Should I start the monk diet? (One meal, not eating past noon) Is it healthy?

zenmyste

Want to cut that last layer of fat!

Diet is the only way (i work out aswell)
But diet is now the only thing that will cut the last layer...

Also, Any ideas on what the main meal at noon should be??

Thanks.

robot

It doesn't sound like much fun. Maybe get some more excersize instead.

person

It could be the newest diet craze, you could write a bestselling book and become rich.

zenmyste

What is it with some people, why cant you guys just answer questions normally?

If you are not going to answer questions with a genuine/related reply then dont bother commenting at all and BORE OFF!!!!!!

It frustrates me so much!! FFS!!!!

robot

I think you said you have kids. If you do you need to consider the effect that jacking around with your diet to "cut that last layer of fat" can have on their thinking. Particularly with young girls.
"Dad thinks he's too fat. He's not having supper with us. Maybe I'm too fat"
What's wrong with a little fat?
Do what you want.

Dakini

Cut down on carbs, eat more protein. That'll cut the fat. Then when you reach your goal, you have to add carbs back in very gradually, over weeks, to avoid gaining it back.

1 meal a day seems like it would be stressful after awhile, and a stressful diet isn't conducive to success. Also, you can't possibly get enough nutrients in just one meal.

But...try it, if you want. See how you do on it.

Straight_Man

As to fat, the most knowledgeable folk I know for knowledge of diet and fat think that 7-11% fat in body is HEALTHY, less than 7% is too little, much more than 11% is too much. So last layer may be healthy for you. Please be careful with thought that all fat is bad.

karasti

Why do you think the answer to the diet problem is to cut down to 2 meals a day? Even the people who do that (that I read anyhow) eat sizable meals at lunch so that they get enough calories. You can cut down your calories and still maintain multiple meals a day by tracking your calories. You should do it for a couple days, just eat what you normally eat and track it, see how much you are eating before you decide how much room you have to cut calories.

The thing with losing weight is, no matter what you do (diet or exercise or both) your body will adapt and stop losing weight, so you have to change it. You do this by varying your exercise in type and intensity and by varying your diet as well in terms of what you are eating not just how much. Bodies don't LIKE to change. They suffer distress at change (not enough calories, too much exercise) and they change to adapt so they don't have to suffer anymore. But that suffering is what brings about the change. Diet can only do so much alone. Exercise can only do so much alone. But finding the proper balance is hard for many.

So rather than decide that a monk diet is the way for you to lose weight (and potentially backfire, because when your body adapts, you might find yourself gaining weight, not losing it due to changes in your metabolism when you stop eating regular meals) I personally think it would be better to honestly track what you eat for 3-5 days and see what changes you can make. This means salad dressing, condiments, cheese on top of your pasta, etc etc but it'll give you a clear picture of what changes to make. Most people are shocked when they do this (as long as they are honest about it) at how many calories they eat in a day.

TheEccentric

Its actually better to eat frequently but in small portions if you eat just once a day your metabolism will hit rock bottom and also it would be torture as you would be extremely hungry for much of the day.

zenmyste

Thanks to all who made the effort to give a genuine 'related' answer! Thank you x

Jeffrey

I don't eat in the morning or noon other than a few handfuls of raisin bran.

Then I eat a solid relatively healthy dinner. I eat, but not a big portion.

Then through the night I snack on bites: turkey sausage bites (kinda like dog food treats ), grape tomato, beef jerky, half a bread with peanut butter, healthish granola bar, olives, and raw almonds.

I went from 225 pounds at 5 foot 8 down to below 175. Part of it was reducing drinking and part was radically changing what I eat. That included stopping taking my enjoyment from what I eat. It hasn't gone away but I just resist the impulse to eat. I am not losing any more because I added some meds that give lower metabolism and sugar craving. But I have held 175 for about 1 year. I also started exercising about 5 months ago, but to my surprise I haven't lost weight but I think that's because I have added muscle.

karasti

You don't have to (in my opinion anyhow) give up enjoying eating in order to be healthy or lose weight. You do often have to retrain your body and your mind as to what is ok to crave, and what to eat when you crave certain things. You don't have to grab the bag of chips when you crave salt. Just don't buy chips. Buy a bar of sea salt dark chocolate, and have a square or 2.
Food tastes good because that's what helps us to eat it. But we've programmed our bodies to crave a lot of things that are bad for us. We can reprogram them. Just as during meditate and Buddhist practice we are retraining our minds, you can retrain your body on what to eat and what to accept as good tasting food.

Jeffrey

Yeah karasti, I still enjoy eating but it isn't a neurotic habit. It's all relative. Before each time me and my mom shopped we bought a package of cream cheese and a giant bag of potato chips, each of us.

It also means that I enjoy something lower in calories/nutrition (divided by) than the cheesy pasta or what have you.

Beej

@jeffrey- awesome for you! i also lost 50 lbs, though i did it over the course of many years, so there was no "OMG" effect to the weight loss and therefore no big deal to me because it parelleled many slow changes i made to my life. but it was very "OMG" to an x-girlfriend i hadnt seen in many years.....

i cite excersise, proper food choices, and generally abstaining from beer as my success method. good luck to you @zenmyste if you do decrease your meals, but remember: after the noon hour monks are basically done with their work and take to sitting (right?), so they might not need the calories that an active layperson with children and such might need.

SillyPutty

I've tried the "eating only between 11am and 12pm" thing, and it's very hard to stick to if you don't live alone. I don't even have a social life like so many others do (i.e. going out to dinner with friends frequently, dinner parties, etc.), and I still found it hard to stick to due to not being able to sit down from 11am - 12pm and eat my food like I wanted.

I don't like to give food advice, though, since I struggle with it myself. It might work for you, though. Although I will agree it can damage your metabolism if not careful.

karasti

I forgot to address the part where you asked if it was healthy. I don't think much is inherently healthy for every person. Clearly this works for some people. It will not work for everyone. You could attempt it, of course, But you would have to ensure you are getting a fairly large # of calories and nutrients in one meal, which is harder than you might think. The foods that are best for us are nutrient dense, are often low in calories. For some people this does not matter much and personally I think the idea that the average person needs 2000-2500 calories a day is bullpoo. When you eat a deficient diet, yes, because you have to eat them much of crap food to even come close to the right amount of nutrients. Go ahead and try to eat 2500 calories a day of veggies and fruit. It's almost impossible.

So, I think if a person does it right and plans ahead and eats truly nourishing food, yes, it can be possible and it can be safe. That doesn't mean, however, that it is possible and safe for everyone, because every person has different needs and ignoring them is never in your favor.

federica

@zenmyste, I have already mentioned several times that the food intake regime I'm following at present is probably one of the best I've ever come across, personally.... I've investigated a few, too. See for yourself - and research things well.

http://thefastdiet.co.uk/

Chaz

zenmyste said:

Thanks to all who made the effort to give a genuine 'related' answer! Thank you x

I know you're working out but you may consider sustained exertion at about 80% of your max heart rate - that'l burn a lot of fat. Run, bike, swim - anything that'll get your heart going and help keep it there.

I use a bike.

Nevermind

zenmyste said:

Want to cut that last layer of fat!

Diet is the only way (i work out aswell)
But diet is now the only thing that will cut the last layer...

Also, Any ideas on what the main meal at noon should be??

Thanks.

No, it's not health. Humans are natural grazers. It's far better to eat several small meals than one meal a day. If the body thinks it's starving it changes the metabolism to favor fat retention, essentially.

I think you'll find that if you eat cleanly (little or no processed food) you won't have food cravings, and it will be easier to eat smaller portions.

karasti

Grazing can actually make a person gain weight if they are not tracking what they eat. A handful of this, a cup of that, adds up to a lot of calories over a 18 hour day. You have to know what you are eating before you can make changes to it.

Zayl

Sounds like it'd slow your metabolism down to a grinding halt. The way I eat is that I have a moderate breakfast. something light and healthy, packed with energy. The rest of the day I snack on small healthy things, so my body is almost always digesting something. This speeds up your metabolism, and accelerates weight loss.

So in a way I guess it is sort of like the monk diet, the only actual mean I eat is well before noon (or, after I wake up anyway) but instead of that being all I eat, I graze throughout the day on fruits, veggies, granola/grains, maybe some beef jerky if I need something a little heartier.

EDIT: by "snacking" and "grazing" I mean I might literally only have a few bites of something, instead of eating an entire package of food.

karasti

It depends largely on the person, and what they eat, as to how well that works. The evidence for eating many small "meals" versus a couple of big ones is actually changing. Even if the # of calories is the same, eating 2 larger meals is consistently better for weight loss than eating 5-6 smaller meals. A lot of that is because when you are constantly eating, especially grains (even healthy grains) and fruit, it keeps your blood sugar elevated. Elevated blood sugar, even if it's not much but is consistent, messes up the hormones because of the constant stream of insulin that the pancreas has to put out to handle it. Also, keeping your body constantly in a state of digestion is not good for your organs. They need breaks to properly eliminate the toxins that they collect from the food you eat. If the flow of toxins (which are in everything we eat and drink) is constant, the ability to properly filter them *and* have the organ recover for the next onslaught is reduced.

That said, if you don't eat the right amount of the right types of foods with bigger meals, you still wreak havoc with your metabolim and blood sugar. If you have a breakfast of oatmeal and toast and juice, 2 hours later you'll be hungry again because of the imbalance of protein/fat/carbs in the breakfast. You get hungry because when your pancreas has to spit out all the insulin to manage that breakfast (which was probably about 90 grams of carbs) then your blood sugar goes too low, which triggers cravings for...more carbs. So before lunch, you go to the vending machine for a pack of crackers or a handful of grapes (more carbs). It turns into an ugly circle of carb craving to manage to swings of the blood sugar. Balanced meals are really important. You can't eat carbs all day and then stuff all your protein into a big steak (or big bowl of veggie chili) at the end. It has to be spread throughout the day.

There's nothing wrong with eating smaller meals multiple times, for some people. But like I said earlier, it makes it much easier to overeat. You'd be surprised how fast a handful of grapes, a handful of walnuts, a slice of cheese, a glass of juice, a handful of pretzles, a cup of yogurt...add up to a whole lot of calories at the end of a day.

Nevermind

karasti said:

It depends largely on the person, and what they eat, as to how well that works. The evidence for eating many small "meals" versus a couple of big ones is actually changing...

Interesting, however zenmyste was inquiring about consuming 1 meal a day.

karasti

Yes, I know...my response was to zayl about their eating multiple small meals a day as advice for losing weight. For some people it works. For others it does not.

zombiegirl

Any good meal plan will take activity level into account and allow +/- calories for it. I wonder how much activity most monks do. (Aside from those zen monks running up and down the corridors to polish the floor, you know. I don't know how they do it...)

riverflow

zenmyste said:

Want to cut that last layer of fat!

Diet is the only way (i work out aswell)
But diet is now the only thing that will cut the last layer...

Also, Any ideas on what the main meal at noon should be??

Thanks.

If you want to cut the last layer of fat, dieting certainly has its place-- but more importantly, you will have to do a solid and consistent cardio workout. Reducing your caloric intake helps, but you still gotta put your shoulder to the wheel. If you do a good cardio workout, you will not only burn calories during the exercise itself, but throughout the day.

Do avoid sugar (unless natural, as in fruit-- but I mean sodas, candy, any of that--it all goes straight to fat).

I don't think doing one meal a day will accomplish what you want. Diet PLUS cardio will.