For me, the only surefire way to lose weight quickly is to stop eating. This is absolutely guaranteed to work. Other methods, such as reducing caloric intake, taking medicaments, and doing exercises, produce disappointingly few results. Fasting does work though.
Here’s how I know:
Years ago, when I was indeed fat, I went on a one-week fast, during which I did nothing but chew gum, and I lost 20 pounds.
Now that I am no longer fat, fasting is not quite so dramatic, but it still works. Recently, I weighed myself for the first time in about 2 years, and I was a little annoyed that I had gained 15 pounds. However, at 5’-11”, I am not fat even at 175 pounds. Still I try to maintain a weight of 160 pounds. If I allowed myself to continue at 175, the next step would be for me to start thinking that even 185 was okay. Then the upward spiral to 200, 225 and 250, as I weighed years ago, would begin.
So I opted to go on a 10-day fast, assuming I would lose 10 pounds anyway, if not the 20 that I had lost years earlier. I ate absolutely nothing for 10 days, but allowed myself two cans of Fanta orange soda per day. At the end of 10 days, I had lost only 9 pounds, and I was miffed, since for me fasting 10 days was a lifetime record.
At the end of the 10 days, I went on a minimal diet for about two weeks: one cheeseburger and one small order of fries per day, at McDonald’s in Santiago. I assumed that this would clip off that other pound that I was aiming to lose, but it did not. After two weeks of this diet, I had gained a pound, instead of losing one. So I declared another fast, but only 5 days this time. I was lucky; I lost 6 more pounds. The upshot was that I lost 15 pounds all told.
I know from experience that if all you do is cut down a little, the weeks, days and months go by, and you stay the same or fluctuate a little, but basically get nowhere.
Fasting works like a charm, however, and there’s really no great discomfort or even pangs involved. Once you’ve made up your mind to do it, it’s easy and painless.
World traveler, retired. Visit at http://www.mecnita.com
