Day 1 of a new diet:
7 am on Day 1 of my new, last diet I’ll ever need! Wait! Where is my 326 page diet book I feel asleep while reading last night? There it is - under the bed! Okay, let me check to make sure I have everything I need. I bought a food scale to weigh my food; a journal to track my results; a 64 ounce water bottle to make sure I’m drinking enough, a calculator to figure out calories, carbs, and fat grams; a separate recipe book that is the companion to the diet book; ordered the special vitamins I’m supposed to take while on the diet; and I took the week one food list in the book to the store last night and bought everything on it (I had to buy 2 pounds of Swiss Chard and I hate Swiss Chard! How am I going to force myself to eat it?).
10 am. I’m starving. I’m still reading the introduction to the diet (wish I wouldn’t have fallen asleep before finishing it last night and maybe I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t so boring) so I haven’t had breakfast yet. I still have 50 pages to read before I actually get to the food part.
11:30 am. I’m finally ready to make my breakfast! It’s a smoothie. That should be pretty easy except I have to find my blender and wash and cut up my fruit. It’s okay. I can do this. Crap! I’m out of ice cubes and I need a cup of them for my smoothie. Oh well. I’ll just use water instead.
12:00 pm. My watery smoothie is gone. I’m still hungry. But, hey, it’s lunchtime!
1:00 pm. Who knew it could take so long to cut up vegetables and make salad dressing for a salad?
2:00 pm. I ate my salad and have the kitchen cleaned up. It’s a good thing I started this diet on a weekend. All I’ve done so far is make food. Oh crap! I forgot to write everything I ate in my journal.
2:30 pm. Consulted my checklist for the day. Does a salad count as 1 or 2 servings of vegetables? Let me see if my 326 page diet book tells me that.
3:30 pm. The salad was 2 servings of vegetables. Next item on my checklist: drink 8 glasses of water. Oh crap! I forgot to start drinking water.
4:00 pm. My stomach hurts. I shouldn’t have drank those 3 glasses of water so fast. I’m hungry too. My snack is 20 almonds. Maybe if I eat them really slow…….
4:02 pm. The almonds are gone. I think I’ll start dinner.
6:00 pm. I found all the dinner recipes in my diet cookbook and have my dinner ready! It looks okay except for the darn Swiss Chard I don’t like.
6:05 pm. Dinner stunk. Maybe I can eat my evening snack early. Oh goody. I get to have 6 stinking crackers and 1 ounce of cheese. Do I look like a mouse?
6:15 pm. I ate all my food for the day but I still have lots of water to drink. And I forgot to take my special vitamin this morning. I’ll take that now. Maybe it will fill me up.
6:30 pm. I want food! No, I’m going to do this. I’ll keep myself busy by trying to figure out how that food calculator I bought works.
7:00 pm. Did you know that a 3.52 ounce Toblerone chocolate bar has 510 calories, 30 grams of fat, and 60 grams of carbs? I’m going to check the bar I hid from myself (yes I remember where it is) to see if the calculator is correct.
7:10 pm. It is. Now I’m figuring out how many calories, fat, and carbs in 1 piece of it because I was really hungry and figured 1 piece would be okay.
7:15 pm. Just one more piece of the bar won’t hurt, right?
7:30 pm. Hey! I just realized I missed my mid-morning snack because I was so busy making breakfast and lunch.
7:35 pm. A small container of light yogurt! That’s all I got for my mid-morning snack? I’m eating it.
7:36 pm. My yogurt is gone. Now what should I do. I guess I could read some more of my diet book. I’m supposed to read another 40 pages before I start day 2 of my diet.
8:00 pm. Did you know that if you rip the pages of a diet book out one by one they work great to start a fire in the fireplace so that you can roast some marshmallows for s’mores?
Okay, you may think I went a little overboard with that description but I have literally spent entire days reading about food, prepping food, and cooking food while I was on a diet. And I have spent literally spent thousands of dollars on diet programs, diet tools, and diet books that just didn’t work.
Maybe losing weight doesn’t have to be so complicated or expensive.
That’s why Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat program caught my eye although after reading through the sales pages it started to sound too good to be true because Brad claims that using his program:
- You don’t have to worry about food all day (is that because I won’t be eating?)
- Your metabolism will not slow down and you will not go into starvation mode (even though I’ll be fasting????)
- You will save money (I’ve never been on a diet that saved me money)
- You will have great workouts (I never have good workouts if I don’t eat something a few hours before I go)
Then I did some further investigation and found that Brad’s claims of
-“ You don’t have to worry about food all day” didn’t mean I would be starving myself. It just meant a combination of intermittent fasting with normal eating which translates into 1 or 2 days a week of fasting and eating normally (not being a piggy who is eating 2 bags of Cheetos at one sitting) the other days of the week. There’s no counting calories or fat grams or carbs or the number of croutons you put on your salad.
- Your metabolism will not slow down and you will not go into starvation mode” because you only fast for 24 hours and experts say starvation mode doesn’t kick in until about 72 hours after calorie reduction.
- “You will save money” meant I would really would save money because his program doesn’t involve buying expensive supplements, calorie counting gadgets, special foods, or expensive diet literature. His program is $29.95 and that’s not per month. It’s a one time fee.
-“You will have great workouts” means (and I like this one the best) you don’t have to work out hours every day for his program to be successful. A couple of weight training/strength training sessions are enough.
The program really isn’t complicated or expensive. Plus, Brad has the credentials that most of us want to see to back up his claims. He’s a nutrition professional with an honors degree in nutrition. He worked in the mainstream weight loss industry for several years, and he’s a an athlete who wouldn’t promote something that doesn’t work and would cause people to lose muscle instead of fat.
Plus, if you buy the program (which I personally know is less than the one month cost for meetings and consultations at well known weight loss companies) and you decide it’s not worth the money Brad will give you a 100% refund.
There truly is nothing to lose except the time it takes to read Brad’s e-book, time that you may just find was very well spent.
As Brad says, with Eat Stop Eat you will “discover why the most effective tool for weight loss can never be put into a pill.”
Learn more about the Eat Stop Eat Program by clicking here.
April 27th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
[...] Intermittent fasting is not about a person starving themselves to lose weight. It also is not something that will put a person’s body into starvation mode where the body slows its metabolism down to use as little energy as possible because it no longer knows when more food is coming. It is short periods of fasting, usually around 24 hours, followed by eating normally for several days. Many people have following a program of intermittent fasting for 1 or 2 days a week with eating normally other days and also doing some weight or strength training to lose weight and keep it off. April 27th, 2008 Your Lender Can Be Persuaded to Accept a Short Sale, But It May Take Some Work– Short Sell Your House [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 10:15 am
[...] of fasting makes some people break out in a rash, but did you know that many people have used intermittent fasting, combined with normal but sensible eating on non-fasting days, to lose excess weight and keep it [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 4:16 am
[...] Eat Stop Eat Review isn’t going to tell you that you are crazy if you don’t buy Eat Stop Eat. While I [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am
[...] But then I shut my mouth, opened my ears, and learned something; causing me to write an Eat Stop Eat Review. Brad Pilon, who wrote the e-book is a nutrition expert who doesn’t just talk about the [...]
June 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Well, it does sound familiar
Thanks for the great post, I was not aware of this diet program, looks like it can actually work.
I tend to believe that tricking your metabolism is the way to go, and the fasting periods may do just that!
July 25th, 2008 at 8:15 am
[...] Here is a review of the book. Read it, if for nothing else other than the hour by hour timeline of going on a normal diet (i.e. restriction, calories counting) Day 1. It’s pretty funny. [...]
August 30th, 2008 at 2:42 am
Good post…I have posted some similar stuff what I call total health. Check it out.
December 31st, 2008 at 6:28 am
[...] people overcome a variety of challenging health conditions. Also, take a few moments to learn about Eat Stop Eat - an intriguing program about losing [...]
March 15th, 2009 at 5:43 am
I have lost 4 kg (~9 lbs)of mostly body fat while on ESE over the past month. Meanwhile I am increasing my weights during my work-outs. ESE takes discipline not to eat but there tricks such as drinking no calorie fluids, chewing sugarless gum and keeping busy. I will give one piece of advice try not to do ESE when really tired if you use food to normally boost a tired body. I would have lost more on ESE which I have been doing for 7 weeks now but I gained a bit of weight during 2 business trips. It is the most effective fat loss program that I have done. I would recommend it to anyone who is healthy (the book covers that part) and is already performing resistance training. If you do not do resistance training I suggest you make that a habit first before trying ESE as it is essential to maintaining or growing muscle mass on ESE.
March 31st, 2009 at 8:29 am
Wow, this review is fantastic! Very personal and gives a good insight into how the program works. I have similarly tried many diet plans and products, so I was understandably skeptical before reading this review. Now I can buy with the knowledge that this WILL work. Thanks for such a great review!
PS. Another great review that I checked out was http://www.squidoo.com/Brad-Pilon-s-Eat-Stop-Eat-Review take a look at this one before buying too.
April 8th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I have done a full week on this Eat-Stop-Eat method. I did 3 fasts. The first one was surprisingly easy. I do them from 6:30PM-6:30PM. Leaving my weekend free for going out and eating with others. I have continued working out with my Turbulence Training Bodyweight Workout 3X per week. I have not been weak at all. I have lost 7lbs and 5 inches. I have always had trouble keeping my calories in check even while working out which slows my progress. I must admit on my fasting days I feel way better than on my eating days. My appetite has seriously decreased so eating completely healthy is satisfying, smaller portions now fill me up. When eating with others I’m filled so fast. This is a total god send for me. It is working like a dream so far. I do not feel deprive whatsoever and the fasting is shockingly easy…for me anyway and the times I have picked to do it. I do find myself highly alert…and so calm. A++++++