Thirty Days Down - One year later

A year ago, I completed an extreme diet and blogged about it on this site. Well, it's a year later to the day, so it's a good time for a quick review. How much weight have I put on since? A big fat zero kg. I'm as surprised as anyone.

The diet was extremely simple: ignore all the psuedo-science and mumbo jumbo and commit to eating a lot less (by dint of doing what works best and experimenting with different foods, you should gravitate to healthy eating).

Here are some general comments I made a while back about my experience:

- I found that after a few days of self-torment, skipping breakfast and lunch paid dividends. For sustenance and brain function I had more sugar of all things. Sugar in some dried fruit, sugar in tea, etc. I found a little sugar goes a long way to correcting the energy deficit. However, if I ate anything substantial in the day I desired more food a few hours later. By going without something happened to my body (still not sure what) that simply stopped wanting breakfast or lunch. I guess you can train your body and mind to new habits in this way. Also, to get my nutrients I had no room for any empty calories. I had zero chocolates, crisps etc over the period and piled in the vegetables. Also had cod liver oil tablets.

- Exercise proved largely counter effective as it simply increased appetite, making abstinence more difficult.

- I normally like to take a moderate approach but by going extreme I put my body and appetite on a new pattern and when I had my first chocolate biscuit after the project ended it was like an explosion of sugar in my mouth - not nice, although I adapted back to normal after a few days.

- The only side-effect is that my taste buds were heightened over the period and everything tasted amazing, and I am now obsessed with food!

- I don't necessarily recommend this approach and it requires almost military discipline in the first few days, but after that, it's all too easy (perhaps dangerously so).

- Admittedly with a sample size is 1, it is arguably a bit low, but I was still surprised at my results and my prescription for losing weight which is no or little fresh fruit, no exercise during the weight loss period, more sugar, loads of veg but less carby, starchy stuff, and no breakfast or lunch.

People say crash dieting doesn't work, but for me it has given me a much deeper self-knowledge and appreciation of the food and the body.

I tested my cholesterol at the end of the 30 days and for the first time in my life and to my knowledge, my good cholesterol was nicely above the recommended level, and total cholesterol about 20% lower than earlier in the year. Body fat also fell from 16% to around 11%.