Arclein Diet

I am presently running a diet regime that I put together for myself.  I will share the approach with you in the event it turns out to be successful enough to recommend.  As usual, I toss a lot of things on its head.

First, though, like many I have experimented with several other protocols and am fully cognizant with the inherent difficulties.  All rely on calorie reduction, but then demand mental stamina to sustain the effort.  If added to an exercise regime, one merely doubles the mental loading.  I discovered in the process, that the only way that I could hope to sustain such a regimen would be to join a monastery.

I did learn that I could initiate a fast with no difficulty and pass through the first day with no discomfort.  The trick was simple.  One wakes up in the morning and takes no food.  The system is dormant and you simply do not wake it up except to take water and teas.  With a modest bit of repetition, the body gets into the habit of cooperating with all this and it soon is as easy as having a meal.  The fight only begins once the body has voided the previous day’s food and is now empty. That actually will take the whole day.

More recently, I learned that the digestive system is rigged to hold 125% of your daily needs.  This gave pause.  If one ate daily to satisfaction, and what greater pleasure is there save one allowed humanity, one always carried a 25% overage in food.  Just getting rid of the 25% would leave one insatiated and always been harassed by body and mind to make it up.

What this meant of course, is that in a given week we normally want to eat enough for almost nine days.

Now the actual numbers surely vary between individuals, but I think this gives us all the idea.

This led immediately to the following conclusion.  It is enough to simply eliminate two days and possibly a third day to help the body eliminate unwanted fat.  The other days it is necessary to eat to satisfaction.  The important thing though is to stagger the days and choose your three fast days carefully.  In my case I chose Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

In this way I can eat well on my eating days while fast days are just that.  Four eating days will provide me with five full days of normal sustenance while forcing the body to squeeze little extra energy from the food the other two to three days.

The results have been satisfactory.  The fast days suit my schedule and needs.  Others accept such a regime quite easily.  Actual weight loss is quite slow but has been persistent over the past three months.  I find that I never feel hungry at all.  I actually feel that I am losing weight stealthily in the same way that I gain weight.

I anticipate that it will take a good year to come down to a satisfactory weight and perhaps another two years for the body to bring is all down to trim.  I expect that the effect will taper off and need exercise to push much lower.  However, I should be at least ten percent lighter and dealing with the last five percent and well ready to handle physical stress

A corollary from this is that when one has reached an optimum weight, it is likely that the food intake and utilization by the body will be in proper balance and one will be unable to gain excess unnecessary weight.

I do not think that this can be applied to someone who must support quite a bit of physical effort, but then he is rarely suffering from overweight.  It is also difficult to see how it may be applied to someone who is diabetic.  There it would be necessary to first use a calorie restricted diet to get in a good working range.  Of course, we may also be surprised. 

This does work for the modern lifestyle in which most are sedentary at least.

I have observed no ill effects and am comfortable that this protocol is not been opposed subconsciously.  In fact it is taking no more effort than that needed to carefully recall whether it is a fast day or not.  I am losing over a pound per month so it turns out that even when eating only for four days a week, the loss rate is unstrained.

I have also noted that one can fit in some over indulgence as rewards with no harm which takes the sting out and besides, the best thing one can do after a serious overindulgence is to fast the next day.  Let the body handle it all.   By the by, beer and alcohol is not a fasting beverage.

As an after thought, right now I am conducting an experiment of one.  Readers may want to take on this approach and it would be worthwhile to collect data and experiences from all this.  So I would like anyone who wishes to try this approach to email me at arclein@gmail.com and notify me of your intent.  I will try to track progress every three month and collect comments.  That way we may have some useful data and conclusions to report.

I expect that the main problem for most will be to master the daily fast.  It will be initially awkward for newbies but you quickly get into it and become comfortable.  Those who have fasted in the past will find this very easy to do.  The problems with conventional fasting begin with the second day.  Please note that a fast day includes two sleep periods and it ends up been around thirty hours.