1 Month, 10 Pounds, Low Carb

Three years ago, almost to date, I wrote about The 4-Hour Body Expirement – Slow Carb Diet (Month 1) where I discussed the Slow Carb diet which I learned from Tim Ferriss’ The 4 Hour Body. Since then I have learned a lot about myself and the evil carbohydrate. One of the nasty things I’ve learned was that when I discovered how easy it was to shed the fat on this diet I stopped caring about it, in the back of my mind I always knew that I could just lose the extra weight in a month or two.

Well, three busy and stressful years later I found myself overweight at 185 pounds and 23.8% body fat (not quite my heaviest, but getting close). My lowest weight was 160 pounds with around 14% body fat. I’ve also discovered a lot of great resources to learn more about what specifically works and doesn’t work. To date, I am still quite happy with the research Tim Ferriss did when he was writing The 4 Hour Body. There are a few modifications to my current diet though, and I’m still seeing amazing results. Here is a snapshot of the last 31 days from a great body measurement app for the iPhone called Bodytrack.it.

So, in 31 days I lost just over 10 lbs. My “goal” is 165 which is just a decent weight for me, but I suspect I’ll lose more than that over time. It feels a lot better to just have lost what I’ve lost. And I’m officially under the “overweight” line (again).

Interesting Resources

Dr. Stephen Phinney wrote a great book called, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. Here is a great video of him describing Low Carb living.

If you haven’t seen it, you should checkout the Fat Head documentary (available to watch for free on Amazon Prime). It’s a response to that Super Size Me documentary about losing weight on fast-food. They have a pretty good YouTube channel, from time to time I send this video to people to explain why Fat doesn’t make you Fat and Carbs do!

If you’re interested, Steve Gibson also has a good resource for anyone interested in learning more about low-carb living.

Some Dietary Changes

So, what has changed about my diet? Well, I basically just track carbs now, I try to stick to under 50 grams of carbohydrates a day now. I prefer “slow” or complex carbs over simple carbs, but I do allow some simple carbs in (if I can keep it under 50 for the day). I still do the binge day, in fact, tomorrow is my binge day and we’re making the Slacker Shake (again):

We’re a chocolate/caffeine free household, so we get Mayfield’s Mini Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches and the shake is delicious!

This is what I’ve been eating on a typical day.

• Breakfast – 3 scrambled eggs topped with a bit of cheddar cheese
• Lunch – 1 low carb soft burrito (ground turkey, pickled jalapenos, black olives, mexican blend cheese, and a low carb soft taco). I like the La Banderita brand better than the Mission brand, they’re a lot softer (kind of like a burrito from Moe’s or Barberitos)
• Mid-day snack – 1 Clementine (they’re in season), only about 10 carbs each.
• Dinner – Pretty much the only thing that varies from day-to-day. Whatever it is, we stick to the low or slow carb routine.
• Dessert – I generally don’t eat anything for dessert after dinner, but occasionally I get a craving. During these cravings, I’ll usually drink a diet Fanta or eat a half a cup of Carb Smart ice cream.

Since I work from home now and do not really have much time (or money) to go to the gym, I’ve started to do the Scientific 7-Minute Workout. I use the 7 Minute Workout app. I only do it once a day (usually before bed). I don’t really do it for any weight loss gain, more of a “keep my body from atrophying” attempt (since I work from home and sit in a chair all day). It’s a good workout though, and I think it’s a testament to the fact that you don’t need to workout for 60 minutes at the gym to lose weight. You can eat as much slow/low/no carb foods as you want and still shed the fat!

I’ve also discovered that there are a lot of great recipes from those Paleo people. Paleo is basically just another low-carb diet. I personally feel like the Paleo’ers are too focused on cavemanology (and sometimes misguided by what we think a caveman would do). Also, there are a lot of great resources out there from the people who follow the Atkins diet.

Basically, just stick to under 50 grams of carbs a day and the rest will work itself out. I consider Legumes to be safe as well as nuts (except peanuts). If you have any questions, leave them below!