N = 1, Warrior Diet Fun

[jacob]

No!

Trying to gain weight/muscle on the warrior diet is practically impossible. The point is to turn you into a warrior. Not an athlete.

Basically, if you're a 6' guy, the WD will make you weigh somewhere between 170 and 180 pounds with a low BF%. Scale accordingly.

[jacob]

No!

Trying to gain/support weight/muscle on the warrior diet is practically impossible. The point is to turn you into a warrior. Not an athlete. Think military. Not Arnold.

Basically, if you're a 6' guy, the WD will make you weigh somewhere between 170 and 180 pounds with a low BF%. Scale accordingly.

[jennypenny]

I still don't understand how you don't gain weight on the WD eating right before you go to bed. Isn't that what sumo wrestlers do? Eat and then sleep to gain weight?

[jacob]

"Calories in - Calories out = Weight gain" is still the first order determinant.

3500 kcal = 1 pound of bodymass. Maintenance cost depends on muscularity/BF%.

[jennypenny]

But if that's true, then why does it matter when you eat the calories? (3 meals v. 1 meal like on the WD)

edit: I'm not trying to be confrontational. I guess I just don't understand how the WD works.

[jacob]

Second order effects. The WD lets you spend more time in the fat-burning state than the (six meals per day) carb-burning state.

[fiby41]

Experiments on mice show, given the same amount of physical activity, those mice who were fed at night grew fatter than those who were fed in the morning. The reason being those fed in the morning used up the energy throughout the day while the other group converted and stored it in the form of body fat.

This is in support of,

'Have a breakfast like a king,
lunch like a commoner,
and dinner like a beggar.'

Personally, there is nothing reasonable about not recognising your hunger. Just like the urge to urinate, hunger acts like a signal from your body saying that it is about time.

I don't see the point of WD when you spend the rest of the day checking if you're hungry or not spaced with cups of coffee and random stuff which fits into an arbitrarily made list of permissible food for a WD.

About fruit juices... They produce massive insulin spikes as you consume all the fructose in one go without the chewing to space them out and without the fruit fibres.

[stand@desk]

I've done the warrior diet briefly in the past..in honor of this post I am going to do it today! I think a few times a week to mix it up warrior style might be right for me. Got my black coffee in me, I'll have another right before work and lunch is at 1PM (modified warrior). Glad I don't have to do the breakfast dishes this morning! (small win)

[reepicheep]

Not sure what day I'm on. Not eating until was 2 was fine. Hunger goes away after awhile. Did the coffee/coconut-milk thing in the morning.

I find I tend to pay more attention to what's going on around me in the afternoon. No afternoon crash this time.

Trying for 3 tomorrow--it'll be interesting, as I'm going to go play on a ropes course for a few hours first with the Synagogue. Weekend will also be interesting--I'm visiting some German friends and they really like to keep me well fed. Not sure how I can socially manage that, or if it'll be worth it to try.

[reepicheep]

@stand, how'd it go?

@fiby, hunger is actually culturally determined based on the meal time one is accustomed to (to a point).

The point of a 30 day trial period is to test something out and then determine whether it's worth doing long term. I don't expect to still be hungry in the afternoon 30 days from now.

Additionally, I expect I'm probably eating less than I would if I ate 3 squares plus snacks. I just get full at night. I don't eat the quantity of 3 meals, it's more like 1.5 plus a salad earlier, no snacks. Before this I rarely ate salad, lunch was much more substantial and usually involved meat.

The science of diet is tough. That's why this thread is called N = 1. Just because something works for me doesn't mean it's going to make sense for you.

[7Wannabe5]

Waist-to-hip ratio down to .719 which is in the low risk zone for women 30-39 and I am 50! My goal is low-risk zone for women under 30. I knew my resting pulse was quite low- 58 after sitting around not doing anything for a while, but I hadn't measured my return to resting pulse rate in a number of years. So, after doing an hour of water aerobics class, I swam 4 laps as fast as possible and got my heart rate up to 159. It dropped to 102 after one minute and then 90 the second minute and it was back down to 70 after 3.5 minutes. Then I determined that it wasn't going to get any lower than that, probably because I was standing up in water that was heated to about the temperature of cup of soup. Since my exercise routine for the past 13 years has mostly been just-do-something/anything-for-around-an-hour-6-days/week and most years my choice has been to just walk out into nature for an hour no matter what the weather, I guess either a moderate approach works or luck of the draw (my mother who is 75 does nothing right, except not smoking, and she has no major health problems except her joints are collapsing and she still has a decent WHR if you look at her from behind.)

[enigmaT120]

Additionally, I expect I'm probably eating less than I would if I ate 3 squares plus snacks. I just get full at night. I don't eat the quantity of 3 meals, it's more like 1.5 plus a salad earlier, no snacks. Before this I rarely ate salad, lunch was much more substantial and usually involved meat.

I feel it works that way for me. If I eat more meals, I end up eating more for the day than I would at one meal. Though I can seriously put away some food at one sitting, for a non-competitive eater. My work schedule messes it up sometimes though. Today I've been eating frozen cauliflower and green beans at 45 minute intervals all day, since about 8:00. Oh well. I'm biking 31 miles, extending my commute on the way home.

[vexed87]

About fruit juices... They produce massive insulin spikes as you consume all the fructose in one go without the chewing to space them out and without the fruit fibres.

The book does state that veg juices are preferable to fruit juices for this reason, and certain high sugar fruits should be avoided during the undereating phase. Also, smaller quantities of fruit should be eaten in moderation to avoid insulin spikes.

I'm taking a morning off today so I could scoff pancakes and maple syrup with SO. It's our anniversary, and she's hungover. Reflecting on last week, I slipped up and had carbs for lunch one day when I forget my sliced carrots and cucumbers, whoops.

Despite that, I've lost 3lbs this week, not sure if it's due to the WD, but I'm about another 5lbs over my ideal weight, so lets see if this can be dropped over the next couple of weeks too.

I managed to stick with fruit, nuts and veg during most of the week, maybe I'll try introduce some boiled eggs to mix things up. I also mande another change to my routine. Rather than having a coffee first thing when I arrive at work, I've gotten up 10 minutes earlier and had a cup with SO before leaving the house which helps tide me over breakfast pangs until 11 am. I then start to feel pangs (likely due burning 500cal on bike journey to work) so will have a banana or other fruit. Around 12-1pm I snacked again usually on berries, and around 3pm I'll eat some nuts etc.

The problem I'm having is after I get home from my bike ride, another 500cal burnt, I'm getting pretty hungry and succumb to cravings for carbs. I'm curious what others are eating late afternoon, if I can crack this last kink in the armour, I'll be a true Warrior. Although technically, if I arrive home at 6pm and head to bead shortly after 10pm, eating then isn't a huge deal as it's in the 4 hour eating window. All things considered, it's been a good week.

[7Wannabe5]

Went just a bit off plan and more than a bit off budget the last few days since I live in semi-frugal foodies paradise, and there are extremely tempting $5.99/lb Bangladeshi, Middle-Eastern and Polish hot meat dish buffets within a block of the pool where I've been swimming in the evening. So, there was some rice in my stuffed cabbage and some sugar in the sauce with the vegetable and I drank an entire quart of kefir in one sitting, etc. etc. Haven't been having too much difficulty sticking to just one small serving of yogurt with fruit and nuts or seeds earlier in the day.

Also, I am happy to report that thanks to the miraculous youthenizing effects of the warrior diet, I scored a second date with cute 41 year old and he is even going to fix my bike : ) As we used to say/chant way back in the historical era known as the 1980's, "I am a woman in her power."

[DSKla]

@jacob I'm also a fan of the warrior diet + never-turn-down-free-lunch strategy.

@reep Looking forward to seeing how you like it. I was one who fell into it naturally, and it's much more pleasant than when I was eating to add mass. Although I blew it completely on my recent vacation, and had to have lunch today because of getting used to the diabetic concept of eating every few hours.

Here are a few of my basic strategies to enhance the WD for me.

1. Medium chain triglycerides and black coffee in the morning. That could be something like a shot of coconut oil. I don't usually do it, but it does really boost the ketogenesis. The black coffee suppresses appetite.

2. Feast at night. This is a key part that I feel most people get wrong. Namely, their idea of feasting is my idea of fasting. They will take their normal supper, multiply it by 1.5, and complain they get hunger pangs. You have to eat an ungodly amount of food. Rather than counting calories, I prefer to just go by the weight of my protein/fats, and carb sources. Figuring out the calories is fine, but I find it to be a PITA. Instead, I might say someing like 2 lbs of meat, 1 lb of carbs. It's inexact, but easy to do, and reminds you of the volume you need to eat.

3. Earn your carbs. People really don't need as many as they think when they're dipping into ketosis daily. If you do intesne anaerobic activities, go wild. If you don't workout that day, or mostly keep it low-level aerobic, you don't even need to get out of ketosis. Some leafy greens might be all you need for the evening.

4. Mind your bugs. Eating a small amount of fermented food every day really helps in a ton of ways. And ketosis in turn helps the beneficial gut bacteria proliferate, as opposed to constantly eating sugar, which tends to leads to things like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Eating fermentable fibers can help as well (think fibrous greens and resistant starches).

5. If you have to cheat with things like alcohol and ice cream, it's best to just tack it on to your evening feast. If you know you'll be drinking ahead of time and want to minimize the effects, I like using dry active yeast. There's a lot of controversy as to how--and if--this works, but I did an n=1 experiment and it definitely had a noticeable effect for me. The dry active yeast reduces the feeling of how drunk you are, and you don't feel as hungover. The standard prescription is 1 tsp per drink, so I found it works best if you're having 2-3 drinks. You won't be able to stomach enough for a binge. I stir it into a cup of probiotic skyr (I like Siggi's) and eat it right before drinking. Basically, if you have three drinks, you'll feel like you only had one or two.

[reepicheep]

The weekend did not go well. It was a lot of fun though.

Let's just say that I owe more burpees than it may be physically possible to do. I'm knocking them out 15-20 at a time (the kind where you go all the way down, not the kind where you just stop in the front leaning rest). And I'm adding a week at the end, so I'll go into early August. That'll probably go really well to be used to eating this way, because I'm leaving for my work trip shortly thereafter and the food situation (frequency, quality) there may be less than ideal for me.

Monday and Tuesday went a whole lot better than the weekend, even though I screwed up the cycle a bit. I didn't eat until after 3, had a salad, nuts, and a plum yesterday and then didn't eat again until after 9 PM. And I really wasn't hungry, at all.

It is awfully hard to ignore the goodies that people bring to the office--yesterday there was coconut cake--but that's not so much the warrior diet as just my long-standing addiction to sugar in general.

I should try the coffee with coconut oil (instead of milk) thing. I really hate the taste of black coffee, but maybe I can work up to it. Is it smoother with the coconut oil?

[DSKla]

If you're going to put coconut oil or grassfed butter in your coffee, you will likely want to use a blender or one of those little stick blenders. It probably won't mix well if you just pour it in. The oil should take the edge off of black coffee, but I doubt it will be as smooth as milk. Especially since you don't want to out a TON of coconut oil. Not unless you have a bathroom nearby.

[enigmaT120]

It is awfully hard to ignore the goodies that people bring to the office--yesterday there was coconut cake--but that's not so much the warrior diet as just my long-standing addiction to sugar in general.

I've started calling donuts protein bars, but I am not sure my body is convinced. Luckily they don't show up often enough to really make any difference.

[reepicheep]

For those wondering what happened:

An ER visit and two different medications that require me to take them with food, twice a day, put the kabosh on this project.

The ER visit was entirely unrelated to my dietary experiments, which while they were ongoing seemed to be working ok for me. I did find this diet tough to do socially, particularly when spending the night at other people's houses, which happens once or twice a month usually.

I'll probably try again after my work trip ends.

[7Wannabe5]

Sorry to hear about your medical problems. I agree with your take on the diet. It was effective to the extent I could do it, but difficult to integrate with my social life, and due to my own long-term habits, it proved expensive for me to not given any consideration to food until the evening. I usually like to do most of my cooking in the morning after I eat my breakfast and then just serve dinner later, so I can check off all my daily housework as done, and relax or focus on other things in the afternoon, but it is difficult for me to cook early in the day if I am trying to avoid eating early in the day. However, doing this diet more like a 2 or 3 days on, 5 or 4 days off interim fasting plan does work much better for me socially and housework-habit-wise, because then I can allow for thoroughly enjoying myself being treated on a lunch date on Friday, baking up some getting-mushy fruit into some muffins for brunch with my kids on Sunday, and only eating garden cucumbers and dill with sour cream and a piece of expensive fish on Monday, etc. etc. etc. Maybe it's just my personality type, but I find any sort of rigid rules to be the opposite of conducive to overall improvement of quality of lifestyle and/or frugality.