You need to believe that you can change, which is equivalent to believing that your story is a quest, a metamorphosis. Get out of your normal world, and into the life-changing adventure. Because the physical game is so controllable, it is a good entry point to the habit of winning games. Behavioral decisions are affecting hormones in the population Hormones are affecting behavior, making people indecisive, hysterical etc. When you are in caloric deficit for a long time, leptin takes a nosedive, and fat loss stops. Hormones have physical, social and cognitive effects. Sugar and carbs are fine if you confine them to one day per week. Lower hGH leads to faster aging. Autophagy goes screwy. Longer daily fasts means more autophagy. Poor sleep (quality as well as quantity) associated with higher mortality, less muscle, more fat, irritability and cognitive problems. Eating carbs late at night causes more hGH release during sleep. (?) Eating carbs and protein before bed helps you sleep better. Cheat days will boost leptin. Overtraining leads to less T, less hGH, more cortisol. Having more hGH makes sleep better. hGH + good sleep reduces cortisol. Less than 5 hours sleep can reduce testosterone 15%. Less sleep also produces ghrelin, making you hungrier. Supplementing T and hGH together created three times as much fat loss as either alone. The increased circulation following exercise improves cognition. Irisin - A newly-discovered hormone. Promotes insulin sensitivity. Turns white fat into brown fat. Muscle contraxion > PDC1 > FNDC > irisin. Thyroid hormones (T3 and T4) and leptin - Prolonged caloric restriction leads to these dropping, lowering basal metabolic rate. Cortisol - Faster aging, worse sleep, lower sex drive, more belly fat. Endorphins inhibit cortisol. A lot of cotisol releases gonadotropin-releasing hormone, lowering sperm count and sex drive, while at the same time increasing gonadotropin-inhibiting hormone. Going on holiday a lot made people 30% less likely to die from heart disease in one study. On a see-saw with hGH Insulin - Makes you sleepy. When you eat a lot of carbs, each gram of carb comes to create a bigger insulin response. Eat enough carbs to enjoy them, including infrequent binges to create spikes, to result in overall better insulin sensitivity. Linked to prostate and pancreatic cancer. Impairs vasodilation: weaker erections. Don't drink fruit juice. The more sensitive your insulin is, the more your nutrients will be directed into building muscle. Supplements - Protein. Greens drinks (to give micronutrients as well). Fish oil. Vitamin D (connected to leanness, regulates leptin, regulates thyroid, lowers cortisol). Some supplement companies have 'GMP' stamp. This means 'Good manufacturing practice'. Look for this. Testosterone - Low testosterone makes you go with the crowd, not speak up, not take things on yourself. Men with high oestrogen and low T are 3 times more likely to be depressed. Luteinizing hormone can lower T. The more T you have, the more protein you can turn into muscle. Lifting weights boosted T up to 49% Eat fat. Fat is important to sex hormones. Polyunsaturates linked to sperm count. PUFAs also help circulation, and therefore erections. 30% lower on average than it was 20 years ago. Eating frequency - Breakfast is not particularly important. Eating breakfast increases your eating window (i.e. shortens your fasting window). A longer fasting window downregulates your hunger-response - you can deal with hunger better. So focus on having a fairly long fasting window; don't worry about the number of meals eaten during that time. Eating fewer meals probably makes you feel less hungry (leptin and ghrelin) and is definitely more convenient. Allegedly, people reduce the amount of food they eat by 30% without feeling any hungrier. Binging - If you get timing and quantity right, the rest doesn't matter. Leptin and ghrelin are influenced by the timing of eating. Restricting food causes leptin to drop, which causes thyroid hormones T3 and T4 to drop, which causes your metabolic rate to fall. By the same token, eating a lot of calories all at once will upregulate leptin, increasing you basal metabolic rate. This is the reasoning behind the once-a-week high-calorie day. Fasting - 20-fold increase in growth hormone in men after a 24-hour fast. Fasted training trains your muscles to recover quicker and use energy more efficiently. An exception to this is eating BCAAs before training. Insulin sensitivity is highest when you've fasted for 8 hours or more, and highest when you've exercised. By this logic, if you train in the morning without having eaten, then eat afterwards, you're training your body to burn fat in the mornings. When you're not eating, your body turns to its own cells for energy. Research at the University of Utah suggested that people who fasted just 1 day per month were 40% less likely to have clogged arteries. By feeding-up before the fast day, you hit the fast when leptin levels are high, i.e. when your body is likelier to burn fat. Plan Intermittent fasting every day, i.e. 16-hour overnight fast.