The ordinary week — Breakfast isn't the problem

The next three chapters are the method, and the method is small, because most of the work has been done by stopping the fresh start. This chapter is what you eat instead of a diet.

Three meals. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, at roughly the same times each day. Not because three is magic, but because regular meals are the structure that appetite comes back inside, and because the NHS puts "don't skip meals" on its short list for the plain reason that skipping leads to snacking. If you're not hungry at breakfast, have something small. But have something.

What you'd feed a friend. That's the whole of the content. Mostly ordinary food, some vegetables, enough to be satisfied, a pudding when you'd give a friend one. You know how to do this. Chapter 12 said so. The knowledge was there the whole time, underneath the rules.

Nothing banned. No food is forbidden in the ordinary week, because a forbidden food is a rule, and a rule is what sets up the write-off. Biscuits exist in the ordinary week. They're eaten sometimes, as biscuits, and then dinner happens.

Don't finish the plate if you're full. The NHS line, and the only thing in this chapter that asks you to notice anything during a meal. Hungry at the start, enough at the end, and the plate is not the judge of either. Save the rest for tomorrow.

One list. Do the week's shopping from a list written when you're not hungry, with the three meals on it. This is the good half of Sunday night, the planning of food, without the bad half, which is the planning of restriction.

What it isn't. It isn't a diet with a friendlier name. There's no target, no count, no weigh-in, no day of the week. It isn't a licence to eat anything at any time, because the structure is three meals and the meals are what you'd feed a friend. And it isn't a weight-loss plan, though if you want to lose weight, the NHS route in chapter 16 is the ordinary week with a slow direction on it.

Expect three uneven weeks. Chapter 13 said why. The body has been restricted a dozen times and hasn't yet believed it won't be again. Some meals will be big. Let them be, and have the next one at the usual time. By the fourth week most people find the meals have found their size.