Roast chicken for breakfast? Oatmeal for dinner? LIFE asked the experts to weigh in on the new weight-loss fad. By Joanne ChenIt’s diet advice that’s so old, it predates Slim-Fast shakes and Jane Fonda tapes: Have your big meal at noon and eat light at night. Americans ate this way hundreds of years ago, as farmers and pioneers, when work was close to home and lunch was a family affair, not a sandwich at your desk. Generally, the Spanish and Italians still do it, and they’re in better shape than Americans are. But we like having things our way, and the idea of a big steak-and-potato dinner still feels like a reward at the end of a long day.
Nevertheless, almost eight years ago, Tricia Cunningham, a working mom in Pittsburgh, who at 27 weighed close to 300 pounds, had a food epiphany: She realized she felt fuller and more satisfied throughout the day if she ate her dinner at breakfast. Four months after she implemented an upside-down strategy for mealtimes, she had shrunk to a size 9; today, she weighs 130 pounds. Now, along with nutritionist Heidi Skolnik, Cunningham has compiled her secrets in a book called The Reverse Diet.
In a crowded category—type in “diet” on Amazon.com, and you’ll get at least 167,000 results—Cunningham’s plan has piqued the nation’s curiosity. The book’s splashy roll out in January landed her on
Today and in
People and
Us Weekly, as well as on countless local news shows across the U.S. In addition to stirring a debate over the logistics of pulling it off (could you stomach pasta for breakfast?), the Reverse Diet offers much food for thought: Could a diet shift your shape
and revolutionize your social life? How might rearranging your meals throw off the rhythms of your day? LIFE quizzed Cunningham, along with health and culture experts, about the secret of dieting and the larger meanings we attach to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The Experts
TRICIA CUNNINGHAM, the coauthor of The Reverse Diet; MICHAEL SMOLENSKY, Ph.D., the coauthor of The Body Clock Guide to Better Health; MEHMET OZ, M.D., a professor of surgery at Columbia University; DAVID KIRSCH, the author of The Ultimate New York Diet and a fitness trainer; HERB MEISELMAN, Ph.D., a psychologist of consumer food habits; MARGARET VISSER, the author of The Rituals of Dinner; KATY SPARKS, the director of culinary research at Great Performances, in New York City
LIFE: Tricia, tell us about the day you realized you’d be happier eating “upside down.”
CUNNINGHAM: I’d spent my life yo-yo dieting. Then one day—August 28, 1999, at 9:30 a.m., to be precise—I was getting ready to watch a sporting event with friends. I had something to eat with my morning cigarette. Suddenly, everything started spinning. I thought my heart was going to burst. I never smoked again, and I didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day, nor for three days after. I was afraid food would cause another panic attack. On the fourth morning, I realized I couldn’t keep not eating, and I was famished, so for breakfast, I ate the dinner I’d prepared for my children the night before. That’s when I had my reverse moment. I looked in the mirror and instead of hating what I saw, as I usually would, I decided I could change it. I had to reverse course, to change my life, and to do it, I would flip-flop everything.
LIFE: That’s a dramatic approach. But is there any scientific explanation to Tricia’s eating patterns?
SMOLENSKY: There’s a biological explanation. Chronobiologists, those of us who study how our circadian rhythms affect our health, know that calories consumed in the evening don’t necessarily equal those consumed in the morning. That’s because after we have a night’s sleep, a greater proportion of the calories consumed in the morning tends to be given off as heat and [used] for immediate energy needs, so there isn’t likely to be much excess to be stored as fat. In the evening, our body is more efficient: You don’t burn off as much of what you eat, so you tend to accumulate more fat.
LIFE: One of the toughest things about this diet is that many of us just aren’t hungry in the morning.
MEISELMAN: It’s worth remembering that breakfast wasn’t always a part of the day. Even now it is the meal most often skipped. In the Middle Ages, they didn’t eat breakfast at all. It was a meal recommended for sick people, small children, and the elderly. The main meal of the day was the midday meal at 11 o’clock, but it started getting pushed later and later, and [breakfast] eventually appeared because we couldn’t go on for that long without food.
KIRSCH: In principle, this diet makes a lot of sense, and some of my clients have tried it—but they don’t find it practical. The reality is, I don’t want to eat steak in the morning.
LIFE: Even if you enjoy having steak and eggs, who has time to cook dinner in the morning?
SPARKS: I can’t imagine getting the children to school, getting to work, and making lamb chops. And as someone in the restaurant business, that would be a really tough transition to make. It would also cause a shift in the service schedule. The [kitchen staff] would have to start the day at 2 a.m.!
CUNNINGHAM: It’s not a hassle, though, when you plan ahead. I prepare everything the Sunday before. It just takes two hours. You get some Tupperware containers and family packs of chicken. Grill them up, and put them in the freezer, and just defrost them throughout the week. I also found if you eat a small dinner, you’re guaranteed to be hungry in the morning. My family looks forward to it: We have a big meal early and talk about our goals for the day.
LIFE: What about people who get hungry at night?
SMOLENSKY: Actually, we wouldn’t have such a craving if we had enough sleep. More and more Americans are staying up later and getting far less sleep, 20 to 25 percent less than their bodies require. Staying up late affects the hormones that control the appetite center of our brain. One hormone, leptin, which shuts off our desire to eat, normally peaks in the middle of the night. But if we’re not sleeping, its secretion is depressed, and our appetite center doesn’t turn off. Appetite-stimulating hormones are also produced when we’re sleep-deprived. This gives rise to the immediate craving for late-night carbohydrate-rich snacks, which often continues the next day.
LIFE: Tricia, don’t you ever arrive home at 6 p.m. and want something more than oatmeal?
CUNNINGHAM: Definitely. That’s what I like about the diet. It allows for a lot of flexibility. You don’t have to follow the menu exactly. The key is to eat light. I went to Olive Garden the other day and ordered some plain pasta with a small amount of Alfredo sauce on the side. At McDonald’s, they have yogurt and fruit. When I’m away on business, if there’s a dinner buffet, I make a salad and store the healthier items, like turkey, pasta, and salad, in the hotel room mini-fridge for breakfast the next day.
OZ: Anyone who wants to succeed on a diet has got to use it as an opportunity to eat better. Whatever diet you choose, your biggest enemy when eating out is the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes. By that I mean the bread basket and the dessert. I’ve found that if you eat your salad last, you won’t crave dessert as much. I suppose if you had breakfast foods for dinner, you probably wouldn’t want dessert as much either. We’re not accustomed to having dessert after eggs.
LIFE: Given that meals dictate the rhythms of the day and how we socialize, how could eating “upside down” affect the way we live?
VISSER: People gather in the evening, and people need to get up and out of the house in the morning. I’m just speculating, but if the meal is short at the only part of the day when people actually have time to linger, then there will be less socializing on the whole.
CUNNINGHAM: Our household now does things a little differently. We get up early for breakfast. And when we’re all home, we have a small dinner. It’s great because there are fewer dishes to wash in the evening, and we get to play board games afterward or spend time with friends.
LIFE: What would it take to change the way we eat, as a country—whether it’s according to Tricia’s diet or another regimen?
MEISELMAN: It’s difficult. I have doubts that people will reverse the way they’re eating now. It takes more than one diet book. It takes something bigger. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. As society industrialized, people ate four to five times a day. Besides meals, they’d have a snack with coffee or tea to get them through the day. A couple of generations ago, in Sweden and Finland, they instituted a national hot-lunch school program in the middle of the day, and eventually adults began eating that way too.
LIFE: So how do you make this diet work?
OZ: What’s really important is eating a meal in the morning with fiber and protein. This keeps you satiated. Problem is, most people eat a breakfast that isn’t conducive to anything but weight gain. By this I mean pancakes and muffins. So if you eat exactly as you did before, you won’t lose weight. If you have 1,000 calories worth of pancakes and you sit on your bottom for the rest of the evening, you won’t lose weight.
CUNNINGHAM: Making yourself focus on eating healthier is important. I did cut calories, because burgers and leftover fries won’t work for breakfast. But it helps when your family is on the plan together, including your spouse. You take care of the kids together, you pay the bills together, why not eat the same way together? My husband went from 265 to 205 pounds. My older daughter lost 35 pounds. I’ve been eating in reverse now for years, and I know I will never be 300 pounds again.
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