50%
A thing about diets: you gotta get one that fits who you are — your essence. Part of my essence is imbibing alcohol while, generally, sitting around. Another thing that I’ve learned about my self, during my souciant late twenties, is that I’m a terribly practical, discrete, list-oriented man.
Five years ago I was filling out the paperwork to rent a tuxedo for my third wedding of the year — I was a very popular groomsman in the early aughts. I insouciantly wrote my weight down as 165, because honestly! It was my mid twenties! Insouciant was my middle name. My friend glanced over and said, “Whoa, fatty.”
You know how weird little things like that stick with you? Like when your dad says “You don’t have what it takes, Jack”? THIS WAS THAT. Especially, last fall when I had fatified up to 180lbs* and none of my pants fit anymore. Listen, I’m not trying to be all “Oh, I am sooooo fat, look at me, GIVE ME BONBONS.” I’m just saying that one of my life goals is not to be a buddy chubbster. That was when I implemented the Fifty Percent Diet — which I will now describe in its entirety:
- Eat 50% of what you would normally eat.
- Drink as much as you want.
- Never exercise.
This incredibly simple “diet” has lost me twenty pounds**. TWENTY POUNDS, PEOPLE. And you should see the amount of beer I drink and exercising I don’t do. It boggles the mind.
A thing about diets: you gotta get one that fits who you are — your essence. Part of my essence is imbibing alcohol while, generally, sitting around. Another thing that I’ve learned about my self, during my souciant late twenties, is that I’m a terribly practical, discrete, list-oriented man. And the implementation of this diet really appeals to me: eat fifty percent of the contents of your plate. Can you get anymore discrete?
Implementation
The recommended portion of meat for a single human meal is about the size of a deck of cards. Not six decks of cards, just one. Which is why this diet is at its easiest to implement when you eat out or get takeout: literally just cut your massive cheeseburger from Carytown Burger and Fries in half. Wrap the other half up for lunch tomorrow. Not only are you losing weight, you’re losing money! Wait, saving money. Pizza is an easy one, too. Do you normally eat four pieces? (Whoa, fatty.) Just eat two. Guys, this is simple.
It gets a little harder when you cook at home — at least it does for me. It makes no sense to ladle a whole bowl of soup only to eat half of it and toss the rest. So usually, I’ll just try to serve myself smaller portions. This, however, is not very discrete and therefore difficult: I usually end up with 75% instead of 50%.
Drawbacks
Say you implement this diet. You successfully ate half of your Fu Jian yesterday and are pulling it out of the work mini-fridge for lunch today. Inevitably, some a-hole is going to ask you, “So are you going to eat half of that? And then half of that? AND THEN HALF OF THAT?” This is the single draw back to the diet: a-holes. Well, maybe it is a draw back of humans. YOU DECIDE.
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Really, obviously, this whole thing is about portion control. The amount of food served to you by the “restaurant industry” is out of control, and once you think about it, kind of disgusting. 50% is just a simple way to not starve yourself, but eat a volume of food smaller than your head. Which is probably best for everyone.
* Just FYI over here, I’m 5’10”. At my heaviest I had a BMI of 25.8 — which is officially “overweight.”
** Results not typical? I will say, that so far its worked for 100% of the people who are on the diet.
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Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
I think I’ve heard it put well in:
Don’t eat until you’re full, eat until you’re not hungry anymore.
Guess I should see if it works. This keg ain’t tapping itself.
Good advice Ross… Know what, I’m going to give it a go. Don’t want my kid noticing I am a fat-ass. I still have time to get it straight seeing that he is 7 months.
Do you snack while you imbibe? That would be my downfall. What’s 50% of endless snacks?
I love it. Let’s see how it goes…
Nice use of the word ‘insouciantly’.
You should also mention that you cook like a champ and rarely allow chemies into your diet. I mean if you’re eating only half the the peanut butter cup you eat, you’re still eating a peanut butter cup. And you don’t eat peanut butter cups. FULL DISCLOSURE
In all seriousness, though eating 50% of what you would normally eat is what most Americans should be doing in this day in age (of course that varies from person to person), doing so whilst drinking all you want and not excercising is ultimately quite unhealthy. Don’t get me wrong, I think people really should try this approach, but discouraging excercise is dangerous.
It’s funny because Ross and I lost a ton of weight during pretty much the same years by doing completely different things. But sure portion control was one part of my strategy.
One thing about appetite that everyone talks about is the “if you eat until you are full you will overeat” thing, but it doesn’t seem like as many people talk about the day-to-day impact of 50% on appetite. Like if I gorge myself on burrito+chips+salsa one night for dinner, then the next day at lunch and again that night i will also be STARVING for more gorging. But if I eat a light dinner one day, the next day I won’t be nearly as hungry.
So like the first day you do 50% you will hate your life, but by day 3 your body will be used to it and it will be a piece of cake. Or not any cake at all.
I agree with your 50% approach to eating. I need to follow that myself and maybe I could take the 15lbs off that are stretching my waistline. I don’t agree with your no exercise. By any medical standards you would be better off with the 20 extra lbs but getting plenty of cardio and strength exercise. As Taylor says discouraging excercise is dangerous.
I signed up to run a 10k with friends and training for that is skimming the extra sludge right off me. Can’t stop training or my friends will leave me behind on race day. But I only had a few pounds to go, which were mostly from when I used to eat out a lot. Since my cooking is mostly vegetables, and most restaurant food is too much and too fatty, I did better eating at home. The leftovers help too, since bringing a bowl of veg chili for lunch is way better than eating an entire sandwich from Quizno’s.
Hey guys just FYI, I Am Not A Doctor, obviously.
And yeah exercise, I hear it is great! I know Susan Howson swims like 3 miles every day before work and she’s as fit as a fiddle.
Every time I tried to exercise, I kept spilling my beer.
Ross is a liar. He rides his bike, that is exercise. Deadlifting a child multiple times a day is exercise too. NOTE: Cait, that is hilarious — good one.