What I Eat When I’m Allowed to Eat
A 500-Pound Man’s 3.5-Day Refeed Window — The Clean Day, The Dirty Day, and Why Both Count
Article Two of the Sumo Sized Ginger Six-Month Fasting Chronicle
TL;DR: Five weeks in. 500 pounds. Fasting 3.5 days a week, eating the other 3.5. This article is the honest food log ; a clean day, a dirty day, the protein pudding recipe, and the research-backed reason one bad meal doesn’t torch the whole protocol. Full data spreadsheet linked at the bottom.
One more day until I can eat again.
You’d think planning meals while you’re still fasting would make the hunger worse. It doesn’t. There’s something about mapping out what you’re going to eat, actually thinking it through, that quiets the voice in your stomach. Not silences it. Quiets it. Enough to get through the day.
There’s actual science behind this. Researchers call it episodic future thinking, the act of vividly projecting yourself into a future scenario. Studies published in Appetite and the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who imagined specific future events before eating consumed fewer calories and made better food choices, even in environments stacked with temptation. [1] The brain partially satisfies the craving through the mental rehearsal of it. You think through the meal in enough detail that your body gets a fraction of what it’s looking for, and the urgency eases.
I didn’t know the term, episodic future thinking , when I started doing it. I just knew it worked.
Before I show you what I eat, I need to say something I mean completely.
I have been big my whole life. Over 300 pounds since I was 13 years old. I played basketball. I had relationships. I had decades of living a full life inside a body that most people would call a problem. I never saw it that way. I loved being who I was.
I’m doing this because I want to know something I’ve never known. Not because I was broken. Not because I hated myself. Because I’ve been one version of me my entire life and I want to know what another version feels like. That’s it. That’s the whole reason.
So if you’re big and you’re happy and you’re healthy — stay there. Chase your joy, not somebody else’s number. You only get one life. Live the one that fits you.
This one is the one I chose.
Here’s what that choice looks like when it’s time to eat.
The typical American diet is engineered for speed and convenience, not for your body. French fries, white bread, processed snacks — fast, cheap, and almost completely empty of anything your body can actually use. The mental battle of changing how you eat isn’t about willpower. It’s about fighting a food system built to make the wrong choice the easy choice.
I found that spreading eating across every single day worked against me. My brain and my stomach became adversaries. Fasting half the week gave me control back. But that only works if the days I’m eating actually count.
So here’s what counting looks like for me.
The Clean Day
Rotisserie chicken. Eggs. Ground beef. Broccoli. Two protein puddings.
That’s it. That’s the clean day.
The chicken is skinless because the skin is where most of the fat hides and I’d rather spend those calories somewhere more useful. The eggs are scrambled — eight of them — because eggs are one of the most complete foods you can put in your body and they cost almost nothing. The beef is 80/20 and it goes in the same pan after the eggs come out. The broccoli gets soft in the microwave because I’m not running a restaurant. The protein puddings are the anchor of every refeed day I have, and I’ll give you the recipe in a minute because people keep asking.
This day feels good. Not just morally — physically good. My joints don’t swell. My energy is steady instead of spiking and crashing. Going into the next fast from a clean day is easier than going in from anything else. Your body knows the difference between fuel and noise.
The clean day is the template. It’s what the protocol looks like when everything lines up.
The Protein Pudding (Non-Negotiable)
Every refeed day, one to three of these:
- 2 tablespoons chia seeds
- 1 packet sugar-free pudding mix
- 1 scoop Nutrex no-sugar protein powder
- 10 oz whole or 2% milk
Mix it, let it sit 10 minutes, eat it. That’s it.
The chia seeds are the point. Twelve grams of fiber per serving. If you do nothing else I describe in this article, do the protein pudding. Fiber is the thing most people obliterate when they eat high-protein, and the consequences show up in ways your digestive system will remind you about loudly. The chia seeds fix that. Make the pudding.
The Dirty Day
I was out. Friends, road, a day that belonged to real life instead of the protocol. And real life in America runs on McDonald’s.
Four McDoubles. Four McChicken patties, just the patty. Large fries. Ten-piece nuggets.
I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen. I’m also not going to pretend I regret it. We were out, the food was there, the company was good, and McDonald’s was the only thing available for miles. Part of living your life while losing weight is understanding that the two things are not mutually exclusive. You don’t get to opt out of being a person just because you’re on a protocol. And the truth is, even if a restaurant had been right there, a McDonald’s run with people you care about is part of a life worth keeping.
Here’s what I did instead of spiraling: I counted it. Wrote it down. Looked at what it actually cost against what the week as a whole was doing. And what I found is that one McDonald’s run inside a significant weekly deficit is still a deficit. The math held.
What I don’t do is pretend it was a clean day. It wasn’t. The sodium was high, the refined carbs were real, and going into the next fast from a dirty day is harder than going in from a clean one. Your body carries it differently. You feel the difference.
But different isn’t destroyed. It’s just different.
Why One Day Doesn’t Break the Machine
Every fasting blog on the internet shows you the perfect plate. The clean proteins, the measured vegetables, the spotless breakdown. What they don’t show you is the Tuesday you were sitting in a car with people you care about and McDonald’s was the only thing for fifteen miles.
I’m showing you both because both are real.
Research from Drexel University’s Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Sciences found something that runs counter to the shame spiral most people fall into after a bad day: people who responded to dietary lapses with self-compassion — treating themselves the way they’d treat a friend who stumbled — reported better mood, better self-control in the hours after the lapse, and were more likely to stay on their protocols than people who responded with guilt. [2] Guilt, it turns out, is not the motivator we think it is. Self-compassion is.
What that looks like in practice is exactly what I described. You count the McDonald’s day. You write it down. You don’t hide it, and you don’t decide the whole thing is ruined because of one afternoon. You eat the fries, you account for them, and you come back to the chicken and the eggs tomorrow.
The goal isn’t a perfect week. The goal is a week that ends in a deficit. A week that you finish. A week you can repeat.
If the clean day is an A and the dirty day is a C, then a week that contains both still passes. You don’t fail out of a protocol because of one meal. You fail out because you decided one meal meant the whole thing was over.
It isn’t. Count it and keep going.
A Note on Evening Hunger
One thing I hear from people starting any kind of fasting protocol: why is nighttime the hardest?
It isn’t weakness. It’s biology.
Research published in the International Journal of Obesity found that the hunger hormone ghrelin runs on a circadian clock, with levels measurably higher in the biological evening than the biological morning — around 15% higher during fasting, 10% higher even after eating. [3] Your body is wired to want food at night. That’s not a character flaw. That’s your endocrine system doing exactly what evolution built it to do.
Knowing this doesn’t make the evening easier, but it changes what the hunger means. It’s not a sign you’re failing. It’s a wave with a predictable schedule. It peaks, and then it passes.
The Full Data
I keep a complete log of every refeed day — every meal, every macro estimate, every high-sodium mistake, every win. If you want the numbers, they’re all in the linked spreadsheet. [HERE]
The article is the story. The spreadsheet is the proof. Use whichever one helps you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is a refeed window? The refeed window is the 3.5 days of eating that follow each 84-hour fast. It’s not a cheat period and it’s not unrestricted junk food. It’s deliberate eating — high protein, fiber-focused, whole foods when possible — designed to fuel the body and preserve muscle while the weekly deficit does its work.
Why not just eat clean every day instead of fasting half the week? Because that didn’t work for me. When I spread eating across every day, my brain and my hunger worked against me constantly. Fasting half the week gave me clear on/off structure. Some people do better with daily eating. I do better with the binary. Find your version, not mine.
What do you do the day after a dirty refeed day? I write it down, I don’t beat myself up, and I come back to a clean day next. The research backs this up: guilt after a lapse makes adherence worse, not better. Self-compassion makes it better. So I count it and I move on.
Do the protein puddings really matter that much? Yes. Chia seeds are twelve grams of fiber per two tablespoons, and fiber is the first thing that disappears when people eat high-protein. The puddings are also filling enough to reduce the urge to overeat at the start of a refeed. Make them.
Doesn’t eating a lot on refeed days cancel out the fasting? No, but I understand why it feels that way. The math of a weekly protocol is different from the math of a single day. Three and a half days of no eating creates a deficit that three and a half days of eating — even eating a lot — doesn’t erase. The McDonald’s day is in the spreadsheet. The weekly deficit still held.
Should I try this? I’m not a doctor, a dietitian, or a coach. I’m a 500-pound writer who designed a protocol that works for him and is documenting it publicly so other people can see one honest version of what this looks like. Before you try anything extreme, talk to your doctor. This is my story, not your prescription.
What’s in Article Three? Exercise. Specifically: how I exercise at 500 pounds when walking hurts. My doctor told me to cut back to three sessions a day and focus on standing more throughout the day rather than chasing volume. No gym. No walking required. It’s the article I’ve been most fired up to write.
About the Author
Joseph Riley Long is a writer, podcaster, and the Sumo Sized Ginger — a 500-pound man from Buckley, Washington five weeks into a six-month public experiment in fasting half the week, every week. He is the author of SPORE and the co-host of Jackasses with AI: Burn the Beige. He writes honestly, he documents everything, and he does not pretend the bad days didn’t happen.
This is Article Two of six. Article One — the protocol, the math, and the moment a fictional character made him stop eating — is here: I’m a Sumo Sized Ginger Who Fasts 3.5 Days a Week. Here’s What Actually Happens.
The full six-month data log lives here: Sumo Sized Ginger Diet Log — Google Sheets. It updates when the data has earned it — not daily, not on a schedule, but when there’s enough there to be worth your time.
If this hit, drop a clap, follow the series, and tell me what you want me to dig into next month.
Citations
[1] O’Neill, J., Daniel, T.O., & Epstein, L.H. (2016). Episodic future thinking reduces eating in a food court. Eating Behaviors, 20, 9–13. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9188833/
[2] Drexel University Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Sciences. (2024). Self-compassion and dietary lapses. Appetite. https://drexel.edu/news/archive/2024/January/Can-Practicing-Self-Compassion-Help-People-Achieve-Weight-Loss-Goals
[3] Morris, C.J., et al. (2019). Ghrelin is impacted by the endogenous circadian system and by circadian misalignment in humans. International Journal of Obesity. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6424662/
End of Article Two. Next: Exercise Without Walking.
