“EOD dieters were delighted by the biggest surprise of every-other-day dieting: you don’t lose control on Feast Day. You don’t binge. You don’t even eat all that much more… After eating 25% of normal caloric intake on Diet Day, EOD dieters usually eat only 110% of normal calories on Feast Day.”
Every-Other-Day Diet by Dr Krista Varady

I just read a very interesting book called the Every-Other-Day Diet by Dr Krista Varady. I heard about the book from a Dr Mercola interview. This diet doesn’t require expensive special foods, supplements or joining a group. This is dieting on the cheap. EOD dieting might even help improve your longevity.

This book may be of interest to someone that has been fighting with weight issues for a long time but can’t seem to lose the weight. The first part of the book could be summarized as: feast one day, fast the next day, then repeat. Eat normally on feast day and 500 calories on the modified fast day. On fast day eat the 500 calories for lunch or dinner, not breakfast.*

Chapters 1-3 goes over the science and some weight loss tips learned in the clinical trials. Dr Varady found many of the clinical outcomes very surprising. EOD dieters did not overeat on feast days. “After eating 25% of normal caloric intake on Diet Day, EOD dieters usually eat only 110% of normal calories on Feast Day.” She stated that science doesn’t really understand the mechanism yet, but fast days act like a “metabolic reboot”. Dr Varady wonders if feeling true hunger on fast days causes EOD dieters to tune into their hunger cues which naturally controls appetite on feast days.?

I didn’t like Chapters 4-5 which contain some truly scary recipes. The homemade recipes are based on prepackaged foods from the industrial food system. There’s a whole chapter on frozen prepackaged foods that meets the calorie requirements of fast days and gives tips for safely using your microwave. Ugh. The clinical trails show that even if you’re on a Standard American Diet (SAD), the EOD diet will give you the weight loss you’ve been looking for. In my opinion, ditching the industrial food and replacing it with nourishing traditional foods would better ensure your long-term health.

Chapters 6-7 talks about the benefits of a walking program for maintaining lean body composition which results in the maintenance of long-term weight loss. Dr Varady states: “When most dieters lose weight, they lose body fat and muscle: 75% fat and 25% muscle… However, the group combining EOD dieting and exercise didn’t lose any muscle during the eight weeks of the study — they lost only fat!” And we’re not talking about a lot of exercise here, just 20-40 minutes of walking a day. Surprisingly, they found that EOD dieters that walked didn’t regain the weight during the maintenance period. Dr Varady theorizes that the success in weight maintenance was because the diet combined with a walking program maintained muscle mass.

“I want to repeat this fact — drive it home, really — because it’s so important to your health and well-being: if you go on the EOD Diet and exercise, you will get the most benefits… Exercise boosts willpower and decreases binging and emotional eating.”

Here are some suggestions for making the diet easier and ensuring your long-term health:

1. Eat nourishing traditional foods from a quality source and avoid the junk coming out of the industrial food system. Skip the food advice in Chapters 4-5.
2. Leave behind the current wisdom that eating breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Dr Varady’s research shows that EOD dieters that ate their 500 calories for lunch or dinner, did not cheat as much as EOD dieters that ate their 500 calories for breakfast.
3. Making the transition from being a “sugar burner” to a “fat burner” can be difficult. Surprisingly, Dr Varady said her EOD dieters make the adjustment in less than two weeks. Also, EOD dieters that ate the most fat lost the most fat!

I have experimented with intermitted fasting (IF) and ketogenic diets for some years. Just one warning. If you can’t fast overnight and go without breakfast you’re hypoglycemic and a sugar burner. When I was a leader for Weight Watchers I would regularly become hypoglycemic and become panicky and feel like I was going to pass-out if I didn’t get a snack every 2-3 hours. I didn’t know it at the time but this was a serious warning. I was on the road to type 2 diabetes. It took me awhile, but I made that transition from a sugar burner to a fat burner. It’s now easy for me to fast all night, not eat breakfast or lunch, and have a meal in the late afternoon. Like Dr Varady’s clinical results, I find it easier to fast overnight and not eat breakfast or lunch, then to eat breakfast and fast for the rest of the day. Don’t get me wrong. I’m hungry on fast days, but being a fat burner means I can take being hungry, unlike the days when I was hypoglycemic and would be in danger of passing-out. Here are three last tips to help with the modified fast day:

1. If you use the 100 calorie snack during fast days, make sure it’s high fat. This will ensure your insulin does not spike during the fast period. I like coffee with raw heavy cream or Ketogenic Coffee, Flax Crackers, Sesame Seed Dip, Crunchy Cocoa Candy or Brazil Coconut Candy as my snack.
2. Eat more fat if you’re hungry between meals. Don’t fear fat.** Dr Varady’s clinical trial showed that EOD dieters that ate the most fat lost the most fat.
3. Reduce your stress and use adaptogens in the afternoon.*** Your endocrine system controls your metabolism. If you have high insulin and high cortisone at the same time your body considers this an emergency and will pack on the fat stores.

Also, I have had a long history of pituitary-thyroid-adrenal axis problems resulting in a low, normal body temperature. If I restrict calories my metabolism will drop further, resulting in low energy and feeling cold all the time. This makes calorie restricted diets such as Weight Watchers a real grind. Cycling up and down between feast days and modified fast days hasn’t resulted in a drop of my metabolism. If you have issues with low thyroid function or low metabolism, EOD dieting might work for you.

It is possible to switch from being a sugar burner to being a fat burner. According to Dr Varady’s clinic trials the transition can be done in less than two weeks.

The only industrial food on this website! The search for truth sometimes comes in strange packaging.

Work with your endocrine system, not against it. In a healthy person, cortisone is naturally high in the morning and goes down during the day. High cortisone in the morning wakes you up, but if you have high insulin at the same time, your body considers this an emergency and will pack on the fat stores. In contrast, high cortisone and low insulin makes you into a fat burning machine. Don’t eat carbohydrates — leafy greens are an exception — in the morning. Or don’t eat anything in the morning if you are trying to loss weight.

*Just to be clear, feast day means eating normally, or maybe eating a little bit more than normal. Feast day does not mean going to the all-you-can-eat buffet and expecting to loss weight.
**I did a low-carb version of the EOD Diet. If you find you aren?t losing weight, or your weight loss stalls, or your hungry all the time, consider going low-carb with the EOD Diet. I will discuss a low-carb version of the EOD Diet in Part II.
***For more information about adaptogens and managing stress please see: Healthy Household: Remedies for Stress, Depression and Grief and Healthy Household: Adaptogen Green Drink.