I love a 30-day challenge, they make life interesting and fun and you always learn something.
I also struggle with my weight. I am vain that way but I like to weigh 88 kilos and eat what I want. Unfortunately, these two ideas are not friends with each other, if I eat what I want I always weigh between 93–95 kilos.
It doesn’t matter what I do in terms of training. I train really hard 5–6 days a week. Kettlebells and Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu where I roll hard and often.
My issue is that I like to eat what I want. I don’t drink and I have few vices, so food for me is a great comfort. I eat kebabs, pizzas, and Chinese food. Cake, pancakes, and ice cream. I am not a moderate guy, I have about 5 cheat meals a week.
I’m not saying that I look bad, I have a good relationship with my body, it’s just I see fat where I don’t want it. My lower back and lower abs and sometimes my face.
My Dilemma
Get to 88kg without denying myself the food I want. I read a lot of literature on intermittent fasting, the 24-hour method, the 16–8 eating window, the 36 hour Sunday night to Tuesday morning fast, etc. I tried them all with some success and they all work the same way. Lowering calorie intake. There’s probably more science to it than that, hormones and shit but that wasn’t my concern. I wanted to get to 88kg quickly. I wanted results.
I read a book called the Warrior Diet by a guy called Ori Hofmekler who claimed that one big meal a day at night with small snacks only in the daytime would give you more energy and make you a lean mean motherfucker.
I was intrigued so I decided to alter it slightly and go for 30 days of one big meal per day, where I could eat whatever I wanted, with no food at all in the day.
Here’s what happened.
I thought about food all day for the first week. My stomach was a loud angry cave. The meals were like mana from heaven. I ate to my heart’s content and ate big. I loaded up on a huge salad to start with and mostly ate chicken or steak with onions and rice. 400–500 grams of steak or 600–800 grams of chicken thighs, followed by full-fat yogurt and blueberries.
I didn’t feel tired in the daytime at all. I was pretty sharp, with good constant energy levels, I didn’t have a desire to sleep after lunch at all which I usually do.
I felt more aggressive and more capable. I was working towards my evening meal and wanted it to be a reward so I would push on with tasks and get stuff done, my workouts which were fasted and before I ate were some of the best workouts I have ever had. Explosive, immersed, powerful were some of the keywords that come to mind when I look back.
I started to lose weight quickly, really quickly and within 18 days I was sub 90kgs (from 94kgs) — I am sure a lot of this was water weight but all the same, I looked and felt lighter. I could see my lower abs clearly
But then, on day 20 it kind of went wrong, all of a sudden I was getting tired and my workouts started stalling, I didn’t feel right and I nearly called it off after another day or so.
But what I did instead was I allowed myself 3 things in the daytime.
Coffee with milk in the morning
One orange at lunch
A handful of mixed nuts an hour before I trained.
This kind of help, but I still felt I was flagging so after 30 days I called it off and went back to normal.
I guess we are all different but I did get to 88kgs and I admit that the last week was really hard.
My takeaway is that I would do it again but only for 14 days or do it as Ori says exactly in the warrior diet.
Of all of the fasting techniques I have tried, his is the best.
I looked hard and lean and when I started eating regularly again I was so much more disciplined. I only wanted to eat healthy good food and this lasted for a long time after. As time moved on I slipped back into bad habits, but hey ho I can always do it again.
Note: I am not a nutritionist, nor an affiliate, this is just what worked for me.