Jason and his crash diet: Week 8

I am not a fan of crash diets and don't believe they actually work for almost everyone. Sure the initial results might make your head spin, but the problem with crash diets is that they tend to be troublesome and therefore unsustainable. Most people are not interested in the rather intense restrictions that a crash diet is going to put you through and I can't think of anyone that has stuck with their crash diet in the long term.

Jason is a friend of mine and he is seriously overweight. 8 weeks ago he decided he was going to do an intermittent fasting diet and for the most part he has stuck with it. I can verify this with my own eyes because I frequently see him in public during his fasting hours and he doesn't consume anything other than calorie-free drinks and water. Good for you Jason!

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Based on what I know about Jason and his lack of impulse control I expected him to completely give up by now but I have to say I am impressed with his apparent dedication to the diet but we can't pump our fists in victory just yet because here is the major problem: He doesn't appear to have lost any significant amount of weight. When I ask him about it he says that he doesn't have a scale so he doesn't really know if it is working. If I had to guess I would say that it probably isn't working because he looks the same.

I have also noticed that he is coming up with an increasing amount of excuses for why he needs to violate his rules of fasting. For the most part he sticks with it but his resilience is starting to wane. In the past 2 weeks I have seen him at parties where he was not observing his fasting rules and there is also a good chance that he is doing something similar when he isn't around anyone.

I don't want my friend to fail but I also am not a big believer in any crash diet, especially one that is focused on denying yourself food when you are hungry. The big problem I have with the fasting diet that he is on is that he is still consuming vast amounts of calories during his allowed hours and he doesn't really pay much mind to what it is that he is eating. IE, he is not avoiding certain foods that likely got him to the obese state that he is in now.

There is no science to indicate that avoiding eating during certain times of day will result in any health benefit, but there are tons of studies that have shown that weight-loss is largely determined by calories in vs calories out. Just because your tummy is rumbling at certain points of the day doesn't mean that you are doing anything right, it just means you are hungry.

Jason is still eating horrible calorie-packed meals, but he just does it for a 5 hour window of opportunity in the afternoon. I don't know how an idea like this ever started but I find it crazy that anyone would believe that they can eat 8,000 calories during a specific time of day and somehow end up losing weight. It just doesn't make any logical sense.

Jason also doesn't do any exercise and I think this is a terrible mistake.

Fitness and prolonged weight management isn't something that you can achieve in a few weeks even if you starve yourself. Most people need to reprogram the way they live their life and get most healthy food into their lives on some sort of permanent basis. Crash diets like intermittent fasting of the sort Jason is doing don't even attempt to accomplish this. The reason why Jason took on this diet plan was because of the fact that he wasn't actually going to have to change anything about his lifestyle and I think this was a lazy plan from the start.

If he simply put forth the effort to make sure that he was achieving a calorie deficit every day, he would be able to eat any time he felt like it and get better results than he is seeing now.

I would bet money on him not even bothering with the program a few weeks from now and then not only will he gain back any weight that he lost (if any) but I reckon he will actually put on even more weight - which would put him right in line with almost anyone else that ever did a crash diet.

I really don't believe there are any shortcuts in weight-loss other than liposuction. Maybe Jason should look into that instead.