zero-diet

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I am not sure about the English term for this, but since I am too fat and can not keep up with what is bad and what is good food during a diet, my Ma said that it might be a good idea not to eat a thing for a week (and also refgrain from soda). She said, that I am so stubborn that it'd be the right way for me. The German term for this is Nulldiät, ie: zero diet.

So yeah, my last meal was yesterday, at about 15:30, after that, I only drank tea, water or coffee. If I can keep this up, I'll also include fruit juice in my diet so I can still get the vitamins, I need.

Anyone tried/is trying/will try this? Any experiences? Any "you're nuts!"? Any recommendations? I'll keep y'all updated here!

Doesn't sound good. If you get too hungry, you'll be miserable, you might binge, and you might make poor decisions about what to eat when you do eat. If your blood sugar gets too low from not eating, you could even become dangerously impaired, which is bad enough by itself, but can also lead to motor vehicle accidents if you drive, etc.

Some things like getting enough protein and avoiding trans fat, are necessary everyday guidelines that should be followed even when you reach your target weight. I recommend tuna, yogurt, and soy nuts. These foods have a lot of protein but not a lot of fat and calories. Consumption of these high-protein foods will enable you to eat fewer calories without getting too hungry. Take a multivitamin, too, and also make sure you're getting enough calcium and iodine.

Avoid "empty calorie" foods, foods that add calories but don't have any other nutritional value. Drink diet soda instead of the regular kind, for example. Don't neglect exercise, which is the other side of fitness. If you walk, run, or lift weights, you'll gain some muscle mass while losing fat with or without dieting.

It says if I can keep it up 3 days, the hunger will cease... I just need to keep myself occupied for the time.


okay, that's good to know!

But since I don't drive, I don't endanger others.

I do not want to think of my food as a bunch of chemicals. It's horrible, IMHO! Also I kinda have issues with most of the healthy food. The taste is disgusting, or it makes my face itch or both!

Ok, you say it makes your face itch... what, specifically, does that to you?

The main thing is to just not eat processed foods. The closer it is to its natural state, the better it will be for you. That means butter over margerine!! Nuts and seeds are great, fresh or dried fruit, lots of vegetables (and don't tell me they're 'yuck' because there are about a million different veges that can be cooked about a million different ways and in a million different combinations, all of which taste totally different), organic meat and fish, free range organic eggs... Yum yum!!

If it comes from a packet and has a list of chemicals in the ingredients, then it's not worth eating. Easy as that. Eating well isn't hard.

As for fasting, which is what you're doing, it's not good for you to do for that long if you've never done it before and it won't keep the weight off. It'll shock your body, but as soon as you start eating again it'll start storing fat in case you do it again. You're better to perservere on a healthy diet and do it that way.

One good tip is to always eat only 2/3 of what's on your plate.

Cut out the sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and enriched flour. Added sugar is the one food-like substance that human's don't need to survive. Enriched flour is empty calories - It makes you feel full, but it's devoid of much nutricional value. Your body needs grains that still have their nutrients (whole grains).

Cut out artificial sweeteners, because all of them are hazardous to human health.

Don't drink juice. Eat raw fruit instead. The fruit can also be a great dessert. Don't eat pie, cookies, cake, or anything typically categorized as dessert.

Try to keep your salt/sodium intake to a minimum. Your body does need salt, but it should be getting enough naturally from the food you eat. When you consume too much salt, it makes you retain water, making you look fatter than you really are.

I follow all of that advice myself.

Eat only wholegrains and vegetables.

Starving yourself is not a good idea.

I stated that I do not want to analyze my food into chemicals and y'all just tell me that I need to do just that. If I did that, I could jump off a bridge now because I couldn't eat anything again.

Fasting can be very therapeutic. But a fast out of the blue, with no preparation, will inevitably be a shock, as someone said, and will, as someone else said, cause your body to reset its storage efficiency so that you will store even more fat afterwards than before.

Also if you have food intolerances, as it sounds as if you have if you get irritated skin etc, fasting can cause quite serious/difficult withdrawal symptoms. Be prepared for big mood swings ranging from depression, anger, suicidal feelings, to "weird"/out of it feelings and euphoria, aswell as headaches, nausea, etc.

A better approach is, as others have said, to eliminate the more obviously unhealthy things like sugar and refined foods, especially refined carbohydrates, like white breads, pasta, corn, etc. And also think of excluding dairy, ( which is often implicated in skin reactions) and gluten/wheat, which is often the cause of compulsive/binge eating, cravings, irritated/inflamed/bloated guts, and depression.

If you still want to fast do it with diluted fruit and veg juices and lots of water, plus an occasional mouthful of fresh apple or pear or grapes, because the vitamins will help you get over the worst chemical effects from the toxins your body will take this opportunity of taking out of storage in order to evacuate, which is what will cause headaches and nausea etc.

If your problem is compulsive/binge/overeating then you probably have a food-intolerance because allergies very often create an addiction mechanism, eating in the same way an alcoholic takes a drink as "hair of the dog".

Try to persuade your mother that exclusion dieting in stages is probably a better idea, because you will learn something about what sets you off. You need to eliminate a food type ( dairy, gluten, whatever) for at least 5-7 days to see an effect because it takes 5 days for your guts to get rid of something completely, even then you may not see the full effects for much longer ( weeks or months) because some foods can be stored for long periods in the liver and somewhere else. Proteins/amino acids from gluten for instance.

I have been gluten-free for 10 months and am still seeing improvement.

But the first time I ever went on an exclusion diet was 16 years ago, and I too went cold turkey , total fasting ( except for a couple of bits of apple) for three days, followed by rice and salad for another 4. It was an eye opener. On the third morning I felt a calm ( physical and mental ) and happiness that I hadn't felt since childhood. It was amazing.

Good luck.

PS: Food is chemicals.

PPS: Two very simple principles which can make a huge diference are to cut out all carbohydrates, and dairy as you have skin problems.
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Divide it up into colours then. Avoid all white and brown food!

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so what are you going to do when the week is up??? what will you eat then?

if i cut out milk and carbs (but keep veggies) i have a horrible couple days with tantrums and i think i'm starving, and then it goes away and i'm not so hungry. sort of like a no glutein/casein thing except i cheat and have dairy besides the milk. the biggest problem with this is that i forget to eat because i'm not hungry, so then i go off it because the not eating enough eventually catches up to me.

i don't doubt that you are strong/stubborn enought to abstain for a week, but i don't see how that will help your body. fasting can make you feel euphoric, but it is a big crash when you come down- food is not exactly something you can quit doing forever.

avoiding trans fats is good, but avoiding all fat is BAD. you NEED FAT, it's suggested you eat the same quantity (in calories) of fat as protein.


NO. don't cut out carbs, period. you need carbs, in fact most of your energy should come from carbs. it's suggested your daily energy should be 60% from carbs, 20% from fat, and 20% from protein. simple carbs from things like enriched flour should be avoided because they cause insulin spikes and they make you hungry faster, but carbs are a necessity. exclusion diets can be good, as long as you aren't talking about excluding carbs, fats, or proteins. the Atkins diet is terrible and unhealthy.

other than those two issues, i think there's some good info here. i think what you're going to do could be dangerous, especially if you don't drink much water or exert yourself in sports or your workplace. changing your lifestyle is a better idea.

people have suggested good ways of changing your diet. switching to whole grain will not only give you more nutrients, but you won't get hungry as quickly so you won't binge as much. if you have potatoes, switching to sweet potatoes is a good idea. sweet potatoes in my opinion taste much better, and they're much better for you. they have a lot more nutrients, and are digested more slowly than white potatoes, which again will keep you full longer. dropping anything packaged is a good idea, so stop eating chips, frozen dinners, etc. avoiding juices is another good idea, lots of them have a lot of added sugar, and they don't give you the same nutrients as the whole fruit.

i hope this helps, and i hope you change your mind about your fast.

Be careful about fasting <zero diet>.

When you stop eating your body says...what, no food? Okay, I'd better slow down. It moves into starvation mode, and burns calories VERY slowly.

You also do harm to body. Fasting is for 1-3 days maximum. Otherwise you should be drinking special drinks to maintain your metabolism.

Here's a VERY simple diet.
NO processed foods (cold cuts, luncheon meat, processed cheese)
NO refined flour (anything with white flour in it)
NO refined sugar (no white sugar, or anything that has it in it)
Following this rule, add meat and poultry and fish. Again, nothing processed...

After that, remember HOW much you eat is as important as WHAT you eat.

Good luck.

Sorry, but you are way off base here. The Atkins, low carb diet is probably the healthiest weight loss diet around and has been proven scientifically to be such. Your body actually needs very few carbs which is why you should still eat a few, but not more than 25 per day.

The ONLY time a low carb diet has been shown to be harmful is when people start losing weight TOO FAST and it harms the kidneys in the process. If you find yourself losing more than 5 lbs in a week, you should eat a few more carbs to slow down your fat loss. This is not specific to low carb diets. Any diet where you lose more than 5 lbs in a week is harmful. The problem is that as your body burns fat, it produces ketones which, in high concentrations, are toxic to kidneys.

So any time you burn fat, you are going to produce ketones. Its just that the low carb diets work so well that they can sometimes burn too much fat and that can cause a problem.

A zero calories diet is actually going to be slower to lose weight than a low carb diet. About 80% of your basal metabolism goes to your colon and digestive system. If there is no food in it, then it will not use any energy. Therefore, a fasting diet will lower your basal metabolism to about 20% of what it is normally. If you combine your fasting with healthy exercise such as daily 2 hour walks, you can compensate for the lower metabolism. Even still, you are only looking at maybe a pound a week with a fasting/exercise diet. You'll probably lose 5-10 lbs the first week due to the purging of the colon, but the first week doesn't count.

Because Atkins requires you to eat unlimited amounts of food (provided that your total carbs don't go over 25/day), your digestive system remains full and your metabolism stays at 100%.

Again, the Atkins is also very healthy. Testing has shown it to lower cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Even someone on the diet for only a month will have radically lower triglycerides. The reason is that triglycerides are fat molecules in the blood and are fair game when it comes to fat loss with a low carb diet.

So the bottom line is that if you are serious about losing weight, go on an honest low carb diet (without cheating) for a month. There is a reason low carb diets are popular. Its because they work.

Fasting follows the same path as jumping off a bridge, it's just slow and painful.

You have to analize your food to a certain extent. When you know what common things are bad (sugar, enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners), it doesn't take more than reading the ingredients list. You can eat any other kinds of foods (and you should). For lunch, I can make a sandwich with whole grain bread. Not only is this more healthy than fast food, but it's also better knowing how it was prepared (no loogieburgers for me, thank you).

If you want to get on a healthy level you absolutely have to abstain from sodas and fruit juices. Start with just that, and then you can gradually build up to the other things I've suggested.

The reason that fruit juice is bad while raw fruit is good, is that juice doesn't fill you up - you'd still feel hungry after drinking it. Fruit at least puts something in your stomach.

And fruit juice is full of sugar, so you won't loose weight. Your body will be in starvation mode and it will grab those sugars, and lay them down as fat to act as storage for the famine it perceives is ahead.

I agree. Trans fat is harmful and not needed, and occurs mostly in artificially hydrogenated fat mixtures, but only in trace amounts in beef and dairy. Unsaturated fat is good, and saturated fat is also needed in small amounts. However, fat deficency does not generally occur when eating a balanced diet, and the recommeded daily allowance for saturated fat is surprisingly easy to exceed. If you exercise a lot, your requirement for fat may be greater, but in general it is a good idea to watch your consumption of saturated fat and keep it within sight of the recommended daily allowance, and avoid trans fat altogether whenever possible.