Have you ever heard of the warrior diet? It is a form of intermittent fasting that is gaining a lot of momentum for its promises of weight loss and better bodily functions. But is the hype real or not? I sat out to find out for myself and did the diet for 30 days straight without deviation (or just a little bit, as you will read further below).
But if you don’t know the warrior diet, fear not, as it is possible to explain in just a few lines. The warrior diet was created by Ori Hofmekler, a former member of the Israeli Special Forces. In 2001, he published a book titled The Warrior Diet – Switch On Your Biological Powerhouse – For Explosive Strength, High Energy and a Leaner, Harder Body.
In short, the warrior diet is a type of intermittent fasting that goes beyond the traditional 16:8 (16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of an eating window). The warrior diet is basically a 20:4 intermittent fasting in which you fast for 20 hours and can eat during a 4-hour period every day.
Basically, by limiting the time you can eat, you end up eating less calories even if you feel like you’ve eaten too much during those 4 hours. Essentially, you can eat anything during your feasting window, but it is important to keep in mind that eating junk food and sugary ingredients will hinder your weight loss journey even if you do intermittent fasting.
Fully Explained Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss
If you want to know more details about the warrior diet, check out our complete guide to the warrior diet here.
My 30-Day Warrior Diet Journey – How it Began
First of all, whenever you decide to change your eating habits, there must be a reason behind it. You should have a goal in mind so that you know when you are getting closer to your goal, achieving it, or straying away from it.
My goal with the warrior diet was, honestly, curiosity. I have done something similar before where I ate only broccoli and blueberries for the warrior diet but during 7 days, not an entire 30 days – I must tell you straight away not to do it as your macros and vitamins will get increasingly deficient after a week.
Obviously, my second goal was everybody’s main objective when starting a new diet: to lose weight. So, according to my scale at home (which we know is not the most accurate in the world, but it is helpful), these are my numbers when I began the diet:
- Weight – 94.8 kilos (209 pounds)
- Body fat – 15.3%
Those are the two most important numbers if you are looking to lose weight as, sometimes, losing weight might mean losing muscular mass, I will also provide more insight on how that changed over the 30 days.
How it Began?
I decided, right after Easter, that I would begin my 30-day challenge of the warrior diet. On a Tuesday night I had my last late meal and began fasting the day after.
Due to social events, I planned on having my 4-hour feasting period to be during the later hours of the day.
Every day, for the next 30 days, I was allowed to eat whatever I wanted between 16:30 and 20:30 (4:30pm and 8:30pm).
I have read somewhere can during your fasting period, you can also eat a few low calorie snacks such as carrots and cucumbers, but I thought that was counterproductive with all the benefits that proper fasting has on your body.
The maximum I allowed myself was to drink water or a zero-calorie beverage. No food of any kind was consumed outside that 4-hour window.
How Did it Go During the 30 Days?
Honestly, the entire thing was easy physically. Overall, I know I can surpress my hunger by drinking lots of water or simply doing sports (yes, I am one of those that are not hungry at all after running or playing football).
Below is a small account of how it was week by week.
1st Week
The first week was probably the hardest of them all. After all, you are shocking your body into deprivation from one day to the next for no apparent reason. It is those first few days that you are constantly reminded that there is food in the fridge, but you cannot reach out and simply grab it.
The most difficult for me in the first week was the weekend. First, without working, I had extra time to think about food instead of writing articles for BOXROX. Harder even was social gatherings, brunches, or lunch with friends from out of town. And when I did go out, I wouldn’t drink anything besides water after 20:30 – my friends would look weird at me.
2nd Week
The second week was a breeze and gave me the kind of feeling that made it all worth it. Feeling energetic and not hungry at all, I developed a plan to stay away from home while other people in the family were having lunch: I would go for a run.
This way, I was not tempted by the smell of food, burning extra calories with the run, and even not getting hungry at all as I simply don’t feel the hunger after doing cardio – I do feel thirsty, so that is where the water bottle became my best friend in aiding my weight loss.
How to Reduce Hunger While Dieting
It was also during my second week that I began pondering doing OMAD (one meal a day) at least once during this challenge to see if I could handle.
3rd Week
My body adapted so easily to the restricted hours of eating that, without realising, I shortened my feeding window more than once. Although I could eat until 20:30 in the evening, I would not feel hungry after 20:00 and would simply stop eating around that time.
By not having lunch, you also have a lot of extra time on your hands and your mentality is so tuned to losing body fat that you begin pushing yourself harder to get fitter and be proud of the results. This led me to join a local gym only 10 minutes away from my house.
In other words, during my lunch break, I could go for a quick workout and come back running or cycling. Some days I would go back to the gym in the evening and change my training schedule appropriately.
Last Week
The fourth week and last few days of the 30-day challenge of this warrior diet was as expected: incredibly easy. So easy that I did go up on my one-meal-a-day goal during the last week not once, but twice. The OMAD further decreases your eating window to just 1 hour a day, meaning you can have one big meal a day and fast for 23 hours – I did that twice in the last 10 days of my warrior diet without having any kind of trouble whatsoever.
Results of Doing the Warrior Diet for 30 Days
This is what you’ve been looking for, no? Let’s get down to business then. I did the warrior diet for 30 days and you want to know how that affected me so that you can have some expectations in case you decide to do it for yourself too.
When I first began, 30 days before, these were my numbers:
- Weight – 94.8 kilos (209 pounds)
- Body fat – 15.3%
After 30 days of doing the warrior diet, these were my numbers:
- Weight – 91.4 kilos (201.5 pounds)
- Body fat – 14.6%
According to my scale at home, my fat-free body weight went from 80.3 kilos to 78.1kg.
This means that, in terms of fat only, I lost 2.2 kilos (4.8 pounds).
Of course, these impressive numbers, and believe me they are impressive, were not the result of only doing the warrior diet for 30 days. As you may have read above, I also began being more active, running often and going to the gym sometimes twice in the same day.
But this is the power of challenging yourself and sticking to it. Not only you try your best to get good results, you go above and beyond what you initially have decided and see that you can push yourself to better outcomes.
Pros and Cons of the 30-Day Warrior Diet
Although I did lost body fat, and not that much muscle mass, of course there are pros and cons to doing this kind of fitness/health challenge.
Pros
- Weight loss
- Fat loss
- Improves your mental strength
- Shows you can achieve a fitness goal if you set yourself out to do it
- Feel enegetic even under low calorie consumption
- Overall feeling of accomplishment
Cons
- Tough first few days trying to get used to it
- Muscle mass decreases
- Not social friendly
- Not easy if you like snacking
- Difficult if you have never tried intermittent fasting before
And there you have it, that was my account on doing the warrior diet for 30 days straight, with some days doing just one meal for 1 hour.
If there is one thing I would change now is regarding new research that has come to light that says doing intermittent fasting for longer periods (daily for 2 weeks) ultimately lowers your metabolism, which is the opposite of what you want, regardless of your fitness goals.
Are you planning on doing it yourself too? Good luck and keep your eyes on the prize!
Read More: Intermittent Fasting vs Prolonged Fasting
image sources
- Warrior diet PRO: The 5th on Pexels
