The diet is counter-intuitive. We eat so much we can’t possibly lose. We eat at 8 am, 10 am, 12-1 am, 3 pm, 4 -6 pm and 9 pm [time is uncertain on some] and yet drop weight. This started with the Nutrisystem box from Walmart, but we’ve continued once we ran out of Nutrisystem food.
Here’s what we’re doing.
Breakfast: a tiny seedcake, or 1 oz cereal like Special K with 1 oz no-fat milk, or a shake or a diet bar.
10 AM: an apple with peanut butter; or 8 oz yoghurt with 3 oz blueberries; or a small bunch of grapes with string cheese.
Lunch: one prepackaged tuna meal (lunch-size) shared for 2, plus a bowl of salad and tomato/cucumber/carrot/radish/snap peas with one oz Ranch. Or some other lunch divided in half.
3 PM another snack like the 10 AM.
Supper: one helping of any food according to helping sizes ON THE CAN or PKG, ie unreasonably small by what people regularly eat—divided in half. Plus one full cup of steamed vegetable. Eg, last night, 3 regular chicken raviolis, not large size, apiece, finished in olive oil and basil. And full head of broccoli apiece. Salt and pepper ok.
9 pm. pkg of popped popcorn, lunchbox packet.
1/2 glass wine.
And pretty well, with substitutions, we’ve had meatballs, 3 apiece, red sauce, about 10 strands of spaghetti each; or pork chop, with small dollop barbecue sauce; or rice dish, 4 oz, including topping.
In other words, you eat what you want in little tiny amounts, about a small teacup’s worth including a protein 2x a day, and for the rest, it’s all fruits and steamed and raw veggies.
Plus drinking large amounts of water. I flavor mine with lime juice and others, so I can get it down.
But the deal is—you’re absolutely hitting all the food groups and hitting the good ones hard. What you’re cutting down on is the typical ‘main dish’ with all its trimmings, which is reduced to what you could put in a dainty teacup.
If you want to lose fast, you go real light on the fat and carbs. Most of your carbs are coming from the veggies.
But it can accommodate many sensitivities and special problems with food, because you’re eating what you ordinarily eat, just way, way, way less of it.
If you have to have a taste of that chocolate cake, fine: just ONE tablespoon, flat measure. 😉 and don’t do it two days running.
Eating out? Pick the chef salad and have the dressing (Ranch) on the side.
I think part of the theory behind the frequent small meals has to do with wide fluctuations in blood sugar (diabetics are encouraged to eat five little meals a day) encouraging carb/sugar binging when the blood sugar troughs out. Nutrisystem is supposed to be a good diet for type 2 diabetics. The Brits with their breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea and dinner are on the right track they say. Plus idea behind the quantities of food is of convincing your body that food is plentiful, we do not have to hold on to every single fat cell with a death grip, which is the rock on which most deprivation diets (3 crackers and a glass of water for lunch) wreck.
somewhere else I was reading, and I can’t recall where, that in our ancient past, as foragers, we ate when we could, which meant a lot of moving around from food source to food source. Our closest simian cousins eat around 6 meals per day, and when my mom was put on a 2,000 calorie/day diet, it specified 6 meals a day, too.
“When we could” is part of the rationale for the 2:5 diet. When food wasn’t available then the liver had to kick-in to break down stores. That hardly happens to most of the “non-poor” Americans these days with regular meals.
All I know is, I can’t go to bed with “anything” in my stomach or I’ll be up at 3:30 for antiacid. Maybe a teaspoon of PB if I’m hungry, but the aim is to eat at 5 so’s I’m not to be hungry.
It’s called acid reflux disease, usually caused by a hiatus hernia. There’s a hole (hiatus) in your diaphragm where your esophagus goes through to your stomach. If that hole is wider than it should be (diaphragmatic hiatus hernia), stomach contents mixed with hydrochloric acid from your stomach can reflux up into the esophagus. The lining of the esophagus is not “acid proof” like the lining of the stomach, and “heart burn” is literally that: Stomach acid burning the lining of your esophagus. Acid is more likely to reflux up into your esophagus if you are trying to digest a meal when your body is in a horizontal orientation.
If you are diagnosed with acid reflux disease/hiatus hernia, the doc will tell you to: (1) avoid eating acidic or highly spiced foods such as tomato products, chili, coffee, etc., (2) lose weight (remember who the Prilosec spokesperson is. . .) (3) make supper the smallest meal of the day, (4) take an acid reducing medication like Prilosec, Nexium, Prevacid, etc. (5) elevate the head of your bed at least 20 degrees (put a brick under the legs of your headboard or a foam wedge between the mattress and box springs), and (6) don’t eat within 6 hours of going to bed.
Hiatal hernias can be treated with endoscopic surgery, they just run the instruments down the esophagus, tighten up or repair the hiatal sphincter, and you’re done. Most gastroenterologists prefer to treat with medication, though, unless the hernia is rather large, or the patient doesn’t respond to medication.
I have GERD, Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease, as well. I’m on Nexium, which has worked quite well. I started out on Aciphex (sp?), and then worked through Prilosec, Prevacid, and now Nexium. Even though Nexium is OTC, I’m getting mine as a prescription. I can usually get away if I forget to take a daily dose, but after 2 days, the volcano starts rumbling and I know it’s time.
One thing that I didn’t know, and the doctors didn’t mention until several years later, even if I’ve been taking it regularly and not skipped a dose, if something happens that my stomach generates excess acid, I can take an “extra” when the symptoms first show. Of course, there are the usual bottles of antacid chewables beside the bed, just in case.
All of the things WOL described in the last paragraph help a lot. I’ve found that you do NOT want to drink hot cocoa, or have much of any chocolate, before you go to bed. It will trigger a bad case of reflux, at least in me it does. I find even with the Nexium, I still have to sit up in bed for at least a half-hour and take a couple of doses of the antacid tablets – they’re chewable. Walmart’s generic of Gaviscon Extra Strength.
I know about hiatal hernia. When I was in college one of the physics lab techs was dropped by a paraesophageal one causing vagus nerve involvement! He’d been a competitive swimmer in younger days, causing his hiatus to enlarge from the deep breathing.
All in all, I’d rather just not eat too late, i.e. around 5PM.
One more for WOL’s list, if you’re a side-sleeper: go to sleep on your left side, not the right. Prop yourself up with pillows so you don’t roll over, and are at a slight slant: I use a thin cushion under my ribs and another one under my pillow (a garden-seat cushion is enough).
Using that, I find, helps about as much as staying upright, while it does allow me to go to sleep when I’m tired instead of waiting for the acid to subside.
As the stomach is on the left, if you’re on your right side the acid can flow down toward the oesophagus; when you’re on your left side it would have to crawl upwards to reach the sensitive tissues, and unless the stomach is still very full it has a harder time doing that.
I always turn to sleep on my right side, which puts the pylorus(?), the “drain” to the duodenum, lower than the esophagus–give those juices somewhere else to go.
Jane has the same thing, only not from a hiatal hernia. In her case, genetic problem, called achalasia, swallowing mechanisms don’t work, so she has to wash down food with liquid. To make life easier, they did a balloon dilation some decades ago, which meant that from then on she had to stay upright for a certain number of hours after eating. So fashionably-late dinner parties are a real trial for her, and drinking too much is dangerous. We eat supper about 5 pm, which suits me, because Dad always got home from work about then and that was supper time for us, too, in growing up.
Re: antiacids. There is another, maybe better, option.
Calcium carbonate, aka limestone, aka Tums, has two side effects: 1) a “rebound effect”, and 2) tendency to cause constipation.
That’s the reason for Maalox, etc., magnesium & aluminum hydroxides. I can’t take the AlOH because I’m taking a synthetic “bear’s bile” trying to dissolve gallstones.
There is another preparation, “Digel”, of which what I’ve just run out of is 675mg calcium carbonate with 135mg of magnesium hydroxide, to counteract the constipation effect. I’ve been looking for more, but not able to find it. 🙁