For about a month I tried skipping breakfast in order to lose a couple of kilos so I could zip up one of my favourite dresses again. I lost one kilo after about three weeks and nothing much happened after that except that I found myself starving all morning and sniffing marmite from the jar. Skipping breakfast is not an effective way to lose weight.
This week I reversed it and tried skipping dinner instead. Just three nights of skipping dinner and I’ve lost a kilo and not only can I zip up my favourite dress, I can even fit into this bridesmaid dress I wore to friend’s wedding when I was 27. I haven’t been able to fit into this for years. It’s still pretty tight and I doubt I’ll ever wear it out because the colour doesn’t suit me plus it looks like a bridesmaid’s dress but I’m pretty chuffed nonetheless.
I love beautiful dresses and clothing in general – I’ve become a bit of a collector of old dresses now so it was important for me to still fit into them.
Now that I’m back to my usual weight I’m going to stop dieting. What’s to stop me just putting it all back on you ask? From now on there’ll be no more Ben and Jerry’s vegan peanut butter ice-cream. I’m sure that will help. Plus I’m also going to change the way I eat. The past few days I’ve been eating an enormous breakfast and huge lunch and I rather like it. In the past people referred to lunch as dinner (at school here the kids have school “dinners” which is a cooked meal) and in the evenings they had supper which was traditionally a light meal. There’s no reason we can’t do the same now. I’ve always been fond of breakfast and brunch and also lunch. I can happily gorge all morning.
There are other benefits to front-loading the day with calories: our bodies are better at managing blood sugar early in the day and bad at it late in the day. What you eat is important for managing blood sugar but the time you eat it is even more important. Skipping breakfast also increases cholesterol and therefore our heart disease risk. Dr Greger explains the research in this video:
rachel.blog 
Congratulations on the weight loss. Skipping dinner is probably infinitely better than skipping breakfast. I know when I don’t eat I become irritable. Probably better for me to be irritable at home rather than work….slightly.
I did find it hard to concentrate in the mornings after having had no breakfast. Now I’ve doubled the amount I eat for breakfast 🙂
….and you’ve lost weight. Sounds like a win win to me.
Congratulations! 2kg is pretty good going. (Have I worked that out right as the total?) You are right you don’t need to carry on dieting now, just eating sensibly. I’m looking forward to getting to that point. It’s like forces, you need so much more effort to get something moving than once it’s moving and going along.
Thanks, Denise! 2kg probably isn’t much in the whole scheme of things but that’s all I wanted to lose. My weight has been fairly steady for most of my life but it did start to creep up over the past year or so. It took much longer than I was expecting to lose it!
Good on you for finding a diet that worked for you and one you can stick with.
I recently watched this video, which I recommend you watch it too: https://crossfitundeniable.com/2019/09/dr-jason-fung-on-eating-frequency-sugar-and-more/
I wanted to do intermittent fasting but it proved to be hard to stick to not eat until 12 pm or so. I love my morning flat white + peanut butter (and sometimes nutella) toast.
I am still experimenting with for now I am eating breakfast, lunch and dinner and trying to reduce snacking which is the largest deterrent to my diet goals.
Also, it seems nobody is selling Ben and Jerry’s vegan peanut butter ice-cream in Auckland yet 😀
I also found it hard not to eat until 12pm and it doesn’t work as a way to lose weight anyway. It’s far more effective to eat all morning and day but then don’t eat anything after 4pm. That’s what I did eventually and that works really well. I wasn’t that hungry in the evenings because I’d eaten so much during the day 🙂
I’ve decided to lose some weight – mostly because I know damn well I’ve put it on 🙂 Cutting out snacks is my easiest method. It’s the chocolate spread on toast at midnight though… it’s so tempting lol
Good luck with your future in dieting. Hope it all goes well!
Well done! It’s brilliant that you identified what would help you to get back into that stunning dress but also to think of ways going forward to stop the weight from coming back. You have done absolutely brilliantly and I hope you feel great in yourself too XX
[…] just hanging in the wardrobe. Not wanting to discard my lovely old dresses I immediately set about rectifying the situation and although I’m not as light as I was in my twenties I’m back to fitting into my old […]