Having shared a few hints in my recipes last week I wanted to share in more detail the experiment I carried out last Monday to Wednesday. I was listening to The Mind Palace Podcast a week or so ago and they mentioned a deprivation/stoicism experiment. When I mentioned on Twitter I might try it the girls were kind enough to pass on the original mention of it on the Tim Ferriss experiment.
The idea I took from this was deprivation in terms of a lack of variety rather than starving yourself - lucky for me as I don’t think I could have not eaten for three days and still been a functional human being at work!! The stoicism experiment mentioned by Tim Ferriss is inspired by the many instances of fasting in religious culture. The focus is on simple living and the spiritual growth that can be experienced through a lack of excess. The participant is encouraged to eat and dress simply over the course of a few days.
To give an idea of what this change would mean compared to my own diet here's an idea of what I might eat on the average day. Overall I try to eat a fairly healthy diet but I am a bit of a grazer. My typical day will consist of lots of snacks interspersed with copious amounts of tea and water. I mostly drink green or mint tea but there will be the odd cup of builders thrown in there too.
My day starts with my dragging myself out of bed, maybe managing to squeeze in 20-30 minutes of yoga and making my way to work followed by breakfast at my desk at 8.30am - normally crunchy peanut butter on rye with a banana/apple or a couple of boiled eggs, again normally with a piece of fruit.
Mid-morning around 11am I’ll probably have a nakd bar or if I’ve been really organised a homemade protein ball. More often than not it will just end up being a handful of raw nuts and some dried fruit.
Lunch will be next about 2pm or soon after, more often than not it will be leftovers from last night’s dinner so all the kinds of things you see my Instagram littered with! I’ll often have an apple after lunch for ‘pudding’ if I didn’t already eat it in the morning, if the apple is gone then it's normally a sugar free chewing gum to remind my brain we’re done eating!
Late afternoon around 4.30-5pm I’ll likely have another handful of nuts or the nakd bar if I didn’t eat it first thing before heading home for the day. If I’m feeling particularly frazzled that day I might cave and raid the snack cupboard at work for some kind of chocolatey treat.
If I’m not out for dinner or drinks that night when I get in I’ll start dinner, often with a cheeky G&T or glass of white wine in hand. Dinner could be stir fry, risotto, gf pasta with greens - again pretty much any of the things my Instagram feed is full of. When dinner is ready my housemate and I will normally flop down in front of the TV for the next few hours until we’re ready to go to bed, often with a square or two of Green and Blacks dark chocolate.
My personal ‘fast’ consisted of the following over three days:
Brown, camargue and wild rice
Fasoulia - basically healthy baked beans - see recipe from last week
Chunky vegetable ratatouille - again see recipe from last week
Herbal tea - mostly mint and green
Water
No other drinks or food (including alcohol, coffee and chewing gum)
No more than 1 hour of TV each day
I did a big cook up on Sunday so I'd be well stocked for the week. I packed my lunch boxes and my breakfast boxes and took myself off for a nice early night.
Day one
Nothing too strenuous but I did find myself really fancying something sweet especially after lunch. I definitely missed my apple/chewing gum but resisted the urge and just make myself a pukka three mint tea. I did find myself getting hungry as I had chosen to stick to only three square meals a day rather than trying to pack mini snacks of rice and beans. Having said that it wasn’t a hunger that was unmanageable and did make me question how much of my snacking was hunger and how much was habit.
After dinner that first evening I watched one programme then took myself off for a good soak in the bath. I’d done a 40k walk on the saturday before so my poor feet were still a bit ravaged. I also found I was really tired by the end of the day but I think that was the aftermath of the walk rather than because of my diet - either way I slept very well that night!
Day two
My colleague Matt made scones and brought them in with clotted cream and strawberry jam - I nearly cracked! Luckily I have lovely colleagues who saved my scone for Thursday and it tasted all the better for having waited until I was back on other food.
Other than that again the food was good although I was starting to get a bit bored of having the exact same meal again and again. I was highly tempted to add some chilli to my evening meal but decided it would slightly defeat the object if I started messing with my standard fare.
Day three
Definitely bored of rice and beans but I still wouldn’t say it was a hardship. There is a strange comfort in knowing exactly what you’re going to eat. It made me think of the various information out there about our decision fatigue - The Minimalists podcast mentioned it in a recent episode and it seemed fitting timing. I pretty much wear a uniform of jeans and black top to work so by pre-planning my meals too I had much less to think about.
Overall
Not snacking really highlighted how often I normally eat, weirdly if I ignored the urge to eat for long enough - and had a cup of tea! - it tended to go away. I also craved sweet foods quite a lot, I normally eat loads of fruit and raw nuts, as well as the odd chocolately treat around 4.30-5pm so it was strange having mint tea as the sweetest thing in my diet.
While its not something I would want to do continuously it reminded me how good it is to just eat simple food. As a result I'm going to try to eat more vegetarian meals and only snack if I'm actually hungry. I'm also going to try and think more about my food decisions and which of them are a result of hunger vs habit like my automatically reaching for the chocolate after dinner.
That said that the scone on Thursday and that evening's G&T were both lovely!!
No comments:
Post a Comment