Eating Rules for the “ON day”

• Eat pretty much i.e intuitive eating, what you feel like during the ON day, but limit yourself to one dessert serving and avoid snacking on candy or cookies.
• Learn to listen to your body and what types of foods it is hungry for. Keep a healthful selection of fruits and vegetables in the house.
• Eat a big breakfast, and eat at least 700 mg of sodium during breakfast on the ON day; more sodium if you feel weak or washed out.
• Apart from eating a salty breakfast, you should generally avoid salty foods on the ON day, since they will ramp up salt excretion by your kidneys and make it harder for them to adjust to the lower salt intake during your OFF day.
• As a general rule, you should not be eating more than 1,800-2,400 calories i.e caloric restriction, (man) or 1,200-1,800 calories (woman) during your ON day if you want to lose weight, but the optimal amount will depend on your age and activity level.

  Go to the Daily Energy Requirement Calculator in the Tools section of the EatQOD website. Look up your energy requirement based on your age, height, weight, gender, and level of activity. Say this is 1,900 calories per day. To lose weight you need to reduce this by about 40%, so the average intake should be about 1200 calories/day (0.60 x 1900 = 1100). Now multiply by 2 (2 x 1200 = 2400). This (2400 calories) is how much you need to eat every two days. Now subtract the 400 calories that you will be eating during your OFF day to get 2000. So if your steady-state energy requirements are 1900 cal/day, you should be able to eat up to 2000 calories during your ON day and still lose weight, because your average calorie intake will be only (2000+400)/2 = 1200 calories. Smaller, non-active women weighing about 130 lbs have a problem - their energy requirement is only about 1450 calories (couch potatoes). So they, especially, need to eat an average of only about 1000 calories per day or less to lose weight. An alternative is to burn more calories by increased activity level (good for everyone, essential for this group).

• You should not be gaining more than 4 lbs, on average, between the morning and evening of your ON day. Avoid very large meals, or eating large amounts of fatty or rich food. Be very careful to guard against binge eating – if this happens, stop eating QOD immediately.
• Try not to eat much of anything after about 7 PM – this may lead to symptoms of gastric reflux.