The Always Eat After 7 PM Four-Week Diet Challenge, Week 3: The Main Phase -- Featuring Super Carbs and a Weekly Cheat Meal!! #alwayseatafter7pm #intermittentfasting #healthy2020

The following post is brought to you by our sponsor, Always Eat After 7 PM. All opinions expressed below are solely my own based on my personal experience trying out the eating plan for a four-week period.

Throughout this month, I’m sharing my personal experience trying out the eating plan outlined in the new book Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight. Bestselling author Joel Marion is a Texas-based fitness expert and nutritionist who is debunking the myths underlying traditional dieting. Instead? He offers a simple, highly effective weight loss program. In my first post of this series, I shared my personal goal for this program: working toward healthier eating. So far, I’m doing pretty well with that goal! I’ve been following the Always Eat After 7 PM Main Phase the past week. The addition of Super Carbs at lunch and dinner has made the program much easier for me to follow. What can I say...I love carbs! However, I’m learning to appreciate carbs in a healthier, moderate way. 

As I shared in last week's post, I take morning medications that require me to eat something before each dose. That means I’m unable to fast completely in the mornings. So, I start my personal 10-hour intermittent fasting eating window at 1100 AM with an iced coffee with stevia and a low-carb vanilla protein drink added. This curbs my hunger until lunch around 200 PM. Because I start my eating window with this 140-calorie beverage, I simply adjust by eating fewer calories at lunch. I love this flexibility to make the program work for ME!!

With Super Carbs, non-starching vegetables, lean protein, and a bit of healthy fat or nut butter? I’m able to enjoy a wider variety of lunches and dinners. One of my favorite lunches is a couple of eggs scrambled with TONS of healthy veggies, served with diced potatoes sautéed in a bit of olive oil. Dinner might include pasta with veggies, lean protein, and a bit of butter or olive oil. For dessert, I typically have a couple of squares of dark chocolate or a piece of fruit. Before my eating window closes at 900 PM, I have a Pre-Bedtime Fat Burning Snack; my go-to is plain Greek yogurt sweetened with stevia and topped with fresh berries.

The best part of the Main Phase? Hands down, it's the weekly Cheat Day/Meal! Because I’m unable to exercise at a high level since my stroke, I’m allowed one Cheat Meal – including dessert – on Sundays. This week, I enjoyed a small cheeseburger with all the fixings, a small order of fries...with a scoop of my favorite ice cream for dessert. I didn’t feel guilty indulging, because this Cheat Meal is worked into my weekly program. This planned, special meal definitely gives me something to look forward to during the week. This one perk makes the Always Eat After 7 PM plan workable for my life in the long term! A couple of things I especially love about the Always Eat After 7 PM eating plan are:

• No Guesswork! The author provides a convenient Food List that outlines exactly which Proteins, Super Carbs, Fruits, Vegetables, and Fats to focus on…and those to limit. Marion then provides Meal Templates for each program phase that outline the building blocks for the daily 3-Minute Fat-Burning Morning Ritual, lunch, dinner, dessert, and evening snack. Easy peasy!

• Delicious Recipes created using Always Eat After 7 PM program guidelines. The recipe section at the back of the book features everything from breakfast to dessert...and most recipes are family friendly! One of my personal favorite recipes from the book is the comforting Cheesy Ground Beef Skillet. This one-skillet meal pairs economical ground beef with beans, rice, and cheese. It’s a healthy, filling meal that also comforting and delicious. Score!!

Based on surprising science, Always Eat After 7 PM debunks popular diet myths and offers readers an easy-to-follow diet that accelerates fat-burning and allows them to indulge in their most intense food cravings: eating the majority of your calories at night. The most challenging times to curb hunger are just before bed and in the morning. By following the Always Eat After 7 PM program, you have the most willpower to stay on the diet -- because you’re eating during the hours when you’re most hungry. This also puts you into both intermittent fasting – increasing testosterone and your metabolism -- while putting you into ketosis.  According to Marion:

Fact is, most diets are extremely narrow with regard to food choices and variety, and many even limit entire macronutrients altogether over the course of the entire program (think low-carb and low-fat diets). Three months with no carbs? No thanks! Such practices not only are entirely unnecessary, but make for a miserable, unsustainable experience.

Always Eat After 7 PM: The Revolutionary Rule-Breaking Diet That Lets You Enjoy Huge Dinners, Desserts, and Indulgent Snacks—While Burning Fat Overnight by Joel Marion is now available to purchase. Learn more about the book and how to purchase here.

Disclosure: This is a compensated series that details my personal experience following the Always Eat After 7 PM plan for a four-week period. All experiences described and opinions shared will be solely based on my personal experience following this eating plan.