The Reverse Diet

  • I don't really know the specifics of it but I think you eat dinner for breakfast and then taper your meals off during the day with breakfast being your largest meal and dinner being the smallest. I find myself doing this sort of naturally and I am thinking that it is working for me. My urges to binge are a lot less now and I'm actually feeling satisfied. For those of you that are doing this diet, is it working for you? What sorts of foods do you eat for breakfast? Is there an actual meal plan associated with it?
  • There's an old saying ...Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper ...

    I'm not sure what it's supposed to produce. The comparison is interesting.
  • I've never tried it, but you could say that my family used to somehow do it -- we often ate breakfast foods for dinner because it was cheaper. Of course, we also ate breakfast foods at breakfast, so it wasn't very balanced. Hum.

    The old saying is probably to tell us to eat a lot in the morning, to jump-start the day (these calories will be burnt by moving throughout the day), and not too much for dinner, because we won't be needing much energy during the night (plus eating heavy meals before getting to sleep can prevent some people from sleeping well). At least, that's the way I've always understood it.
  • IMHO I don't think it matters all that much, as long as you're within a calorie deficit range for the day. The rest is mostly a matter of personal preference.
  • I saw a show on Discovery Health where a woman did this. She lost a lot of weight. I'm not sure if she drastically changed her calories though.
  • Seems like dinner is our most social meal and wanting to have a bowl of oatmeal while everyone else wants Cheesecake Factory would be problemmatic. (not that dieting in social situations isn't always a bit problemmatic). I'm not much for spending a lot of time in the kitchen in the morning and dinner is my favorite meal, so I don't think it would work for me.

    Probably works just great, if the total number of the calories of day is a deficit.
  • Quote: There's an old saying ...Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper ...
    My mother used to repeat this to my siblings & me as kids. I think the effect was to make sure that we got enough energy from our food throughout the day.

    I do the opposite now But, it's what works for me.

    I'm sure this old saying works for plenty of people.
  • I think what she means is eat a big meal for breakfast, smaller one at lunch and a tiny one for dinner. You can keep breakfast foods with breakfast.
    At least that is how I took but I could be wrong.
  • I actually like to keep it light through lunch time, a light breakfast and a light snack or 2. Lunch is quite often my biggest meal, though not always. I LOVE when I get the opportunity to do this. Eating a larger meal midday keeps me very satisfied.

    Bottomline, as already mentioned - in order to lose weight you need to stay within a certain calorie allotment. Whatever will make you STICK to that allotment is key, therefore we need to find things that will HELP us to stick to it. For some it's a larger breakfast, for others dinner and others lunch.
  • Quote: I saw a show on Discovery Health where a woman did this. She lost a lot of weight. I'm not sure if she drastically changed her calories though.
    I think I saw this - wasn't she the one that cooked fish for breakfast? I think the smell of that would make me barf in the morning.
  • Yeah that was her. There's no way I could eat fish in the morning lol.
  • I have heard the saying that SusanB cites. My opinion is that if it works for you, go for it! Folks around here are always saying that we need to formulate a plan that works for us and it sounds like this is working for you. You can write the book on it and get rich!