The 8-Hour Diet (17 page)

Crazy, right?

But if you eat products made with all the parts of the grain—whole-grain bread and pasta, long-grain rice—you get all the nutrition that food manufacturers are otherwise trying to strip away.

Whole-grain carbohydrates can play an important role in a healthy lifestyle. In an 11-year study of 16,000 middle-age people, researchers at the University of Minnesota found that consuming three daily servings of whole grains can reduce a person’s mortality risk over the course of a decade by 23 percent. (Tell that to your buddy who’s eating low
carb.) Whole-grain bread keeps insulin levels low, which keeps you from storing fat. In this diet, it’s especially versatile because it’ll supplement any kind of meal with little prep time. Whole-wheat toast for brunch, sandwiches for lunch, with a dab of peanut butter for a snack. Don’t believe the hype. Carbs—the right kind of carbs—are good for you.

Warning:
Food manufacturers are very sneaky. Sometimes, after refining away all the vitamins, fiber, and minerals from wheat, they’ll add molasses to the bread, turning it brown, and put it on the grocery shelf with a label that says wheat bread. It’s a trick! Truly nutritious breads and other products will say whole wheat or whole grain. Don’t be fooled.

Oatmeal is the Michael Bloomberg of your pantry: Kind of bland on the surface, but bursting with big ideas for your future. Rich in fiber and nutrients, it can propel you through sluggish mornings, or you can eat it a couple of hours before a workout to feel fully energized by the time you hit the weights. Swap it in for your late-night snack to avoid a binge. I recommend instant oatmeal for its convenience. But I want you to buy the unsweetened, flavor-free variety and use other Powerfoods such as milk, berries, and cinnamon to enhance the taste. Flavored oatmeal packets often come loaded with sugar calories.

Oatmeal contains soluble fiber, meaning that it attracts fluid and stays in your stomach longer than insoluble fiber (like vegetables). Soluble fiber is thought to reduce blood cholesterol by binding with digestive acids made from cholesterol and sending them out of your body. When this happens, your liver has to pull cholesterol from your blood to make more digestive acids, and your bad cholesterol levels drop.

Trust me: You need more fiber, both soluble and insoluble. Doctors recommend we eat between 25 and 35 grams of fiber per day, but most of us consume half that. Fiber is like a bouncer for your body, kicking out troublemakers and showing them the door. It protects you from heart disease. It protects you from colon cancer by sweeping carcinogens out of the intestines quickly.

A Penn State study also showed that oatmeal sustains your blood sugar levels longer than many other foods, which keeps your insulin levels stable and ensures you won’t be ravenous for the few hours that follow. That’s good, because spikes in the production of insulin slow your
metabolism and send a signal to the body that it’s time to start storing fat. Since oatmeal breaks down slowly in the stomach, it causes less of a spike in insulin levels than foods like bagels. Include it in a smoothie or as your breakfast.

Another cool fact about oatmeal: Preliminary studies indicate that oatmeal raises the levels of free testosterone in your body, enhancing your body’s ability to build muscle and burn fat and boosting your sex drive.

Also, I want you to consider adding ground flaxseed to your food. I said this before and it bears repeating. One tablespoon contains only 60 calories, but it packs in omega-3 fatty acids and has nearly 4 grams of fiber. Sprinkle it into a lot of different recipes, add some to your oatmeal, spoon it over cereal, or add a tablespoon to a smoothie.

B
y now, you must be wondering: What’s the catch? A diet in which you can eat anything you want in whatever quantity you want? One that requires just 8 minutes of exercise a day? One that’s proven to strip off up to 2 pounds a day? It can’t be that simple!

Oh, but it is. The 8-Hour Diet is so simple, even a caveman could do it (assuming he was willing to give up the Paleo Diet).

Now, I don’t blame you for being skeptical. If I had a nickel in my pocket for every diet book that has crossed my desk in the past 20 years, I’d have, well, very heavy pants. But despite the hundreds of weight-loss plans I’ve seen at
Men’s Health
, in truth, they all fall into a handful of familiar categories.

There are the diets that say, “Let them eat numbers!” That is, they assign numerical values to foods or create exact ratios of what should be eaten at every meal, so your calculator winds up working as hard as you are. Weight Watchers is a perfect example—a lot more perfect than its competitors, quite frankly, especially with its recently revamped points system. And if you can hang with the arithmetic, great. But when I’m ready to eat, there are only three kinds of numbers I care about: numbers that get me a reservation, numbers that tell me how long the microwave should run, and numbers that make pizza magically appear on my doorstep. I’m Hungry Man, not Rain Man!

There are the diets that say, “Let them eat grapefruit!” Or cabbage soup. Or bananas. Or Subway sandwiches. Or so much beef that mad cow disease becomes a little too personal. The common denominator here: tricking you into believing that if you fill up on one food, it will crowd out all the others. Which it will—until, like a drunken frat boy, you get caught raiding the fridge with your nutritional pants down. Staying faithful to family, friends, and countrymen? Yes. Having a monogamous relationship with a sandwich shop? That’s just not going to work. (Besides, I heard the sandwich shop was seeing other people.)

There are diets that say, “Don’t let them eat _________!” No carbs! No sugar! No beer! Dr. Atkins was the founding father of this movement, banishing all carbohydrates—even fruits and vegetables—in favor of meat and more meat. Which does in fact work, until your cravings build to the point where you’re chasing the Wonder Bread truck down the street, sniffing fumes. Man cannot live on chicken wings alone; eventually, you need a celery stick.

There are diets that say, “Let them eat only stuff they’ve cooked in their own kitchens!” I could also call this the Unemployed Celebrity Chef Diet, as there are plenty of cookbooks out there by stars who fancy themselves nutrition experts all of a sudden. Now eat this? Now get real!
Cooking at home is usually healthier, yes. But if you have time to cook yourself breakfast, lunch, and dinner 7 days a week, chances are you’re just a bit less busy than you should be in other aspects of your life.

And finally, there are diets that say, “Eat what we send you in this very expensive box every night, because fat former sports stars (or their coaches) eat it!” Home delivery is to lifelong nutrition what a stick of dynamite is to fishing. It’ll deliver you a meal all right, but very, very expensively. And over time, it’s a plan that’s just not sustainable.

So why are there still so many schemes and gimmicks out there? Because just about any diet plan will work, at least for a little while. When you have to cut out types or amounts of food, you’re participating in a form of calorie restriction. It “works” in two ways. First: If you eat only cabbage soup, Subway sandwiches, or bacon for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, there is only so much room for other indulgences in your life. Second: After about 3 weeks, you’ll get so sick of cold-cut combos and teenagers wearing plastic gloves, you won’t be able to choke down one more sandwich. And then you’ll go running back into the arms of the dysfunctional food relationships that made you feel so bad in the first place.

The only way to really make a new diet work is by incorporating healthy new habits that become second nature to you. It’s not a new diet, in fact—it’s a new way of living. You form eating habits you can stick with forever and that don’t require you to stop scratching culinary itches you’ve had your whole life.

Building these habits are what the 8-Hour Diet is all about. Notice that we’re restricting eating times, not specific foods. So you won’t crave any favorite food; you’ll simply eat it at the right time. In fact, you’ll be eating so much that you’ll easily fit in all of the 8-Hour Powerfoods and be able to say—probably even before dinner—“I ate my 8!”

It’s simple, and you’ll soon reach the point where you can stick with it without even thinking. Eat now, fast later can become the equivalent of breathe in, breathe out. And so it can go for the rest of your long and healthy lifetime.

That’s what this chapter is for: to show you the feast, the better to help you embrace the fast that wraps around it.

To illustrate what a day of eating on the 8-Hour Diet looks like, I’ve
enlisted my friend Debbie, who is in fact an actual friend who follows this actual routine. Do you have to arrange your life exactly like Debbie has? Absolutely not. Whether you’re a nine-to-fiver or a graveyard shifter or a lineman for the county, you can pick up the plan at whatever hour works for you. Here’s how Debbie does it.

7:00 AM
Popping out of bed bright and early to her alarm (okay, after three consecutive snooze-button bashings), Debbie sleepwalks into the kitchen for coffee. After a full cup of joe and a sobering first look at the world on her tablet, she makes her way to the living room for her ridiculously efficient 8 minutes of exercise. (Yes, that’s right—8 minutes is all you need.) Deb doesn’t like to work too hard in the morning—she’ll just pick and choose from the 20 different 8-minute workouts in
Chapter 10
, doing just enough to make her heart pump, her muscles vibrate, and—most important—her body metabolize the extra glucose stored in her liver, so she can quickly enter the fat-burning zone. She usually washes down her workout with a zero-calorie drink like SmartWater.

8:30 AM
After Deb showers and dresses, it’s back to the kitchen to blend up 2 cups of frozen berries, some frozen mango, a few big spoonfuls of Greek yogurt, a splash of OJ, and whiz! Smoothie. But she’s not going to drink it now. She pours part of it into an insulated thermos (essential for maintaining both the temperature and texture of her morning creation), stashes the remainder in the fridge for her husband, feeds the cat (because he always forgets to), grabs coffee, and sets her coordinates for work.

10:30 AM
While coworkers are milling about, nibbling on Egg McMuffins or standing in line at the company cafeteria, Debbie burns quickly through the battery of e-mails that came in overnight, then catches up on some nagging problems left over from the day before. By 10, she’s already well ahead of the game. At last her appetite begins to rouse from its slumber. Luckily, that thermos has everything she needs: The fruit packs fiber, the juice provides a big dose of calcium and vitamin C, and the Greek yogurt gives her a dollop of healthy fat and twice as much
protein as regular yogurt. Debbie can down it all in a few spirited gulps or savor the smoothie throughout the morning. 8-Hour Powerfood daily total: 3.

11:30 AM
With the day’s second meeting out of the way and lunchtime approaching, Deb’s increasingly lean belly starts to rumble. It needs something solid. There’s a deli around the corner, but to save time, Deb usually stashes a snack—say, a batch of hummus and a bag of pitas—in the fridge in the break room on Monday mornings. Now on her second snack in just over an hour, she’s locked in and still plowing through e-mails. 8 Hour Powerfood daily total: 4.

1:00 PM
On light days, Deb can take time to treat herself to a leisurely lunch with friends at a local Mexican joint. But there aren’t a lot of light days, so she calls up the deli and has them deliver a roast turkey sandwich on whole wheat with cheese, guacamole, and a bit of crispy bacon. People at the office have to wonder—how can she eat so much and still stay so slim? There’s nothing to hide here: lean protein, a good dose of fiber, plenty of healthy fat from the avocado. This is exactly what Deb’s body needs right now. (And that bacon? One of the most delicious 70-calorie investments you can make.) 8-Hour Powerfood daily total: 7.

3:00 PM
Did a hypnotist sweep through the office? Most of the cubicle dwellers have hit their midafternoon slump and are plodding like zombies to the coffee machine or to top off the tank with a Danish. But the increased energy most people see on the 8-Hour Diet keeps Debbie’s mind humming while everyone else’s is numbing. And there’s no reason for Debbie not to snack—she can eat what she wants, as much as she wants, so she reaches under her desk for some chips and salsa—the peppers and tomatoes will help her check off another 8-Hour Powerfood. 8 Hour Powerfood daily total: 8. Ding ding ding! It’s only midafternoon, and already Deb ate her 8!

4:00 PM
Finally, a break in the action. Deb steps out for a late-afternoon pick-me-up—a tall Americano, just what she needs. And the
benefit goes well beyond the jolt of caffeine: According to research from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, coffee is the number one source of antioxidants in the American diet. An Americano, espresso diluted with hot water, is the superstar of the modern coffee bar, since, like black coffee, it’s essentially a calorie-free drink. But because she’s indulging for these 8 hours, Deb pours in a generous glunk of whole milk; it adds just 40 calories, but what a great 40 they are. Why not grab a piece of dark chocolate or a package of almonds as well?