, so we end up hopelessly grasping for control with more and more of the insignificant things, the ‘fluff’ and clutter.

And herein lies the big picture that we end up missing:

Health is a Lifestyle. It is a Process. It is not a Reward…

You should enjoy the process. It should be easy and sustainable. And in the best of situations, it should be mindless.

Enjoying the process means finding a simple and manageable way to enjoy eating less, and then eliminating the mind-clutter and the obsessive attachment to the insignificant little things. By doing this you eliminate the need to control the future, because you are enjoying the process.

The bottom line is that if you can’t sit down with a close friend for twenty minutes and have a good conversation WITHOUT talking about nutrition or your workouts, you need to take a step back and breathe and think about where your priorities are.

Concentrate on getting the best results in the most comfortable and enjoyable way without worrying about the insignificant fluff.

Enjoy the process.

This is what I want you take from Eat Stop Eat. I want you to be able to enjoy the process again.

I want you to forget all the confusion and clutter.

I want you to enjoy your food, and lose weight the way you want to.

Food is Food and Drink is Drink.

If you want to lose weight then Eat Less.

If you want a stress free life then learn to enjoy food again. It can be this easy if you let it be.

The following is guest post from John Barban. John is a professional strength coach and author of  “The Anything GoesDiet” and “Venus Index Workout”

I personally don’t believe in good vs bad food, and that all foods can be part of a weight loss program.

So what is the deal with ‘healthy’ food anyway? Why do so many marketers talk about it?

The issue is that they are confusing the concept of ‘healthy eating’ with ‘weight loss’.

You can overeat ‘healthy’ food just like any other food. Some items like raw fruit and veggies are difficult to overeating…but other than these two categories all food can be overeaten. And overeating causes weight gain no matter what the food is…even so called ‘healthy food’.

Overeating healthy food doesn’t make you any healthier than if you overeat any other kind of food. That is because health and bodyweight are directly related.

Almost every known marker of health improves as you lose weight.

This includes blood pressure, heart rate, blood lipids, triglycerides, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, cholesterol, HDL, LDL, liver enzymes etc.

So the weight loss itself is what is healthy. Suggesting there is a correct or healthier way to eat to lose weight is like saying there is a healthier way to become healthy. It just doesn’t hold water when you actually look at the research.

So whatever foods you choose to eat that fit your lifestyle and allow you to stay on track with your weight loss progress are exactly the right foods for you to eat.

Staying in a positive frame of mind and feeling less isolated and less deprived during your weight loss journey is much more important than creating regimented good food vs bad food lists and beating yourself up every time you ‘cheat’ off of your lists.

Remember that weight loss itself will produce just about every measurable health benefit you can think of. And the way you lose weight is creating a caloric deficit with foods you like and
can manage.

If you feel like you also want to change some of the food items you regularly eat then that is something completely different and a project you can start after you lose the weight.

Eating less calories than the you burn equals weight loss. Stay focused on what works for weight loss and leave the endless ‘healthy eating’ debate for another time in your life.