I think that joining a challenge on such a renowned blog is a perfect way to build up motivation for initial phases of my diet and to make it through the first month of fat loss with success. My progress will now be followed not only by me but by thousands of readers of Leigh’s blog all over the world. I can’t let myself and them down. I can’t make excuses and can’t back down – this train is running and I am on it! I must admit – it is quite exciting!

One big meal challenge

The challenge is set up according to rules similar to those I laid for myself in the previous post about caloric deficit. Every participant is supposed to eat only around 65% to 70% of his daily calorie needs. For me that is 1900 calories per day.

To help us achieve the goal Leigh goes even further and suggests a concept she calls One Big Meal (OBM). I have never thought of that before but the idea makes a lot of sense. As Leigh points out, one of the problems with maintaining a good diet is the need to constantly monitor calories eaten during the day. To overcome that, we should simply cook one big meal in the morning or the day before. The meal should have calories equal to our daily caloric intakes. That ‘one meal’ is what we would be eating throughout the day. Do not get confused though – the idea is to cook everything at once, but it does not have to be just one single dish – you can maintain variety if you want and you can spread the eating over as many smaller meals during the day as you want.

I think that ‘One Big Meal’ approach might prove quite effective. As Leigh says, it makes control of calories much easier. But it does more than that – it also takes away many threats usually encountered when being on a diet. The psychological effect is the one I think is especially worth mentioning. OBM method puts you in a position, where it is very easy to assess whether a day was successful or not: If you ate only your one big meal – it was successful, if you went beyond it – it wasn’t. The border is clear and you break the rules with the first bite of something from outside ‘the meal’. If it is that easy to assess, you know you failed as soon as you did it, not in the evening when you total up all daily calories. That particular guilty cookie, drink or sandwich will not taste as good, when you know that it is the one that makes you fat and the one that stops you from fitting in your daily dose of calories – the one that kills your dreams…

Is it going to work in practice? – I will let you know.

Spread of meals during the day

Leigh does not specify how often should we eat and how frequently during the day, although she advocates a bit in favour of a one huge meal a day. I will not go for that and will do it in a more traditional way, which is having many small meals spread more or less evenly along the day. This method worked for me once before, so I am not going to change it. I noticed that when I eat a huge meal, I get hungry afterwards anyway. Smaller meals don’t stretch my stomach and it is then easier to fill it with something small. This way, I do not really feel hungry at all, and if I did – well, I’ll just wait for another meal which is probably only an hour or so away.

Variety of foods

I love variety in my diet. I don’t think I would feel good if I had to eat the same thing for a whole day. I really like fresh fruits for example, and I have to have meat on my plate practicaly every day. These two, however, do not go well in one meal for me. I have to eat fruits and meat separately and I want to eat both each day. To overcome that, but still stay in line with the rules of the challenge, I will be preparing a couple of different dishes every day – some with fruits, some with meat – and I will eat them separately.

I will be doing all the cooking in the morning before going to work. It will be easier not to eat during that than it would be if I cooked it in the afternoon. I am not that hungry in the morning.

So there I am, on my way to thinness and fitness. Thanks to Leigh, I have a really exciting start. I’ll keep you informed on my progress.

Thanks for all the good words so far

Post from: Permanent Fitness

Weight loss 30 day challenge starts

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