Experimenting on Myself - In The Beginning...

I'm about eighteen hours into a weight loss experiment that I am conducting on myself. You see, after a tough last-half of 2014 and a some overconsumption at Christmas I find myself weighing more than I have in over five years. I am only just over BMI 25 so according to the statistics I am only slightly overweight but I am really feeling the flabbiness. Now I am a tall bloke and losing weight has typically been easy for me in the past so I could just cut out all of the sugary food and ease up on the portion size and I know that weight should come off me. But working for a weight loss company means that I keep track of the research into weight loss and obesity. This led me to an interesting paper published last year that showed that twelve-hour fasting in mice had a positive effect on weight; most notably that obese mice lost 5% of their body weight when they had restricted feeding times.

Which led me to an idea. What does this do to a human?

I admit it, I know that I have developed some bad eating habits over the last year. I tend to drink high-calorie drinks in the evenings, either soft drinks laden with sugar or alcoholic drinks with the empty calories they bring. On top of that I have developed a habit for caloric snacks - crisps, peanuts, post-dinner desserts - which all add on to my daily calories causing the inevitable increase in my waist size. If I stopped eating at 8pm each evening and started at 8am at least those would be cut out. Not only that, the research suggests that I may find my satiety improves and the hormones related to hunger get back under control. Those haywire hormones can lead to long-term weight gain so it seems reasonable that I might shed a few pounds this way too.

I am starting this at a weight of 93.4 kg (14 stone 10 pounds or 206 pounds in old money), and my aim is to lose around 10 pounds initially. What is important is that I plan to keep my diet as is. I am a fairly healthy eater in general as you would expect from someone who works for a company that advocates healthy eating. My general physical activity level is lower than I would like but is much improved over the last few months so I aim to keep that steady or improve it. I realise this is also completely unscientific as well so I do not intend to track my calorie consumption or exercise in detail.

Having started from 8pm last night until 8am today I have noticed only that I was ready for my breakfast when it came! I was not ravenously hungry but neither was I still feeling postprandial like I often am after an evening snacking.

I will be posting regularly about the effects, both physically and mentally. Something like this is easy to sustain early on but I am concerned that I will feel like slipping out of the habit when I get to the weekend. I may cheat in that instance and either have a night off on a Saturday (the research says you can survive the occasional cheat), or change the time period temporarily so that I am fasting from say 10pm to 10am.

Do I expect to lose weight? Yes, but I expect it will be slower than a deliberate change in diet. Watch this space.