I only hit 350 pounds because I was stuffing myself like a French foie gras goose

I could fool myself by making delicious and healthy meals on my French carbon steel pans using raw, whole, meats, vegetables, oils, herbs, and spices, only to consume an entire skillet of savory vegetable compote.

I was sitting in Idido's Cafe and Social House and a tall, skinny, guy was rewarding himself with a brick of breakfast crumbcake. Upon leaving, he noted that the heavy, sweet, cake, topped with big sugary crumbles, took him four days to finish.

I Have Experienced Extreme Portion Creep Over My Life of Eating

Let me make this simple and clear: when I was a kid, a snack-sized bag of potato chips and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich was a complete lunch. Then, in my 20s, lunch out came with the single-serve bag of chips that you get at cafeterias and the local Subway. Recently, I would have picked up a full bag of potato chips and down them over one afternoon or lunch.

America's going through a sort of inflation right now and I get it: lunch for me, over the last couple of years, could consist of a submarine sandwich and a full bag of chips. Yeah. The entire concept of portion was completely out of proportion to what a single serving is for breakfast—four over-easy eggs and five slices of bacon—or lunch—two tuna sandwiches and some fries or chips—to an afternoon snack—a bag of kettle chips and a pot of kimchi—and dinner—a double bacon cheeseburger with everything and fries from Bob & Edith's diner. If pizza, a whole pizza; if a sub, a whole sub; if a delicious pan of fresh veggies and chicken pan-fried in olive oil, then the whole pan.

You can't outrun the fork.

It's true. Now. I am following a strict 23:1 one-meal-a-day intermittent fasting diet with an important caveat: I will not stuff myself like a prize Thanksgiving turkey during that hour-long window. I will aspire to not consume more than 1,500 calories a day and will be comfortable with 1,100-1,300/calories if it makes more sense for me to not have to gorge myself to make the calories. There's always tomorrow. it's not my last meal; it's not my final meal. There will be food tomorrow.