Experiment of the Week – 6 Meals a Day

6 meals a day

This week’s experiment of the week goes back to an eating style I tried and loved about 10 years ago–eating six times a day, just until I was full.  In the first month, I lost 18 pounds.  In the first 6 weeks, I was down a total of 23 pounds.  Though I didn’t lose any more weight over the next 10 months, I did continue to lose inches, until I was down 4 dress sizes.

This previous way of eating was actually rather easy, even though I had to cook a separate meal for the family.   My meal was a subset of the family meal, and leftovers went to work with me.

Why did I quit when it was working so well for me?

Why did I quit when it was working so well for me?

Hmmm, marriage breakup, medication to help me sleep, just trying to get through the day.

Will it work for me now?

I don’t know.   I’m on different medications and have different hormone issues now, so I’m not sure.   That’s what this experiment is all about.

My intention is to eat what I normally eat but break it into 6 smaller meals a day or roughly every 2.5 to 3 hours.   I know from last time that I will suddenly become ravenously hungry between 2.5 and 3 hours.  This experiment is intended to rev up my metabolism and keep me eating throughout the day, which my specialist recommends if I’m doing more strenuous exercise to help keep my hormones in check–much harder now than last time and much more prone to fluctuations in weight and inches.   I’ll measure weight and inches in the morning and then again in a week.

The hardest part will be to take breaks from my job to eat.  Sometimes it’s more than inconvenient–it’s impossible.

To help stay on track, I’ll post my meals to my instagram account here under the hashtag  #experimentoftheweek:

Join me here next week to see the results!

Alas, I must call a reset on this effort.  It’s not that it didn’t work–it was working great for the first 3 days!   In fact, I was down about 4 pounds by the 3rd weigh-in and felt great, not hungry, serene, down 1 inch in the waist.   But on Day 3, all hell broke loose.  It was one of those serious life or death situations (someone else but I was heavily involved) where my day stopped as I was finishing that first meal and I didn’t get a chance to eat again until well after dark that night.  The rest of the week wasn’t as strenuous but all my good habits flew out the window in the name of a crisis–hardly any water at all, meals off schedule, several nights of sleeping only 3-4 hours, grabbing whatever food was available when it was available because we all scarfed up my protein bars early on.  By Saturday, life was returning to normal but overall, I ended the week down only 1 pound from where I started when I’d fully expected to drop 5-10 pounds over the course of the week.

I saw good results in those first few days, so I don’t think this experiment is a failure, just an interrupted experiment.   I’ve restarted the process and will report my results next weekend.


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