When author and Zen priest Dan Zigmond mentions that he has written a volume about the Buddha'due south diet, he is oft met with disbelief.

"A mutual reaction was that Buddha must take had a terrible diet, considering he looked so overweight in all of the statues that everyone sees of him," said Zigmond, who along with Tara Cottrell co-authored the new book Buddha'southward Diet: The Aboriginal Art of Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind . "If y'all go into Chinese restaurants and lots of places in the West, there are statues that show this overweight figure. But it'southward a Western misunderstanding. In countries where that prototype comes from—mostly China and Japan—people empathise that the Buddha is someone else entirely."

Zigmond, who is besides a Tricyclecontributing editor, and Cottrell make it a bespeak to bring upward the Buddha'due south slim appearance in their book considering they discovered that almost all of his beliefs about food and dieting take held up to scientific inquiry.

"I've always been interested in food; I like to cook, and I'm a vegetarian," Zigmond said. In 2014, Zigmond, who is the Director of Analytics at Facebook, briefly left the tech earth to work for a startup devoted to nutrition and health. "I was surrounded past people who had made food and health their whole career. Ane colleague shared with me a study that looked at mice that had been restricted to eating only during certain hours each day. [Eating this way] had provided some protection against all of the unhealthy consequences of a bad nutrition."

Reading the study was a revelation to Zigmond—and made him remember his time living in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand more than than 20 years earlier when he was volunteering at a nearby refugee camp. "The monks had like rules near when they could swallow," Zigmond said. "Like a lot of people, I was not very happy with my diet or my state of wellness, so I decided to give information technology a endeavor. And I actually loved this way of eating."

At the monastery, Zigmond learned that the Buddha had only one steadfast rule almost eating in his teachings.

"It is kind of a strange rule," Zigmond admitted. "The monks basically ate whatever they wanted, which was whatever the local people gave them on their begging rounds, just only inside certain hours." Traditionally, monks eat only betwixt dawn and apex and fast for the balance of the day.

That approach to eating was consequent with the Buddha'due south other philosophies. "It was a Middle Way, then that on the one paw, his followers wouldn't be also focused on food, and on the other hand, it would allow them to sustain themselves and nurture their bodies."

Upon farther research, Zigmond realized that it made scientific sense to restrict eating to only nearly 10 to 12 hours a day. "If you lot think back to what it was like to be a man being in the earlier stages in our evolution, our digestive systems and our metabolisms didn't take to work all the time because nutrient wasn't available all of the fourth dimension," he noted. "There's no reason for our metabolism to work 24/7 or even 16 to xviii hours a 24-hour interval. Considering until this age of refrigeration and food on demand, there's just no style we could have eaten at all hours of the day and nighttime."

Merely of course, nosotros do now live in a culture that seems to revolve around food. Zigmond says that completely altering your eating schedule is a possible, albeit daunting, task. "I do call up that similar so many things in life, it just takes practice," he said. "It was liberating in a way, to follow that rule and just focus on other things besides food."

Zigmond's Tips for Changing Your Approach to Food

However feel similar changing your eating habits is a bit out of reach? Here are Zigmond's suggestions to get started:

Start pocket-sized
 It's important to piece of work your way downwards to a meal schedule that suits you. "Get-go by cut out eating very belatedly at night," Zigmond said. "Then gradually begin reducing and then that you lot are merely eating ix hours a day, which is what I do now."

Counterbalance yourself regularly
 This tip might brand many of you flinch a trivial. "In a way, we hope that weighing yourself regularly makes it less important rather than more than important," Zigmond said. "Your weight does fluctuate quite a bit depending on the twenty-four hours or even on the weather. If yous weigh yourself only occasionally it's very difficult to get an idea of what'south happening. Past making information technology a office of your routine you can get a sense of the larger trend."

Conform your schedule accordingly
Don't let meetings or vacations throw yous off. "If for some reason you accept an early flight to catch and have to eat earlier than normal, just have your terminal repast before too," Zigmond recommended.

Let yourself a cheat day
Remember, it's non cheating if information technology's role of your diet plan. "We do recommend that y'all allow yourself a cheat 24-hour interval, a 24-hour interval where you don't follow a strict schedule," Zigmond said. "There'due south fifty-fifty reason to believe that is healthy to your body because it prevents your metabolism from adjusting as well much to a restrictive style of eating."

Don't exist intimidated
Starting something new is often the hardest role of creating lasting alter. "Like many things, it probably sounds harder than information technology is," Zigmond said. "When you lot start to make these adjustments yous realize that you don't have to eat so many times."

Buddha's Diet: The Ancient Fine art of Losing Weight Without Losing Your Listen is available from Running Printing on Sept. half-dozen.

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