Below is a post I wrote to my group on single fuel days almost two years ago, and to this day, three and a half years into this plan, I still stand by this. I thought I should share it here as some of my readers may find it helpful. 8.25.16.
Why I did and still occasionally do, Single Fuel Days
Hey y’all, Drill Sergeant here wanting to touch on a well… touchy subject. Not really touchy, but there are some people who aren’t clear on this and don’t believe in it, and that’s perfectly ok. Single fuel days, or alternate fuel days, were life savers for me and are what ultimately got me to my goal weight.
See the beauty of THM is that the plan is only guidelines… not set in stone rules. There are no rules that say you must do this, or you must do that, or it has to be done this done this way and not that way. They give us the boundaries…. and we get to play… as long as we stay within those boundaries. How you play the game, is totally up to you.
When I started my journey 20 months ago, I was shocked at how quickly the initial 9-10 lbs went, then equally shocked that I stalled for almost 8 weeks. Stalls and plateaus are common when changing your eating habits. It’s an adjustment period that our bodies seem to need and sometimes no matter what we do, we cannot rush that process. Sometimes though, if it goes on too long, we can kinda nudge things along and that’s just what I did.
Eight weeks is a loooong time for an impatient soul such as myself…. and when I stalled for that long, I went looking for resolutions. I have the first THM book. The big mama that resembles a telephone book. All 675 pages of it. That’s a lot of… words…. to go through. But I braved it out and went looking. I found page 440-441 where the sisters briefly touched on the JUDDD method. They didn’t go into it in too much detail, but they said enough to pique my interest. Essentially it’s about alternating a high calorie day, with a low calorie day and I thought… ok… I can do that… just by alternating an S day with an E day. I know some of you are thinking well why not alternate E S and FP days… but you see too many FP’s will cause the same problem…. stalls… because your body isn’t getting enough fuels.
I opted for alternating S and E days, with at least one FP day thrown in a week. You see E days are naturally lower in calories than S days. How do I know this? Simple math.
- A fat gram is 9 calories.
- Fats are the fuel we ingest in S meals
- A carb gram is 4 calories.
- Carbs are the fuel we ingest in E meals
So S days are double the amount of calories as E days. See? Aren’t I smart? I figured yeah! I can totally work this into my eating and it actually simplified things for me.
There are other advantages to this.
- You don’t accidentally tandem fuel – if you’re only eating one fuel, no chance of that.
- If you get hungry before that 3 hour mark… go ahead and eat. You’re giving your body the same fuel, so you’re not forcing it to constantly switch it’s “fuel” utilization process, by giving it a different fuel.
- If you’re a slow burner… and some of us are…. and you actually don’t burn off the previous fuel in 3 hours, guess what happens when you add a different fuel? Yup tandem fueling, where you force your body to burn one and STORE the other. It cannot burn both.
For me eating this way was ideal. There are some of you who will say, oh I can’t do that! Of course you can. It’s a conscious choice and a decision to “just do it”. It forces you to be a bit more imaginative in your food selections, or you quickly can and will get bored to death… especially on E days. If you’re not the off the cuff- wing it type like me, then plan for it…at least the night before. Know what you are eating the next day, especially if you’re a working mama like me. Don’t be caught unprepared.
Now to be completely clear. I do not now, nor have I ever counted calories, since beginning THM. I have never forced myself to get through a day on 500 calories. For those of you who will research the JUDDD method, those are numbers that you will read about. It’s not about following that plan to the letter. Rather it’s doing the “spirit” of the plan, by alternating a higher calorie day with a lower one. E and S do that.
- I do not count calories.
- I do not fixate on numbers
- I am aware of what I ingest
- I am aware of my boundaries
Work the plan in whatever way works best for you. Just work it!
Drill Sergeant out!
