Efficient Weight Loss with the Slow Carb Diet

Posted: August 7th, 2009 | Author: Steve | Filed under: LifeHacks | Tags: Diet, low carb, Tim Feriss | View Comments

For most of my adult life, I have been concerned about my weight. After watching my parents try a lot of different diets over the years, I proceeded to eventually fall into the same trap of yo-yo dieting. While I had some initial success in my 20s to early 30s, by focusing on lots of exercise, I reached a point where I seemed to just gain more weight every year, no matter what I did. After several years of gaining a lot of weight, I became resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. That was until I read an article, written by lifestyle experimenter Tim Ferris, about his version of a “slow-carb diet”.

I have been a fan of Ferris’ work since reading The Four-Hour Workweek, but I have always been skeptical about whether is was possible for an ordinary person to actually pull off some of the things he has written about. His logic and methodologies are logically sound, but some of the claims seem outrageous. My opinion was changed in a big way when I tried out his Upside-Down Method for building a fire. This worked so well that I almost burned my house down! But, more to the point, everything worked exactly as he described it. So when I read about how effective and easy the diet was, I was eager to see if it could work for me as well.

In short, the diet has worked extraordinarily well for me, in a way that no other diet ever has. I have already lost over 20 pounds, and continue to see a downward trend. The reason it works so well comes down to two factors: sound application of science and simplicity, two hallmarks of Feriss’ work. The diet is an extremely simplified version of a low-carb diet, but with a couple of twists: in addition to protein and vegetables, you also eat beans, hence the “slow-carb” moniker, and exclude brown rice, which Feriss claims is too calorically dense. You maintain a very short list of proteins, veggies and beans, and then for every meal you choose one of each.

However, what really makes the diet work is a once-a-week free for all. Every week, you have one day where you can eat whatever you want.  Read on for some great tips on how I made this diet work for me.

In my interpretation of the diet, I pretty much do what Tim outlines in the article. I would read all of the discussion that is in the comments of that article, there is a lot of useful information there. However, I do eat a wider variety of food than what he outlines, although I still try to keep it simple. It’s basically some kind of meat/poultry or eggs, beans and a vegetable at every meal.

Breakfast
For breakfast, I usually eat scrambled egg whites with one egg yolk, although lately I have just been eating one fried egg alone because I don’t want to eat as much as the weeks go on. Adding guacamole or salsa to egg whites makes them a lot more tasty. I like to eat a red or yellow pepper sliced up and then some kind of beans, usually refried beans or cannelini.

Beans
As far as beans go, I have tried almost everything that Trader Joes offers. I like the marinated bean salad and the canellini beans the best. Of course, you have to be careful not to eat things that have too much added salt or sugar, so baked beans are usually out, although I have them once in a while to break things up. Chili works great, because it has meat and beans together. Just make sure you get the ones without too much sugar, etc.

Veggies
For vegetables, I usually use frozen and then cook them in the microwave. Doesn’t really matter which kind, but I don’t think that corn really qualifies because it is more of a starch. You only need a small amount. Plain is better than anything with a sauce that would add carbs and calories. I also buy fresh broccoli from TJs and then steam it with a steamer basket, which is really quick and tastes better than frozen. Once again, I only need to eat a couple of broccoli spears. I use “I Can’t Believe it’s not Butter” spray, which has no calories and tastes great with some salt. Sometimes I don’t feel like cooking, so I substitute pickles and/or olives as a veggie. I love pickles and olives, so it works for me. They work well with the bean salad, because you don’t have to cook it, either.

Protein
It doesn’t hurt to have some frozen, grilled, chicken strips on hand, because you can cook them fast and they taste good. I sometimes take a whole bag of TJs frozen chicken breasts, marinate or brine them and grill them all at once and keep them in the fridge, so I have food ready for the week. This works pretty well, although once you cook them, you end up eating the same thing all week, so it would probably be a better idea to cook a variety of meats instead of just one kind. You might also want to consider a spice rub instead of a marinade, both for convenience and because you can avoid sugar that way. In my area, Kinders Meats has some really good spice rubs and marinades, and there’s a brand called Grill Mates that you can find in the spice section of the supermarket.

The best part
The most important part of the diet, in my opinion, is making sure that you have one day that you eat whatever you want. You actually have to kind of pig out, because you want to spike your calories. I usually have a pancake breakfast in the morning, candy bars all day, something good for lunch like a Gordo’s hamburger and pizza for dinner. I absolutely love pizza. I try to avoid eating pizza during the week, even though Ferris says that you can eat it within 1.5 hours of a workout. I only eat it on Saturday because it is too addictive for me, and would cause me to go off the diet permanently. I used to have a big ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery, but I have a lactose intolerance, so it was making me sick. Now I just eat other desserts.

Eating this much feels totally wrong, and everyone will think you are crazy, but the numbers don’t lie. I have been charting my weight for weeks, and every week my average weight is lower than the last week. (I use an average of the last four days). This tells your body that it does not need to store calories, because you are telling your body there are plenty of calories around. If you didn’t do this, your body will go into fat storage mode, and you will plateau.

It also has a psychological effect of giving you a way to eat the things you want every week. For me, this is huge, because being on a diet does not mean that I have to deprive myself forever of the foods that I love. I know that, once a week, I will have an opportunity to eat whatever I am craving, and it has become a sort of game to see what fun things I can find to eat on Saturday. I am not the sort of person that can eat “everything in moderation”. This works really well for me, and I am no longer thinking about what I am missing all the time.

Keep track
Keeping a chart of your weight definitely help, because you weight will fluctuate. Your weight may go up after your Saturday binge, but you will see an overall downward trend, kind of like a rollercoaster, but where each successive peak and trough is lower than the last. Like I mentioned, using a 4-day moving average will help you see the trend a little bit better. I weight myself at the same time each morning before I eat, and without clothes on.

I think that is pretty much all I can think of. It’s best if you keep it relatively simple, so come up with a strategy that works for you. Let me know what you think.