Review of the 5 Bite Diet

The thin, large-print, paperback book “Why Weight Around” (2007) by Alwin Lewis, M.D., encourages readers to follow the five-bite diet for weight-loss. This is a self-published book through Lulu "vanity" press and it retails for around $25.

Dr Lewis recommends the 5 Bite approach to eating:

• Drink as much as you want as long as the drinks are free of calories.
• Skip breakfast
• Have 5 bites of any food for lunch.
• Have 5 bites of any food for dinner.
• Eat at least one bite of protein each day.
• Take a multi-vitamin supplement every day

Dr. Lewis assures the reader that after three days on this diet, that you will stop feeling hungry because your body will learn to feel full on this smaller amount of food. This is commonly known to be a valid statement, as hunger ordinarily leaves one’s body after approximately 3 days of starvation such as during a water fast.  He says the the body continually recycles amino acids so very little daily protein is actually necessary when on a weight-loss program.

The five-bite diet involves voluntarily eating the way people are forced to eat after a gastric bypass, in order to give a dieter the benefits of stomach stapling without the surgery. As with many diet plans, the principle of the five-bite diet is to exercise portion control in order to limit your calorie intake. The program allows you to choose to eat any food you want, which can help prevent the feelings of deprivation that often lead people to quit their diets. The five-bite diet is not designed to be a permanent plan. Once you've reached your weight goal, you're advised to resume your normal eating habits.

Dr. Lewis says the volume of 5 bites is about the same as a regular size Snickers candy bar, and recommends that people on the diet eat two Snickers bars a day in order to familiarize themselves with how much 5 bites is.

Dr. Lewis, …just like almost all diet book authors … claims to have successfully followed his diet himself, and at 6 ft tall, he says that he lost from his high of around 190 lbs down to 137 lbs. He recommends that, for good health and a more attractive appearance, everyone should achieve an 18.5 BMI, which is at the bottom border between underweight and normal weight.

Dr. Lewis practices Internal medicine in Burbank, California where he apparently treats obese, overweight, and normal weight patients who have a BMI above 18.5, by putting them on the 5 bite diet. His website, theslimmingstation.com offers an online membership, for $50 per year, but at times this membership fee is $50 per month. It also offers 3 months of weekly one-on-one telephone coaching with Dr. Lewis for a $2,000 fee.

As part of my dieting hobby, I have experimented with the 5 bite diet. Twenty years ago, after my own gastric bypass, I personally experienced what post-gastric-bypass surgery eating is like, and was interested in running a comparison between that experience and the 5 bite diet.

My experimentation with the 5 bite diet occurred while my weight was in the middle of the normal weight BMI range. I successfully completed two weeks of 5 bite diet, and left it in the third week. The first week my weight dropped 7 pounds. While continuing to successfully follow the 5 bite diet rules, during the second week on the 5 bite diet, my body re-gained 5 of those pounds. I left the diet during the my third week, and upon returning to my normal 1,000 calorie diet, the remaining 2 pounds immediately returned, giving me a zero net loss. During a three year period, I repeated this experiment on several occasions, and each time I received similar personal results.

The calories in two 2 oz Snickers candy bars is a total of about 550 calories.   Therefore successfully following the diet would cause weight loss for almost everyone, especially if that person is obese. Normally, I maintain my current weight on about a 1,000 calorie daily average. My personal results were due to my normal-weight as a short, inactive, reduced-obese female over 60 years of age, with a very low calorie burn, and probably... during the diet, my body's metabolism shifted downward to compensate for the very-low-calorie-intake.  if I had chosen to follow the 5 Bite diet for a longer period, over time, it might have caused a net fat-loss. However, the 5 Bite Diet hasn't provided enough appeal to me personally to motivate me to follow through with testing that hypothesis.

My first experiment with this diet was several years ago, and as a part of that process, I purchased a year’s online membership for $50, and for a time, actively posted on Dr. Lewis’ site. As part of that membership I participated in several of the weekly chat sessions with Dr. Lewis himself.   Dr. Lewis was very committed to the 5-bite diet and enthusiasttic. He appeared, however, to be rather insensitive, very egocentric, and sometimes quite rude. When people achieved only modest weight-loss results, he was prone to imply they were lying about their compliance. He ignored some very basic dieting realities, and while "coaching" members, he was prone to state his opinion as fact, and make grandiose claims which (similar to marketing puffery) were backed up by little or no verifiable evidence.

My above-stated opinion was formed due to what I witnessed during my online participation,  As one personal example: I took exception to Dr. Lewis' blanket statements about HOW FAST EVERYONE ALWAYS loses weight after a Gastric Bypass, and advised him that this was not my own experience nor the experiences of many other women that I have personally witnessed. 

To explain my objection to his claims of fast weight-loss for EVERYONE, I told Dr. Lewis that after reviewing my own detailed  records (which I kept current during the first year after my own Gastric  Bypass), my personal weight loss during the first year after surgery ... while eating only about 500 calories per day ... averaged around 2 pounds per week... From 271 lbs down to a low of 159 (which for me was still "obese", because that number is 6 pounds above the bottom BMI border of my "Obese"  weight-range).  Providing him with this information and detailed records, did not cause any adjustment or alteration in his position, and in fact Dr. Lewis indicated to me that he believed that my statements were either inaccurate or less than truthful.

For those here who are interested, I'll add that following the 1st year after my Gastric Bypass, I had an almost immediate  regain into the mid 160s, as my ability to eat more calories increased. After about three years, while eating approximately an average of not more than 1,500 to 1,600 calories a day ... together with a great deal of active dieting to maintain my weight-loss,...  my weight crept back up into the 190s.

I believe that every diet works for someone. The 5-bite diet is an interesting concept, and I can see how it could be an effective weight-loss tactic for an obese person with an extremely busy schedule, especially if that person has latent anorexic tendencies and lacks a genuine interest in food.  At this point, I am not totally opposed to the 5-Bite Diet. It has many things which appeal to me, and there may be a future time when I will choose to try it again.

Below are two videos about the 5 Bite Diet.

The FIRST video is an interesting and positive interview of Dr. Lewis.

The SECOND video is an rather amusing negative diet review.

                                                    
The Alternate Day Diet (2008) by James Johnson M.D. is commonly known as Alternate Day Eating, JUDDD, or Johnson’s Up Day Down Day Diet. 

Dr. Johnson practiced as a New Orleans plastic surgeon. He appears to be another Diet Guru with an MD who, although knowing very little about nutrition, has discovered an eating gimmick or… different type of dieting method… that appears to work for some people.

Although his book was published in 2008, it is based on conventional wisdom, and states many “scientific facts” that have been proven false during the past decade or so.  Dr. Johnson still fervently believes in the cholesterol myth,  and he clearly states that a low-carb diet is unhealthy.

The scientific data used by Dr Johnson as a foundation of his Theory relates to some rat studies involving calorie restriction and longevity research, along with a bit of research involving the effects of short-term alternate day fasting on the human metabolism.

Dr. Johnson created a modified version of an alternate day fast, in which he ate 20% (a number apparently pulled out of thin air) of his normal maintenance calories on “down” days, and normal maintenance calories on “up” days. He quickly lost 35 lbs, and then started using it on his own patients (without ….as far as it appears in his book… any additional prior testing). Based on his own results, and reports of his patients, Johnson proceeded to write a book about it: The Alternate Day Diet (2008) by James Johnson, M.D.

The basic premise is to eat as much as you want one day--without intentionally overstuffing yourself--and to eat only 20% to 50% of your daily calorie requirement the next day. At least at first, Dr. Johnson suggests using prepackaged protein drinks or other packaged foods on your down days, so you can be sure of the calories. The reason for the spread between 20% and 50% has to do with weight loss: If you have a lot to lose, go with 20%. If you've reached your goal and you're maintaining your weight, 50% is fine.

The idea behind JUDDD, (and any kind of alternate day eating plan) is that it works because if one eats within reason during UP days, one's average calorie intake (which is your UP day total added to your DOWN day total) divided by 2, will be low enough to cause weight loss.

The percentage calculations are based on the standard 3500 calories = 1 fat lb Theory, which is used together with one’s BMR as determined by the Harris-Benedict formula, or one’s RMR as determined by the Mifflin formula. A small percentage for one’s activity factor is then added to that Base number.

 For example, an UP day of 2000 calories and a Down day of 500 calories, are added together and then divided by 2, therefore those two days have an average calorie intake of 1250 per day.

An advantage of alternate day eating, is that one eats “normally” every other day, and therefore, one is only dieting “half” of the time… i.e. every other day.

A disadvantage of alternate day eating, is that because one is not consistently eating small amounts, the amount of hunger one feels on “down” days does not decrease over time.

It is the nature of the human body to adapt….and the body’s tendency is to lower metabolism due to consistently reduced food intake. Although there have been a few short-term studies which indicate that metabolism rate is not affected by fasts of 48 hours or less, there have been no studies as to whether the metabolism rate is affected by the use of short-term fasting ... such as alternate day eating or intermittent fasting ... on a regular basis for lengthy time periods. Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t.

My first experiment with the Alternate Day Eating concept was in July 2006  when I experimented with following QOD.  A link to that diet book, along with several others mentioned in this article can be found here at DietHobby under RESOURCES Books & Tools. In my own case, alternate day eating plans worked better for me weight-wise during the first year that I experimented with them, and not as well in later years. However, this could have been due to a drop in metabolism as a result of my long-term maintenance, rather than due to any specific food plan, because in later years, this lowered metabolic rate has appeared within every food plan I’ve used.

Alternate Day Eating, is also known as QOD, or Eating Every Other Day, or Alternate Day Fasting, or Intermittent Fasting. It has elements in common with Calorie cycling or Zigzag dieting. All of these labels apply to the concept of varying the amount of caloric intake from day-to-day with a goal of keeping the body’s metabolic rate up while restricting calories. There is no long-term research indicating whether or not this way of eating is metabolically helpful, and the anecdotal evidence appears inconsistent..some people say they’ve tried it and that it helps their metabolism, other people say they’ve tried it and seen no benefit at all.

Many People who experiment with JUDDD, appear to also be familiar with QOD, and with various other popular Intermittent Fasting plans, such as EatStopEat, and Fast5. These Plans have much in common, and each of them can be used alone, or can be combined in various ways.

 During recent years, the various forms of Alternate Day Eating, including JUDDD, have become quite popular in various weight-loss forums, and numerous people appear to have achieved substantial weight-loss by using them as a calorie restriction method. I’ve personally conducted quite a few individual experiments with these plans, and with various combinations of these plans. Sometimes they’ve “worked” for me…. in that they brought me weight-loss. Sometimes they haven’t worked….in that I’ve failed to achieve weight-loss. I am still attracted to the concepts and open to the theories that surround them. I also still run personal experiments with these various ways of eating.

I’ve learned that when using the DietPower computer software program,   it is possible for me to make careful food choices and meet my own nutritional requirements while eating very low calorie. No matter what diet or way of eating I choose to use, I track all my food in that program every day, and along with watching my calories, it is fairly easy for me to see which food choices will ensure that my basic nutritional needs are met. For more information on this see my recent article: Records: My Past 8 Years, which shows a review of my past 8 years of food records.

You can read Dr. Johnson's marketing hype as well as learn details about how the diet plan works here at the JUDDD online site. I am opposed to buying supplements from weight-loss Gurus, and I advice against any such purchase.  However, I believe that the mechanics of just about every Diet works for someone, and that the Best Diet is whichever one that you personally can live with.

                     
I'm always interested in reading new dieting books
about new dieting plans, and unique ways to eat
in order to lose weight or maintain weight-loss.

Here in 2012, with regards to my dieting hobby,
I'm having difficulty finding anything that looks
"new and unique" to me.

I've been doing Google searches,
and searches of new publications at Amazon,
but nothing stands out.

My primary dieting method continues to be
logging all my food into my computer software program,
and counting calories…working to keep my calorie count
lower than my body's energy burn….
The simple measurement for this is …
If I'm gaining weight over time,
then I'm eating more calories than my body burns.

I've studied the issue of metabolism,
and come to the conclusion that any possibility of raising
one's metabolism by what one eats, or how one exercises,
is a crock of ****.

I'm still very interested in the Habit concepts set forth in The No S Diet,
and I continually research and experiment with possibilities
of implementing more Habit concepts in my own dieting life.

The last two years, I learned a great deal about low carb, zero carb,
zero wheat, and Paleo ways of eating.

For a few years before that, I investigated and experimented
with different types of fasting plans,
like QOD, Alternate Day Eating, Eat Stop Eat, Fast 5, etc.

I've spent a lot of time investigating Intuitive eating type diets…
i.e. listening to your body, eating when hungry, stop when full etc;
that "dieting makes you fat" and have come to the conclusion
that this advice is very wrong for people who are obese, or reduced obese,
and in fact, I believe that this type of diet
(which is a diet that is allegedly not a diet)
is the VERY WORST of all the many diet's
I've ever investigated, tried, or experimented with…
INCLUDING things like the cabbage soup diet, human growth hormone,
hypnosis, acupuncture, Beverly hills diet, Cambridge diet,
the cookie diet, slim fast, weight-loss supplements etc, etc, etc..

Of course, during my lifetime, I've also belonged to all of the major
diet clubs and organizations, like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig,
Nutrisystem, TOPS, Overeaters Anonymous and on and on and on..

This year, 2012, I'm not finding any books or clubs or diets
with concepts that are new and unique, or interesting to me,
and right now, I'm finding that kind of sad.

My hobby with dieting is still full-steam-ahead, because I'm
very busy with this DietHobby website, with my DietHobby YouTube channel,
and with the diet forums and other dieting websites that I frequently visit.

Still, right now I'm missing reading about new and interesting concepts,
and experimenting with them.
My current weight-loss maintenance simply involves a recycling of
dieting concepts that have worked for me before, even though I'm
rather bored by many of them.

Keeping my calories as low as possible is crucial,
and although I'm been having great success with my diet,
my body keeps fighting my weight-maintenance efforts.
Despite all my low-calorie and exercise efforts,
year after year, as I age, my weight keeps gradually creeping up. 

I'm cheered by the fact, that as long as I continue to keep on with my efforts,
even if this creep does continue,
as an elderly person, my life probably won't be long enough
for that process to return me to obesity. 

So, this past couple of months….
besides being really, really busy,
I just haven't found a lot of things worth talking about,
that I haven't already written about here.
So check out the archives, and read up on my past articles.

Eventually, I'm going to figure out the next step for my Dieting Hobby,
and when I do, you'll be the first to know.

During an online discussion of fasting in a forum I frequent,
one of the participants wrote:

"I don't think fasting works for everyone. ..
some people find that they are so hungry the day afterwards
that they eat more that day to compensate for the fast.
I suspect that, for people like this, fasting is simply not a helpful tool.

I've talked to lots of people about fasting
...which is a common practice here in India...
and I've never run across someone who found it difficult
and was hungrier the day after who ever really got used to it."

Based on my own intermittent fasting experience..which is extensive...
and my observations of others,
I tend to agree.

Although intermittent fasting has sometimes been useful to me as a maintenance tool,
my body has never become accustomed to it,

I have to be EVEN MORE CAREFUL to consciously moniter my food intake while doing this,
because I am always more hungry during for a day or two following a fast,
no matter whether the fast is 19 hrs, 24 hrs, or 36 hrs,
and if I left it up to the desires of my body, I would always overeat after a fast.

Of course, if I overeat the day BEFORE a fast,
I'm not as hungry as usual at the very beginning of a fast,
because my body is still digesting the food from the day before.
However, this does NOT mean that fasting is beginning to reduce my desire for food,
and I am always more hungry during the following day or two.

It isn't how hungry I am at the beginning of a fast that is predictive of overall success.
It is how hungry I am during the day or two AFTER a fast, when I return to eating.

Anyone with a tendency to have binges..
...by which I mean short unrestricted, uncontrolled high calorie eating episodes...
must watch and moniter their subsequent food carefully,
or intermittent fasting will simply become a "binge-fast" cycle...

In time, when it becomes extremely difficult (almost impossible) to fast,
this pattern can easily transform itself into a cycle of "normal eating & bingeing".
This "normal eating-binge" pattern is also a major difficulty
many very obese people have when following a "vanilla" No S Diet plan
and...in my own experience, and my observation of others...
this is NOT ALWAYS self-correcting...even after a lengthy trial period.

I enjoy trying out different Diets, and my personal style is to "carve out my own path". Therefore,  I'm usually involved in some type of dieting Experiment-of-One.

"Good Calories Bad Calories", by Gary Taubes, published in 2007. is an excellent book, however, it is about 500 pages long with more than 100 reference pages, and was written primarily for medical professionals.

I’ve read it at least 5 times, and I still haven’t absorbed it all because it is really hard. I have a doctorate in law, with an extensive history in legal research, but I still found it to be difficult reading.

The new book by Taubes, "Why we get fat and what to do about it", (2011) was written geared to people like me…those who are not medical professionals.  It is 250 pages and is a far easier to read. Although it isn't what I would call a quick read. This is the book that DietHobby is now featuring in BOOKTALK

This year, I am experimenting with Low-Carb because I have not yet found a Way of Eating to maintain my weight-loss that I enjoy enough to continuing doing for the rest of my life.

Low Carb is one of the few ways of eating that I have very little personal experience with. My body desperately wants to regain its lost weight, and maintenance takes constant vigilance. I’m hoping that low-carb will help eliminate some of my food cravings, as well as some of my hunger.

I’ve also spent a lot of time experimenting with Intermittent Fasting, and some of that was by using the 24 hr fasting method suggested by Brad Pilon. in his e-book, "Eat Stop Eat".  I own that book as well; have read it thoroughly several times; and think it is probably the best book around that addresses Intermittent Fasting at this point in time.

I will probably do more experimentation of Intermittent Fasting in the future. Neither Calorie Counting, Low-Carb or Intermittent Fasting are mutually-exclusive. A 24 hr fast is one way to further reduce insulin, and many low-carb people use it for that purpose.

My primary purpose for Intermittent Fasting has been to reduce my calories for up to one to three days a week, in order to drop my calorie averages. For me, the primary difficulty with Eat Stop Eat, or any Intermittent Fast, is not keeping my calories low on a fast day. I can do that. On Fast days my practice is to eat dinner only, around 350 to 400 calories, with no snacks after dinner.          

However, on “normal” days, the days before and after an intermittent fast, I have great difficulty eating only normal amounts, and not compensating by eating more food than my normal calorie allotment, and sometimes those fasts will trigger binge behavior for me. This might not be the case IF I were eating low-carb, since it is the sugars --refined carbs, and starches—complex carbs that allegedly trigger those cravings and binges.

Low-carb eating is different for everyone, andon pages 204 and 205 of his new book, WWGF,Taubes clarifies his position on this matter.

“The fewer carbohydrates we consume, the leaner we will be.
This is clear. But there’s no guarantee that the leanest we can be
will ever be as lean as we’d like. This is a reality to be faced.

As I discussed, there are genetic variations in fatness and leanness
that are independent of diet. Multiple hormones and enzymes affect
our fat accumulation, and insulin happens to be the one hormone
that we can consciously control through our dietary choices.
Minimizing the carbohydrates we consume and eliminating the sugars
will lower our insulin levels as low as is safe,
but it won’t necessarily undo the effects of other hormones….

This means that there’s no one-size-fits-all prescription
for the quantity of carbohydrates we can eat and still lose fat or remain lean.

For some, staying lean or getting back to being lean might be a matter
of merely avoiding sugars and eating the other carbohydrates in the diet,
even the fattening ones, in moderation; pasta dinners once a week,
say, instead of every other day.

For others, moderation in carbohydrate consumption might not be sufficient,
and far stricter adherence is necessary. And for some, weight will be lost
only on a diet of virtually zero carbohydrates, and even this may not be
sufficient to eliminate all our accumulated fat, or even most of it.

Whichever group you fall into, though, if you’re not actively losing fat
and yet want to be leaner still, the only viable option…
...is to eat still fewer carbohydrates, identify and avoid other foods
that might stimulate significant insulin secretion…and have more patience.
(Anecdotal evidence suggests that occasional or intermittent fasting
for eighteen or twenty-four hours might work to break through
these plateaus of weight loss, but this, too, has not been adequately tested) “