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I got started with a girlfriend, specifically. For the first month, we agreed to do the following: 1) No breakfast
2) Only coffee (no sugar, sweeteners) or tea during the day
3) Go out for dinner every night. No cooking. Don't eat to excess. We mostly went to different sushi restaurants and had different rolls every night. Under $40 for two.
4) Eat a healthy breakfast on weekends and maybe have some popcorn or nuts or whatever to balance out whatever nutrients may have been missed during the week. It was the easiest diet I've ever tried. The first few days weren't rough at all, contrary to my expectations. The anticipation of restaurant food (as a reward for the daily fast) did a lot to keep my mind off hunger, or at least reframe it: restaurant food was a reward, and I wasn't hungry, I was maximizing my future enjoyment. We also saved a lot of time -- no groceries, no dishes, no meal prep, aside from some egg dishes on Saturday mornings in bed. After that first month, we were both down 8-10 pounds, and conditioned to fast... Importantly, we didn't feel as though our diet had cost us anything socially: we could go out every night and eat together, the meals were so important to us that we had genuine excitement about what was for dinner, and this by itself was a good topic for conversation while waiting for the sushi to arrive. At the end of the month, we had both shifted from passivity towards more active-executive control over our daily lives, especially our diets. To go a day without food is nothing, now. If either of us ever need to lose weight, it has become easy: we can simply eat less until we reach a goal. |