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The only truth I’ve ever found to be correct about dieting is that I know nobody who:
(a) consistently eats only one meal a day
and
(b) is fat
This seems to be the universal cheat code. It’s very hard to eat more than 2,200 calories in a meal (especially a home-cooked meal, obviously you can go all-out at Buffalo Wild Wings or Denny’s or whatever). If you don’t drink full-sugar soda, aren’t an alcoholic and don’t snack, you can pretty much eat whatever you want for your one meal a day and stay slim.
I'm a short thin man who drinks a lot of alcohol and also has lots of sugary drinks alongside that. I can't subsist off one meal a day. there is no way anyone else can either. What kind of meals are you eating that you can fit 2,200 calories on one plate?
It’s fairly simple to do by eating large portions of fatty meat.
Of course eating a kilogram+ of brisket in one sitting takes getting used to.
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Hi, I've been doing it my entire adult life too. Well over a decade. That said I don't drink sugary drinks (if I do have soda I have diet) and I don't drink a lot of alcohol. What I had for dinner last night was:
2 pies, one Cajun pork, one chicken and camembert,
Some garlic potatoes (blend garlic, parsley, olive oil and Dijon mustard together then pour the mix over par boiled potato slices, then leave for a few hours so it soaks in.) I ate about two potatoes last night.
Half an iceberg lettuce, half an onion, and a cucumber with a splash of olive oil and apple cider vinegar,
A tub of ice cream (about half a litre, it was Ben and jerry's bikkie something, they were on clearance.)
The night before last I did drink though, so my diet was a little different (I don't trust myself to cook when I'm drunk, and I usually don't do my morning workout when I'm hungover). I had:
1 Sarah Lee strawberry coulis cheesecake,
A tub of ice cream.
I don't have a particularly strenuous morning workout, but I've found if I eat less than last night and do it I feel like passing out come afternoon.
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I've subsisted on one meal a day plenty of times while not losing weight. I'm average height and average build (5' 9", around 160 lbs most of the time). Eating around 2K Calories in one sitting isn't that tough if you plan for it. It's frighteningly easy to get that many Calories by accident with unhealthy foods like french fries or crisps, but if you're trying to eat healthy, it's probably going to be a heavy, fatty meal that will take some acclimating to, but my experience was that the acclimation was surprisingly quick; just a couple days. The really tough part is going around 23 hours every day in a row without eating. This, too, is a case where the acclimation was surprisingly quick. Normally, I would get hungry 4-6 hours after the previous meal, with the hunger getting worse over time; I found that the hunger stopped increasing pretty quickly and, in fact, went back down over time with just a couple days of experience of that 23 hour fasting cycle.
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I think that's the whole point. If you only eat one full meal a day (and OP says nothing about small meals or snacks) then you're not going to be socking down 2000+ calories, so even if all you do is move around your house, you are not going to put on weight. Unless your "one meal" is McDonalds burger and fries and a shake or the likes, then you can easily consume 2000 calories in a sitting.
It's similar to the 'advice' I got from a cardiologist when arguing over "why aren't you on a diet?" "I am, it's just tough to stick to it!" "Well the hunger strikers managed it".
Eat nothing (literally, starve yourself to the point of death), lose weight, simples!
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Agree 1 meal feels on the more extreme side of the spectrum. I’ve always gone with skipping breakfast and not snacking. In addition, supplement with protein shakes as my bigger issue is making sure I get enough protein to match amount of activity.
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That McFlurry is doing most of the work. As is the ranch. Fries, burger, and a soda barley reaches 1,500. That's not even enough to satiate a normal weight adult.
If you just get a normal Big Mac combo it's a lot closer to 1000. Something, something, shrinkflation, but military rations have roughly the same caloric content as such a meal for a reason.
(Aside: is the GP's comment actually a typical McDonalds order? I thought everyone just ordered the standard combos, which are half that amount of food; that's like 20 bucks worth of food.)
If you can deal with the slight time disjunction between finishing your meal and feeling full, it is. Which is not something people really talk about all that much, but once you realize it's happening to you it's relatively easy to deal with... and on second thought, this inherent bug in human hardware (the lag time between "is full" and "feels full") with respect to weight control is probably what semaglutide fixes knowing nothing else about it.
The main driver of McDonald’s profit is actually frappes. It’s unusual for someone to get a combo plus a McFlurry, but that’s because McDonald’s would offer to upgrade the combo to have a McFlurry instead of a coke. A standard combo isn’t that much above a typical meal’s worth of calories, but, well, people get fat. Sometimes cartoonishly. Burger, fries, and a shake isn’t that unusual of a meal for a fat person.
Wait, their employees actually offer to do that? I've never had a McDonald's employee even offer to upgrade my combo to a large, let alone replace the drink with ice cream- I guess they just don't want my money that badly because I probably would more often if they both advertised that was possible and wasn't going to be adding another 30% of the price of the meal.
And to think I believe the height of cleverness is swapping out the fries for a cheeseburger or the Coke for a coffee; clearly, I've been ordering wrong all my life.
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That's the problem, though; it won't satiate you, but burger/fries/soda can make up a lot of the calories you are supposed to consume. My info may be outdated, but women should eat 2000 calories or less a day, and men should eat 2,500 or less a day (depending on age, activity level and so on).
So if you have 1,500 calories in one meal, for a woman that leaves you with 500 calories for the rest of the day and a man will have 1,000. If you're consuming sugary 'coffee' drinks, sodas, etc. you can hit those limits, and that's without eating anything solid. And you'll be hungry because your calories were liquid/one fast food meal, so you will eat more to feel full. Excess calories consumed = weight gain.
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For dinner last night (at home) I had tuna carpaccio I bought from the deli with (buttered) sourdough and some iberico ham I had left in the refrigerator, gazpacho with some extra olive oil and garlic bread, steak and french fries (the latter air fried, but tossed in some Schmalz/goose fat I bought a few weeks ago and had kept, a cheese course with some brillat savarin and some excellent Cornish yarg and crackers and then an espresso and a piece of shortbread.
I’d guess that’s about 2000 calories, plus a glass of wine and a cappuccino in the morning puts me over my own sedentary maintenance (which is maybe ~1800 cals) but I went for a long run and will eat less today. To me, feasting once a day is always preferable to boring healthy food throughout the day.
That's a gorgeous meal, and within the calorie limits, but you know what the dietitians will say: too much fat! too much salt! cheese bad! not enough veggies! 😁
I made a rocket salad and some capers with the carpaccio 😂
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Your argument is compelling, and furthermore I am impressed by how strongly someone who is not a guy at all can be such a Type Of Guy.
I cook for a customer with very high standards haha.
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How is that one meal? that is two at best. You can't call eating a meal over multiple hours one meal. That is two meals at least.
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