Stephanie (Napa Valley, Ca) on 10/10/2013

8-Hour Window

Good news, there's an easy fix! The easiest way to cure Food Addiction is to create an 8-hour window each day in which to eat. This is much easier than it sounds, as you will see when you try it. The problem with eating often is, each time you eat, your body responds with spikes in glucose, requesting more spikes in glucose, becoming a cyclical hunger signal, making you want to eat more, creating the cycle characterized as "food addiction" or "compulsive over-eating".

The key is getting back in touch with your body's natural rhythms and ability to burn fat, which is what your body will do quickly, by just following a few simple guidelines.

If you are eating in a constant state, your body will be forced to remain in a constant state of digestion, and never burn fat. The feeling of burning fat is what your body and brain are missing out on, which is the most energizing and calming feeling your body can experience in a sedentary state. This can be done easily every day, by putting off your first meal of the day, and eating your last meal as early as possible, thus, the 8-hour eating window.

The 11am-7pm timeframe is the best way to do this. If you can eat dinner before 7pm each night, and hold off on eating breakfast until 10:30 or 11am, you will allow your body to flow into a state of "autophagy", which means "eating itself", referring to burning stored fat for energy. If you have never tried this, you will be shocked within a few days at how much better you feel by letting your body "catch up" with the extra calories you have consumed over the years, and the weight will start falling off almost instantaneously.

Try to eat at least 3 meals in the 8-hour period. And if you want to lose weight, in addition to feeling amazing, just calculate calories by multiplying 10 x (your weight). So if your weight is 200lb, you would eat 2, 000 calories, if you weigh 160, it would be 1600 calories, etc. By the way, mental clarity is another side-effect of eating within an 8-hour window, so get ready to solve all your problems!

The key is to drink non-calorie beverages and water outside of the 8-hour window. Black coffee, blueberry iced-tea(unsweetened), and enjoy 3-5 glasses of water to keep the engine runnin' and help your system continue to burn stored fat.

Remember, no matter what shape your body is in, your body is INCREDIBLE. It is aslo the most valuabe instrument you will ever own, and if you just tweak a few things in your eating patterns, you will see just how quickly your body will respond to curing itself.

Remember to enjoy yourself while you cure yourself-- feel free to have ice cream during your 8-hour window, this is not a diet, it's an awesome lifestyle that will change your life forever!

Side note: If you decide to try this, DON'T tell anyone (other than your doctor). Believe it or not, people will try to sabotage you (maybe even the person sitting next to you right now), so keep this as a gift for yourself. Make something up like "I don't feel good" or "I'm just don't feel like it" if people start harrassing you to eat. Then go do something nice for yourself like take a bath, or listen to favorite music, or go on a bike ride, but DON'T explain yourself to ANYONE. (Learning that you don't need to "explain yourself" to someone is another amazing gift for you! ) If people ask why, "I don't know" is always a good, easy, vague response. Either way, you need to fire your eating partner, even if it's just you.

P.S. I lost 16 pounds in 4 weeks with this, and I still ate plenty of ice cream!