The When Diet:

An Excerpt From The When Diet

I never imagined I would write a diet book.

I just wanted an optimized personal eating strategy so I could lose and then maintain my weight. I am still amazed at the number of theories that point to this optimized dieting strategy and how easily I can lose and maintain my weight. For these reasons, I decided to write this book to help others reach and maintain their weight loss goals.

As I began to study this dieting problem, my objective was to develop a diet in which I could eat as much as I wanted and still lose weight. It quickly became evident that an all carrot and celery diet would allow me to eat as much as I wanted and still lose weight. Being on this all carrot and celery diet would be miserable, so I modified my objective to maximize my eating enjoyment, while still being able to lose weight. For instance, I receive more satisfaction out of eating dessert than I do from either eating a second helping of dinner or drinking a soda. Thus, when deciding among seconds, soda and dessert, I should choose dessert. Since I teach classes in stochastic processes, it was natural to ask if there is some regular period when a person could break every day and assume some independence between the days. The answer was obvious. The day should begin when a person wakes up for the day and ends just before the person wakes up the next morning.

With the period set, I recognized that my hunger resets while I sleep. That is, if I go to bed full, I am hungry within a couple of hours of waking up; and if I go to bed hungry, I am hungry within a couple of hours of waking up. Thus, the prior day’s eating has very little impact on my hunger for the next day. Consequently, the last late night snack is just adding calories to my day and does not decrease my appetite on the following day. Thus, eating late should lead to weight gain.