dollar_binI heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
what's your policy? eat breakfast? go hard for lunch? eat when you're hungry? and what were the noticeable results?
In the last 16 months I've lost about 60 pounds, mainly by a few lifestyle tweaks, one of which is adding breakfast to my day. My previous routine was to skip breakfast, have a big lunch, a huge dinner and then often a late night snack. My nutritionist suggested spreading consumption of food, particularly carbohydrates into more frequent, smaller episodes. So I have a small breakfast, medium lunch, small snack, medium dinner, and a dessert. For me, I found I was eating a lot less food but not actually feeling like I was dieting. I was able to cut my usual dinner portion almost in half without feeling too empty.
Breakfast doesn't have to be fancy, 30 g carbohydrates plus some fat and protein; say a small bagel with cream cheese or toast with peanut butter or fruit and some cheese.
A couple other things that worked for me:
1) Switching to a few low fat options, replacing half and half with skim milk in my coffee for example.
2) Measuring some portions out. I still eat nuts because they're a healthy source of fat but I can pack away 600 calories of cashews without blinking an eye if I'm eating from the can. If I buy a bag of nuts, I weigh out 1 oz portions into little snack sized ziplocks and throw those into the cabinet. I don't eat chips from the bag anymore, either.
3) Saving sugar sodas and fruit juices for the occasional treat. I try to limit a meal to 45 to 60 grams of carbs, a can of Coke has 39 g and it's all sugar. Fortunately, I like unsweetened iced tea and I'm tolerant of diet beverages, if I have a sugar soda it's usually on its own as a snack, not accompanying a meal.
4) Walking everywhere and not using the elevator. I started walking to and from the train station, plus one or two 10-15 minute walks in the middle of the day for a total of 45-60 minutes of walking a day.
5) Adding an extra 15 minutes of cardio and more weight lifting to my workout and an extra workout per week, going from about 2.5 workouts per week to 3.5.
dollar_binI heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
Tom that is awesome.
Indeed! And I bet you have a lot more energy now to play with your family.
Thanks fellas. I'm still about 30 pounds shy of my goal, but I'm feeling pretty good.
One more tip that was helpful for me: Keeping a food journal. It feels pretty lame at first but it really helped streamline my food intake. It's more for the initial stages, I haven't had to fill it out in ages now that I've re-trained my eating habits to my new regime.
breakfast wise, i always eat some kind of cereal, always a whole grain, usually with raisins (brush your damn teeth afterwards cause those lil bitches gave me cavities). my favorite post-breakfast is after ive eaten a big bowl of oatmeal. i can feel the warmth in my belly for hours...i honestly get a high off it
i dont mess with lowfat yogurt. delicious whole yogurt!!!
yogurt blended with pesto and lemon/mint= tadziki substitute/low fat dressing for spinach salad or coleslaw if you add vinegar... you can use it to zest up your lentil soup or marinate a chicken breast in that shit
yogurt blended with pesto and lemon/mint= tadziki substitute/low fat dressing for spinach salad or coleslaw if you add vinegar...
Wow...that sounds really good!
finelikewine"ONCE UPON A TIME, I HAD A VINYL." http://www.discogs.com/user/permabulker 1,416 Posts
Lost 25 Kilos withen the last quarter of a year. Strictly Lowcarb according to Atkins. That shit works like a charme.
I`m not only skinny but less tired and in general more active. Highly recommended.
When you wake up, drink some water w/ lemon and do cardio for 20 minutes/ Then eat breakfast. Eat snacks, have a balanced diet, walk when you can and take the stairs.
I can't comment at all on diet, but it'd be worth finding a type of exercise which you enjoy. I've been doing traditional Jujitsu for about 18 months, and have recently started BJJ, and its pretty fun and a good workout, particularly for core strength. Personally i'm no good at pushing myself gym wise, so I find this sort of excercise more beneficial.
Don't know if that helps, i'm just trying to say try and find something excercise wise which you properly enjoy, so that once you've lost the weight you'll keep doing it.
Lost 35 Kilos withen the last quarter of a year. Strictly Lowcarb according to Atkins. That shit works like a charme.
I`m not only skinny but less tired and in general more active. Highly recommended.
that shit is really real. i used to be mighty thick when i was younger -- i did the low carb in 2003 and lost 120 pounds in about 7 months. then i moved to california and gained half of it back (burritos). i just started at the beginning of january and have already lost 15 pounds.
finelikewine"ONCE UPON A TIME, I HAD A VINYL." http://www.discogs.com/user/permabulker 1,416 Posts
finelikewine said:
Lost 35 Kilos withen the last quarter of a year. Strictly Lowcarb according to Atkins. That shit works like a charme.
I`m not only skinny but less tired and in general more active. Highly recommended.
that shit is really real. i used to be mighty thick when i was younger -- i did the low carb in 2003 and lost 120 pounds in about 7 months. then i moved to california and gained half of it back (burritos). i just started at the beginning of january and have already lost 15 pounds.
There was a typo in my inital post. I lost 25 kg (50 pounds) not 35. That recipe of that cauliflower pizza looks great. I thinks I'll try it. Maybe I'll use celery instead of the cauliflower, I guess it might work out as well.
Cut out fried foods, fast food, soda, switch to lite beer (if you drink), take the stairs instead of the elevator, daily walks or runs, drink alot of water. Eat healthy snacks instead of junk food and for God sake DON'T TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF!!!
Cut out fried foods, fast food, soda, switch to lite beer (if you drink), take the stairs instead of the elevator, daily walks or runs, drink alot of water. Eat healthy snacks instead of junk food and for God sake DON'T TAKE YOUR SHIRT OFF!!!
But my office is on the 37th floor?
Alright, you can take your shirt off...nobody will see you.
The Slow-Carb Diet-Better Fat-Loss Through Simplicity
It is possible to lose 20 pounds of body fat in 30 days by optimizing any of three factors: exercise, diet, or a drug/supplement regimen. Twenty pounds for most people means moving down at least two clothing sizes, whether that's going from a size 14 dress to a size 10 or from an XXL shirt to a large. The waist and hips show an even more dramatic reduction in circumference.
By April 6, 2007, as an example, I had cut from nearly 180 pounds to 165 pounds in six weeks, while adding about 10 pounds of muscle, which means I lost approximately 25 pounds of fat. The changes aren't subtle.
The diet that I'll introduce in this chapter-the Slow-Carb Diet-is the only diet besides the rather extreme Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD) that has produced veins across my abdomen, which is the last place I lose fat. There are just ???ve simple rules to follow:
RULE 1: AVOID "WHITE" CARBOHYDRATES.
Avoid any carbohydrate that is, or can be, white. The following foods are prohibited, except for within 30 minutes of ???nishing a resistance-training workout like those described in the "From Geek to Freak" or "Occam's Protocol" chapters: all bread, rice (including brown), cereal, potatoes, pasta, tortillas, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating the aforementioned foods and anything else white, you'll be safe.
Just for fun, another reason to avoid the whities: chlorine dioxide, one of the chemicals used to bleach ???our (even if later made brown again, a common trick), combines with residual protein in most of these foods to form alloxan. Researchers use alloxan in lab rats to induce diabetes. That's right-it's used to produce diabetes. This is bad news if you eat anything white or "enriched."
Don't eat white stuff unless you want to get fatter.
RULE 2: EAT THE SAME FEW MEALS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat-loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. There are 47,000 products in the average U.S. grocery store, but only a handful of them won't make you fat.
Mix and match from the following list, constructing each meal with one pick from each of the three groups. I've starred the choices that produce the fastest fat-loss for me:
Proteins
*Egg whites with 1???2 whole eggs for ???avor (or, if organic, 2???5 whole eggs, including yolks)
*Chicken breast or thigh
*Black beans
*Beef (preferably grass-fed)
Pork
*Fish
Legumes
*Lentils (also called "dal" or "daal")
Pinto beans
Red beans
Soybeans
Vegetables
*Spinach
*Mixed vegetables (including broccoli, cauli???ower, or any other cruciferous vegetables)
*Sauerkraut, kimchee (full explanation of these later in "Damage Control")
Asparagus
Peas
Broccoli
Green beans
Eat as much as you like of the above food items, but keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place of french fries, potatoes, or rice.
Surprisingly, I have found Mexican food (after swapping out rice for vegetables) to be one of the cuisines most conducive to the Slow-Carb Diet. If you have to pay an extra $1???3 to substitute at a restaurant, consider it your six-pack tax, the nominal fee you pay to be lean. Most people who go on "low"-carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit because they consume insuf???cient calories. A half-cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a half-cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.
Eating more frequently than four times per day might be helpful on higher-carb diets to prevent gorging, but it's not necessary with the ingredients we're using. Eating more frequent meals also appears to have no enhancing effect on resting metabolic rate, despite claims to the contrary.
Frequent meals can be used in some circumstances (see "The Last Mile"), but not for this reason.
The following meal schedule is based on a late sleep schedule, as I'm a night owl who gives up the ghost at 2:00 a.m. at the earliest, usually with wineglass or book still in hand, ?? la heroin addict. Adjust your meals to ???t your schedule, but make sure to have your ???rst meal within an hour of waking. Meals are approximately four hours apart.
10:00 am - Breakfast
2:00 pm - Lunch
6:30 pm - Smaller second lunch
8:00???9:00 pm - Recreation or sports training, if scheduled.
10:00 pm - Dinner
12:00 am - Glass of red wine and Discovery Channel before bed
Here are some of my meals that recur again and again:
Breakfast (home): Scrambled Eggology?? pourable egg whites with one whole egg, black beans, and mixed vegetables warmed up or cooked in a microwave using Pyrex?? containers.
Lunch (Mexican restaurant): Grass-fed organic beef, pinto beans, mixed vegetables, and extra guacamole.
Dinner (home): Grass-fed organic beef (from Trader Joe's), lentils, and mixed vegetables.
Just remember: this diet is, ???rst and foremost, intended to be effective, not fun. It can be fun with a few tweaks (the next chapter covers this), but that's not the goal.
RULE 3: DON'T DRINK CALORIES.
Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened tea, coffee (with no more than two tablespoons of cream; I suggest using cinnamon instead), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk (including soy milk), normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. Limit diet soft drinks to no more than 16 ounces per day if you can, as the aspartame can stimulate weight gain.
I'm a wine fanatic and have one to two glasses of red wine almost every evening. It doesn't appear to have any negative impact on my rate of fat-loss. Red wine is by no means required for this diet to work, but it's 100% allowed (unlike white wines and beer, both of which should be avoided). Up to two glasses of red per night, no more.
RULE 4: DON'T EAT FRUIT.
Humans don't need fruit six days a week, and they certainly don't need it year-round. If your ancestors were from Europe, for example, how much fruit did they eat in the winter 500 years ago? Think they had Florida oranges in December? Not a chance. But you're still here, so the lineage somehow survived.
The only exceptions to the no-fruit rule are tomatoes and avocadoes, and the latter should be eaten in moderation (no more than one cup or one meal per day). Otherwise, just say no to fruit and its principal sugar, fructose, which is converted to glycerol phosphate more ef???ciently than almost all other carbohydrates. Glycerol phosphate p triglycerides (via the liver) p fat storage. There are a few biochemical exceptions to this, but avoiding fruit six days per week is the most reliable policy.
But what's this "six days a week" business? It's the seventh day that allows you, if you so desire, to eat peach crepes and banana bread until you go into a coma.
RULE 5: TAKE ONE DAY OFF PER WEEK.
I recommend Saturdays as your Dieters Gone Wild (DGW) day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. If I drank beer, I'd have a few pints of Paulaner Hefe-Weizen.
I make myself a little sick each Saturday and don't want to look at any junk for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat-loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function and conversion of T4 to T3, etc.) doesn't downshift from extended caloric restriction.
That's right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia. There are no limits or boundaries during this day of gluttonous enjoyment. There is absolutely no calorie counting on this diet, on this day or any other.
Start the diet at least ???ve days before your designated cheat day. If you choose Saturday, for example, I would suggest starting your diet on a Monday.
That's All, Folks!
If the founding fathers could sum up our government in a six-page constitution, the above is all we need to summarize rapid fat-loss for 99.99% of the population. Followed to the letter, I've never seen it fail. Never. When you feel mired in details or confused by the latest-and-greatest
contradictory advice, return to this short chapter. All you need to remember is:
Rule 1: Avoid "white" carbohydrates (or anything that can be white).
Rule 2: Eat the same few meals over and over again.
Rule 3: Don't drink calories.
Rule 4: Don't eat fruit.
Rule 5: Take one day off per week and go nuts.
$1.34 PER MEAL?
Andrew Hyde is community director at TechStars, a well-known start-up incubator in Boulder,
Colorado. He is also an Internet-famous big bargain hunter. I use "big" in both the ???gurative and literal senses: Andrew is 6'5" and 245 pounds. I should say that he was 245 pounds. In his ???rst two weeks on the Slow-Carb Diet, he lost 10 pounds and, perhaps more impressive, racked up incredibly unimpressive costs:
Total per-week food cost: $37.70
Average per-meal cost: $1.34
And this was including organic grass-fed beef! If he'd eaten a big salad three times a week instead of a few proteins, his weekly cost would have been $31.70. He repeated four meals:
BREAKFAST: Egg whites, one whole egg, mixed vegetables, chicken breast Mixed vegetables, peas, spinach (salad)
LUNCH: Mixed vegetables, peas, spinach (salad)
SECOND LUNCH: Chicken thigh, black beans, mixed vegtables
DINNER: Beef (or pork), asparagus, pinto beans
His exact shopping list was simplicity itself. The prices are the per line totals:
Getting these prices didn't require a degree in negotiation or dozens of hours of searching. Andrew looked for discounted items near expiration date and shopped at smaller stores, including a Mexican grocery store, where he bought all of his dried beans.
Just to restate an important point: Andrew is an active 6'5", 245-pound, 26-year-old male, and he exercised three times a week during his Slow-Carb Diet experiment. He's not a small organism to feed. He's also not unique in his experience.
Though you might not get to $1.34 per meal, his two-week experiment shows what thousands of others have been surprised to learn about the Slow-Carb Diet: it's damn cheap. The myth that eating right is expensive is exactly that: a myth.
THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: FRUCTOSE
Can fruit juice really screw up fat-loss?
Oh, yes. And it screws up much more. Not to speculate, I tested the effect of fructose in two tests, the ???rst during a no-fructose diet (no juice, no fruit) and the second after one week of consuming 14 ounces-about 1.5 large glasses-of pulp-free orange juice upon waking and before bed. The orange juice was the only thing distinguishing diets A and B. The changes were incredible.
Before (10/16, no fructose) and after (10/23, orange juice):
Cholesterol: 203 -> 243 (out of "healthy" range)
LDL: 127 -> 165 (also out of range)
There were two other values that shot up unexpectedly:
Albumin: 4.3 -> 4.9 (out of range)
Iron: 71 -> 191 (!) (out of range aka into the stratosphere)
Albumin binds to testosterone and renders it inert, much like SHBG (discussed in "Sex Machine") but weaker. I don't want either to be out-of-range high. Bad for the manly arts. If you said "Holy sh*t!" when you saw the iron jump, we're in the same boat. This result was completely out of the blue and is not good, especially in men. It might come as a surprise, but men don't menstruate. This means that men lack a good method for clearing out excessive iron, which can be toxic. The increase in iron was far more alarming to me than the changes in cholesterol.
Here is just one of several explanations from the research literature:
In addition to contributing to metabolic abnormalities, the consumption of fructose has been reported to affect homeostasis of numerous trace elements. Fructose has been shown to increase iron absorption in humans and experimental animals. Fructose intake [also] decreases the activity of the copper enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) and reduces the concentration of serum and hepatic copper.
The moral of the story? Don't drink fruit juice, and absolutely avoid a high-fructose diet. It doesn't do the body good.
TOOLS AND TRICKS
The Three-Minute Slow-Carb Breakfast (www.fourhourbody.com/breakfast) Breakfast is a hassle. In this video, I'll show you how to make a high-protein slow-carb breakfast in three minutes that is perfect for fat-loss and starting the day at a sprint.
Still Tasty (www.stilltasty.com) Not sure if it's safe to eat those eggs or those Thai leftovers? Tired of calling your mom to ask? This site allows you to search the shelf life of thousands of cooked and uncooked foods.
Personally I think all these strict diet guides are utter bullshit. Anyone I know who's gone on them experiences rapid weight loss which then slowly gets put back on. I mean, no disrespect to those who do it but most of the diets I see recommended just aren't healthy for the body itself.
Just eat regular sized meals at regular times, don't snack on fast food apart from the occasional treat, make sure you do some exercise most days even if it's just a brisk walk and, unless you've got a thyroid problem or the like, the weight loss should take care of itself.
I was well into this schitt for a few years, but it can get OTT and take it from me, a LOT of it is unnecessary - and lets face it, there's more to life.
There are a few simple rules to it if you wanna lose a bit:
1. Carbs (Bread, Potatos, Pasta, Rice etc) = energy. If the energy doesn't get used, it gets stored by the body for later (as fat). So cut out the carbs when you don't need em. Best one is cut all carbs from the last meal of the day - cause all you're doing afterward is just sitting on your ass watching TV anyway.
2. Sugar = energy. Again, if it doesn't get used, the liver converts it to fat. Stay the hell away from fizzy drinks altogether. Stick to water, or skimmed milk etc.
3. Portion size. If you wanna go hardcroe, divide your 3 meals into 6. This means that your body uses the majority of what you've eaten before the next meal and stores less.
4. Increasing metabolism. Green tea and spicy food speeds metabolism up which means you burn food faster, even when you're not doing schitt.
If you do these, you don't really need to excercise to notice the weight loss - but its an added bonus to increase fitness and metabolism.
Thats it in a nutshell. 1 & 2 are the staples. 3 & 4 are optional.
Not going to speak for myself because I need a lifestyle change (too many sweets related), but my wife has lost 30 lbs with just portion control. She eats Pizza, Ice Cream, Grilled Cheeses, etc. except she eats to a 1/4 to 1/2 of what she is given. Now if only I could have that kind of self-control.
The Winter is THEE WORST. I have warm weather activities and that shit is just not happening when it's 10 degrees outside and it gets dark when you come home from work.
I go to the gym pretty often and find that exercise classes keep me from slacking since I have to keep up with everyone. Cardio, strength and pilates classes are great and actually pretty fun. The classes at my gym are frequented by mostly women, and whenever we coerce a guy to join us, he's usually pretty surprised by the intensity of the workout.
You can trick your body into thinking it's full by eating things like carrots or celery which require a lot of chewing. My aunt gives kids a glass of water before a meal to make them feel more full so they eat less. You can use smaller plates so you can't fit as much food on them.
finelikewine"ONCE UPON A TIME, I HAD A VINYL." http://www.discogs.com/user/permabulker 1,416 Posts
Almond said:
I go to the gym pretty often and find that exercise classes keep me from slacking since I have to keep up with everyone. Cardio, strength and pilates classes are great and actually pretty fun. The classes at my gym are frequented by mostly women, and whenever we coerce a guy to join us, he's usually pretty surprised by the intensity of the workout.
You can trick your body into thinking it's full by eating things like carrots or celery which require a lot of chewing. My aunt gives kids a glass of water before a meal to make them feel more full so they eat less. You can use smaller plates so you can't fit as much food on them.
better eat celery, carrots contain more sugar and carbs than one might think.
Comments
Mythology
In the last 16 months I've lost about 60 pounds, mainly by a few lifestyle tweaks, one of which is adding breakfast to my day. My previous routine was to skip breakfast, have a big lunch, a huge dinner and then often a late night snack. My nutritionist suggested spreading consumption of food, particularly carbohydrates into more frequent, smaller episodes. So I have a small breakfast, medium lunch, small snack, medium dinner, and a dessert. For me, I found I was eating a lot less food but not actually feeling like I was dieting. I was able to cut my usual dinner portion almost in half without feeling too empty.
Breakfast doesn't have to be fancy, 30 g carbohydrates plus some fat and protein; say a small bagel with cream cheese or toast with peanut butter or fruit and some cheese.
A couple other things that worked for me:
1) Switching to a few low fat options, replacing half and half with skim milk in my coffee for example.
2) Measuring some portions out. I still eat nuts because they're a healthy source of fat but I can pack away 600 calories of cashews without blinking an eye if I'm eating from the can. If I buy a bag of nuts, I weigh out 1 oz portions into little snack sized ziplocks and throw those into the cabinet. I don't eat chips from the bag anymore, either.
3) Saving sugar sodas and fruit juices for the occasional treat. I try to limit a meal to 45 to 60 grams of carbs, a can of Coke has 39 g and it's all sugar. Fortunately, I like unsweetened iced tea and I'm tolerant of diet beverages, if I have a sugar soda it's usually on its own as a snack, not accompanying a meal.
4) Walking everywhere and not using the elevator. I started walking to and from the train station, plus one or two 10-15 minute walks in the middle of the day for a total of 45-60 minutes of walking a day.
5) Adding an extra 15 minutes of cardio and more weight lifting to my workout and an extra workout per week, going from about 2.5 workouts per week to 3.5.
http://brianstpierretraining.com/index.php/nutrition-101/
Indeed! And I bet you have a lot more energy now to play with your family.
krull up in this bitch!
Thanks fellas. I'm still about 30 pounds shy of my goal, but I'm feeling pretty good.
One more tip that was helpful for me: Keeping a food journal. It feels pretty lame at first but it really helped streamline my food intake. It's more for the initial stages, I haven't had to fill it out in ages now that I've re-trained my eating habits to my new regime.
breakfast wise, i always eat some kind of cereal, always a whole grain, usually with raisins (brush your damn teeth afterwards cause those lil bitches gave me cavities). my favorite post-breakfast is after ive eaten a big bowl of oatmeal. i can feel the warmth in my belly for hours...i honestly get a high off it
i dont mess with lowfat yogurt. delicious whole yogurt!!!
you can use it to zest up your lentil soup
or marinate a chicken breast in that shit
CANT WAIT FOR MY BASKETS TO GET STARTED
Wow...that sounds really good!
I`m not only skinny but less tired and in general more active. Highly recommended.
Don't know if that helps, i'm just trying to say try and find something excercise wise which you properly enjoy, so that once you've lost the weight you'll keep doing it.
that shit is really real. i used to be mighty thick when i was younger -- i did the low carb in 2003 and lost 120 pounds in about 7 months. then i moved to california and gained half of it back (burritos). i just started at the beginning of january and have already lost 15 pounds.
it's all about this:
cauliflower pizza
even if you aren't dieting, it's amazing --
There was a typo in my inital post. I lost 25 kg (50 pounds) not 35. That recipe of that cauliflower pizza looks great. I thinks I'll try it. Maybe I'll use celery instead of the cauliflower, I guess it might work out as well.
But my office is on the 37th floor?
Alright, you can take your shirt off...nobody will see you.
It is possible to lose 20 pounds of body fat in 30 days by optimizing any of three factors: exercise, diet, or a drug/supplement regimen. Twenty pounds for most people means moving down at least two clothing sizes, whether that's going from a size 14 dress to a size 10 or from an XXL shirt to a large. The waist and hips show an even more dramatic reduction in circumference.
By April 6, 2007, as an example, I had cut from nearly 180 pounds to 165 pounds in six weeks, while adding about 10 pounds of muscle, which means I lost approximately 25 pounds of fat. The changes aren't subtle.
The diet that I'll introduce in this chapter-the Slow-Carb Diet-is the only diet besides the rather extreme Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD) that has produced veins across my abdomen, which is the last place I lose fat. There are just ???ve simple rules to follow:
RULE 1: AVOID "WHITE" CARBOHYDRATES.
Avoid any carbohydrate that is, or can be, white. The following foods are prohibited, except for within 30 minutes of ???nishing a resistance-training workout like those described in the "From Geek to Freak" or "Occam's Protocol" chapters: all bread, rice (including brown), cereal, potatoes, pasta, tortillas, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating the aforementioned foods and anything else white, you'll be safe.
Just for fun, another reason to avoid the whities: chlorine dioxide, one of the chemicals used to bleach ???our (even if later made brown again, a common trick), combines with residual protein in most of these foods to form alloxan. Researchers use alloxan in lab rats to induce diabetes. That's right-it's used to produce diabetes. This is bad news if you eat anything white or "enriched."
Don't eat white stuff unless you want to get fatter.
RULE 2: EAT THE SAME FEW MEALS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat-loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. There are 47,000 products in the average U.S. grocery store, but only a handful of them won't make you fat.
Mix and match from the following list, constructing each meal with one pick from each of the three groups. I've starred the choices that produce the fastest fat-loss for me:
Proteins
*Egg whites with 1???2 whole eggs for ???avor (or, if organic, 2???5 whole eggs, including yolks)
*Chicken breast or thigh
*Black beans
*Beef (preferably grass-fed)
Pork
*Fish
Legumes
*Lentils (also called "dal" or "daal")
Pinto beans
Red beans
Soybeans
Vegetables
*Spinach
*Mixed vegetables (including broccoli, cauli???ower, or any other cruciferous vegetables)
*Sauerkraut, kimchee (full explanation of these later in "Damage Control")
Asparagus
Peas
Broccoli
Green beans
Eat as much as you like of the above food items, but keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place of french fries, potatoes, or rice.
Surprisingly, I have found Mexican food (after swapping out rice for vegetables) to be one of the cuisines most conducive to the Slow-Carb Diet. If you have to pay an extra $1???3 to substitute at a restaurant, consider it your six-pack tax, the nominal fee you pay to be lean. Most people who go on "low"-carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit because they consume insuf???cient calories. A half-cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a half-cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.
Eating more frequently than four times per day might be helpful on higher-carb diets to prevent gorging, but it's not necessary with the ingredients we're using. Eating more frequent meals also appears to have no enhancing effect on resting metabolic rate, despite claims to the contrary.
Frequent meals can be used in some circumstances (see "The Last Mile"), but not for this reason.
The following meal schedule is based on a late sleep schedule, as I'm a night owl who gives up the ghost at 2:00 a.m. at the earliest, usually with wineglass or book still in hand, ?? la heroin addict. Adjust your meals to ???t your schedule, but make sure to have your ???rst meal within an hour of waking. Meals are approximately four hours apart.
10:00 am - Breakfast
2:00 pm - Lunch
6:30 pm - Smaller second lunch
8:00???9:00 pm - Recreation or sports training, if scheduled.
10:00 pm - Dinner
12:00 am - Glass of red wine and Discovery Channel before bed
Here are some of my meals that recur again and again:
Breakfast (home): Scrambled Eggology?? pourable egg whites with one whole egg, black beans, and mixed vegetables warmed up or cooked in a microwave using Pyrex?? containers.
Lunch (Mexican restaurant): Grass-fed organic beef, pinto beans, mixed vegetables, and extra guacamole.
Dinner (home): Grass-fed organic beef (from Trader Joe's), lentils, and mixed vegetables.
Just remember: this diet is, ???rst and foremost, intended to be effective, not fun. It can be fun with a few tweaks (the next chapter covers this), but that's not the goal.
RULE 3: DON'T DRINK CALORIES.
Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened tea, coffee (with no more than two tablespoons of cream; I suggest using cinnamon instead), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk (including soy milk), normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. Limit diet soft drinks to no more than 16 ounces per day if you can, as the aspartame can stimulate weight gain.
I'm a wine fanatic and have one to two glasses of red wine almost every evening. It doesn't appear to have any negative impact on my rate of fat-loss. Red wine is by no means required for this diet to work, but it's 100% allowed (unlike white wines and beer, both of which should be avoided). Up to two glasses of red per night, no more.
RULE 4: DON'T EAT FRUIT.
Humans don't need fruit six days a week, and they certainly don't need it year-round. If your ancestors were from Europe, for example, how much fruit did they eat in the winter 500 years ago? Think they had Florida oranges in December? Not a chance. But you're still here, so the lineage somehow survived.
The only exceptions to the no-fruit rule are tomatoes and avocadoes, and the latter should be eaten in moderation (no more than one cup or one meal per day). Otherwise, just say no to fruit and its principal sugar, fructose, which is converted to glycerol phosphate more ef???ciently than almost all other carbohydrates. Glycerol phosphate p triglycerides (via the liver) p fat storage. There are a few biochemical exceptions to this, but avoiding fruit six days per week is the most reliable policy.
But what's this "six days a week" business? It's the seventh day that allows you, if you so desire, to eat peach crepes and banana bread until you go into a coma.
RULE 5: TAKE ONE DAY OFF PER WEEK.
I recommend Saturdays as your Dieters Gone Wild (DGW) day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. If I drank beer, I'd have a few pints of Paulaner Hefe-Weizen.
I make myself a little sick each Saturday and don't want to look at any junk for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat-loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function and conversion of T4 to T3, etc.) doesn't downshift from extended caloric restriction.
That's right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia. There are no limits or boundaries during this day of gluttonous enjoyment. There is absolutely no calorie counting on this diet, on this day or any other.
Start the diet at least ???ve days before your designated cheat day. If you choose Saturday, for example, I would suggest starting your diet on a Monday.
That's All, Folks!
If the founding fathers could sum up our government in a six-page constitution, the above is all we need to summarize rapid fat-loss for 99.99% of the population. Followed to the letter, I've never seen it fail. Never. When you feel mired in details or confused by the latest-and-greatest
contradictory advice, return to this short chapter. All you need to remember is:
Rule 1: Avoid "white" carbohydrates (or anything that can be white).
Rule 2: Eat the same few meals over and over again.
Rule 3: Don't drink calories.
Rule 4: Don't eat fruit.
Rule 5: Take one day off per week and go nuts.
$1.34 PER MEAL?
Andrew Hyde is community director at TechStars, a well-known start-up incubator in Boulder,
Colorado. He is also an Internet-famous big bargain hunter. I use "big" in both the ???gurative and literal senses: Andrew is 6'5" and 245 pounds. I should say that he was 245 pounds. In his ???rst two weeks on the Slow-Carb Diet, he lost 10 pounds and, perhaps more impressive, racked up incredibly unimpressive costs:
Total per-week food cost: $37.70
Average per-meal cost: $1.34
And this was including organic grass-fed beef! If he'd eaten a big salad three times a week instead of a few proteins, his weekly cost would have been $31.70. He repeated four meals:
BREAKFAST: Egg whites, one whole egg, mixed vegetables, chicken breast Mixed vegetables, peas, spinach (salad)
LUNCH: Mixed vegetables, peas, spinach (salad)
SECOND LUNCH: Chicken thigh, black beans, mixed vegtables
DINNER: Beef (or pork), asparagus, pinto beans
His exact shopping list was simplicity itself. The prices are the per line totals:
1x Eggs (12 pack) $1.20
4x Mixed vegetables (1-lb bags) $6
1x Chicken breast $2
1x Organic peas (2-lb bag) $2
2x Spinach (3-lb bags) $6
3x Chicken thigh $9
2x Grass-fed organic beef (0.5-lb cuts) $4
2x Pork (1-lb cuts) $3
2x Asparagus bundles $2
1x Pinto beans (1-lb bag) $1.50
1x Black beans (1-lb bag) $1
Getting these prices didn't require a degree in negotiation or dozens of hours of searching. Andrew looked for discounted items near expiration date and shopped at smaller stores, including a Mexican grocery store, where he bought all of his dried beans.
Just to restate an important point: Andrew is an active 6'5", 245-pound, 26-year-old male, and he exercised three times a week during his Slow-Carb Diet experiment. He's not a small organism to feed. He's also not unique in his experience.
Though you might not get to $1.34 per meal, his two-week experiment shows what thousands of others have been surprised to learn about the Slow-Carb Diet: it's damn cheap. The myth that eating right is expensive is exactly that: a myth.
THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT: FRUCTOSE
Can fruit juice really screw up fat-loss?
Oh, yes. And it screws up much more. Not to speculate, I tested the effect of fructose in two tests, the ???rst during a no-fructose diet (no juice, no fruit) and the second after one week of consuming 14 ounces-about 1.5 large glasses-of pulp-free orange juice upon waking and before bed. The orange juice was the only thing distinguishing diets A and B. The changes were incredible.
Before (10/16, no fructose) and after (10/23, orange juice):
Cholesterol: 203 -> 243 (out of "healthy" range)
LDL: 127 -> 165 (also out of range)
There were two other values that shot up unexpectedly:
Albumin: 4.3 -> 4.9 (out of range)
Iron: 71 -> 191 (!) (out of range aka into the stratosphere)
Albumin binds to testosterone and renders it inert, much like SHBG (discussed in "Sex Machine") but weaker. I don't want either to be out-of-range high. Bad for the manly arts. If you said "Holy sh*t!" when you saw the iron jump, we're in the same boat. This result was completely out of the blue and is not good, especially in men. It might come as a surprise, but men don't menstruate. This means that men lack a good method for clearing out excessive iron, which can be toxic. The increase in iron was far more alarming to me than the changes in cholesterol.
Here is just one of several explanations from the research literature:
In addition to contributing to metabolic abnormalities, the consumption of fructose has been reported to affect homeostasis of numerous trace elements. Fructose has been shown to increase iron absorption in humans and experimental animals. Fructose intake [also] decreases the activity of the copper enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) and reduces the concentration of serum and hepatic copper.
The moral of the story? Don't drink fruit juice, and absolutely avoid a high-fructose diet. It doesn't do the body good.
TOOLS AND TRICKS
The Three-Minute Slow-Carb Breakfast (www.fourhourbody.com/breakfast) Breakfast is a hassle. In this video, I'll show you how to make a high-protein slow-carb breakfast in three minutes that is perfect for fat-loss and starting the day at a sprint.
Still Tasty (www.stilltasty.com) Not sure if it's safe to eat those eggs or those Thai leftovers? Tired of calling your mom to ask? This site allows you to search the shelf life of thousands of cooked and uncooked foods.
Just eat regular sized meals at regular times, don't snack on fast food apart from the occasional treat, make sure you do some exercise most days even if it's just a brisk walk and, unless you've got a thyroid problem or the like, the weight loss should take care of itself.
There are a few simple rules to it if you wanna lose a bit:
1. Carbs (Bread, Potatos, Pasta, Rice etc) = energy. If the energy doesn't get used, it gets stored by the body for later (as fat). So cut out the carbs when you don't need em. Best one is cut all carbs from the last meal of the day - cause all you're doing afterward is just sitting on your ass watching TV anyway.
2. Sugar = energy. Again, if it doesn't get used, the liver converts it to fat. Stay the hell away from fizzy drinks altogether. Stick to water, or skimmed milk etc.
3. Portion size. If you wanna go hardcroe, divide your 3 meals into 6. This means that your body uses the majority of what you've eaten before the next meal and stores less.
4. Increasing metabolism. Green tea and spicy food speeds metabolism up which means you burn food faster, even when you're not doing schitt.
If you do these, you don't really need to excercise to notice the weight loss - but its an added bonus to increase fitness and metabolism.
Thats it in a nutshell. 1 & 2 are the staples. 3 & 4 are optional.
The Winter is THEE WORST. I have warm weather activities and that shit is just not happening when it's 10 degrees outside and it gets dark when you come home from work.
You can trick your body into thinking it's full by eating things like carrots or celery which require a lot of chewing. My aunt gives kids a glass of water before a meal to make them feel more full so they eat less. You can use smaller plates so you can't fit as much food on them.
better eat celery, carrots contain more sugar and carbs than one might think.