13 Weeks: Week 2, In Which We Eat
Backstory: In October I realized that if I didn’t lose weight and get my blood sugar under control, I was going to die. I didn’t like that. I decided to try a 13 week experiment: cut out carbs and add a small amount of high intensity exercise and see what happened. This is the continuing story of that experiment. Follow it every week here at PJ Lifestyle — including some sort of embarrassing “before” pictures — and follow my 13 Weeks Facebook page. I’ll report more on results next week, but right now, I’ve lost 21 pounds since 19 October and my blood sugar is down from 157 mg/dL to 119.
I started worrying about my weight — and being teased about it — by the time I was six or seven. At twelve or so I was an experienced dieter, and my experience was pretty much uniformly negative: I’d try dieting and maybe lose a little weight. Then the weight loss would stop. This would be doubly traumatic, as on a “balanced healthy diet”. I felt horrible, I was hungry all the time, and my pediatrician would yell at me that I had to be cheating, no one could not lose weight on that diet.
I could lose weight on the Stillman Quick Weight Loss Diet — nothing but lean meats boiled or broiled, cottage cheese, and poached or boiled eggs — but then I got yelled at by my pediatrician, my gym coach, and random people who happened to hear about it because it wasn’t a balanced diet. Also, after five or six weeks, it got a little boring: I remember breaking into tears one night when presented with another skinless, boiled half-chicken.
So my feelings about “going on a diet” have a lot of baggage. Skipping about 40 years, I read Gary Taubes first New York Times article, “What Really Makes Us Fat“, which said some things I knew from personal experience but had been told real science disputed. Like “all calories are not created equal,” and “what you eat is more important than how much you eat.” I bought Taubes’ books, Good Calories Bad Calories, and Why We Get Fat and read the primary literature, which makes a strong case that the underlying culprit is refined carbs. Sure enough, cutting out refined carbs helped me lose weight. This time around, I’ve lost 21 pounds since the 19th of October, and my blood sugar is also down a good bit.
But what about the boredom?
What I’m eating now is, thankfully, far more interesting than boiled chicken and cottage cheese. I thought today I’d tell you about some of them.
Breakfast
Most mornings, I’m up at 6AM and about to write. I feed the cats, and stumble about waiting for the coffee — the worst part about getting your first cup in the morning is needing to make it before you’ve had it — and I’m not up to doing anything complicated, so I zap bacon in the microwave, take cold boiled eggs out of the refrigerator, and have
Charlie’s “Diet” Breakfast
- 3 boiled eggs, sliced with an egg slicer and drizzled with about a tablespoon of mayonnaise
- 4 strips of bacon
Except some mornings I have 4 eggs and 8 strips of bacon. I slice the hard boiled eggs because otherwise they last about two bites, and I add the mayonnaise because it tastes good.
Lunch
I usually go out for something because someone who can’t cope with cooking eggs in the morning isn’t going to handle making lunch very well either. There are really lots of options — a diner where I can get bacon or ham or pork chops and eggs, a buffet restaurant where I get salad and roast chicken, or MAD Greens, where I make up a salad with lots of protein:
MAD Greens Salad Example
- baby spinach
- feta cheese
- Oil-marinated tuna
- Red wine vinaigrette
Mad Greens actually has a calorie and nutrient calculator on their web site, which scores this out as 41 grams of protein and 6 grams net carbs (9 grams – 3 grams fiber),
Another thing I’ve done is make a big bowl of tuna salad. One variant is my Mediterranean Tuna Salad, based on something I used to get at a sprouthead restaurant in Durham, NC 20 years ago.
- 1 medium red onion, finely diced
- 4-5 stalks celery, finely diced
- 4 cloves garlic, smashed, diced, and made into a paste with a little salt
- 3 12-oz cans of water-packed tuna (cheap non-albacore is perfectly fine)
- 1/4 cup olive oil (it pays to use extra virgin, but not super-good extra virgin)
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 1/4 tsp dried dill weed
- salt and ground black pepper to taste
make a rough vinaigrette by whisking together oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, and dill in a large bowl (you need a bigger bowl than you think.) You can add a little dry or grey poupon mustard as well, which will help the vinagrette stay together, but I don’t much like mustard with tuna. Add other ingredients, breaking up the tuna to match with the vegetables. Toss until well combined. It’s good now, even better after a day or two in the refrigerator. By the way, oil-packed tuna would be just fine; around here, though, it’s hard to find and significantly more expensive than the water-packed.
Dinner
Okay, most nights dinner is rotisserie chicken from the store — the King Soopers “family size” garlic and herb is my favorite but you’d have a hard time making a roast chicken I didn’t like. Fairly often I’ll cook microwave-in-the-bag broccoli and toss it with from-the-jar chili con queso. This is a high-protein high-fat diet, which opens up a lot of choices. Some nights I’ll cook, and in fact last night as I came home from the gym I suddenly decided what I wanted for dinner was the 10 year old’s nightmare: liver with bacon and onions, and roasted brussels sprouts.
Here are the recipes:
brussels sprouts
- 1 cup fresh sprouts, cut in half.
- 1 Tsp olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced fine
preheat oven to 425. While it preheats, toss the sprouts with the oil and garlic, and add a good teaspoon of salt. (I like sea salt. What can I say, I live in Boulder.) The way I do this: I have a saute pan that goes comfortably in the oven, so I basically put everything in the pan, toss it as if I were sautéing them until everything is nicely coated, and into the oven it goes.
They should roast for about a half-hour; around 15 minutes, take out the pan and toss them thoroughly, put it back in.
liver and bacon and onions
- 2 slices (about 8 oz uncooked) liver
- 4 strips bacon
- about 1 half medium onion, sliced into very thin slices
- 1/4 tsp mexican oregano
- salt and black paper to taste.
In a large frying or saute pan, start with the bacon. I did it as strips this time, next I might cut the bacon into lardons instead. (Isn’t that a great word? “Lardon”. Sounds so sinful.) Cook the bacon until it’s done enough for you and take it out of the pan. Turn the heat up on the pan to medium-high and add the onions, spreading them out to make more or less a single layer. Now walk away for about 5 minutes. The onions will cook in the bacon fat; when you come back, they will have started to caramelize (get brown) and will be pretty transparent. Turn them over and stir them up so the unbrowned side is down and let them cook a little more.
Now for the liver. If you know where to find fresh beef liver in the Denver area, I’d love to know, but I end up buying it frozen at King Soopers. The package has 1 lb of liver in four individually packed, frozen slices. Take two slices out and put them on the counter when you start the sprouts and they’ll have defrosted sufficiently by the time you get to this point. (If you do find it fresh, you need to slice it and devein it. I’ll presume you’re enough of a foodie then to know what to do. The frozen stuff is already prepped.)
Push the onions aside in the pan and turn the heat up to near high. Put the two pieces of liver in the pan and wait for about a minute — the liver will be getting gray around the veins and there’ll be a good bit of steam. The side against the pan will be getting nicely browned and a little crusty; turn the slices over and grab a plate RIGHT NOW. If you wait more than about another 30 seconds, the liver will get overdone, with the result that you have something that looks like a shoe sole but doesn’t taste as good.
Liver on plate. Nicely browned onions on top, and then the bacon. Salt and pepper now — I don’t like to season this stuff first because the salt impedes browning the onions, and I think the pepper tastes a little burned because of the high heat. Take the sprouts out of the oven and add them — they should have some nice golden brown edges on them.
As you can see, I’m not exactly being deprived here — I’m having plenty to eat, and it’s good food. As a “diet”, this one is a winner.
Just last week I started the same diet. A similar situation to yours, I’d gotten up to 290 pounds and the doctor warned me that I was pre-diabetic. I’ve cut out bread, potatoes, rice and pasta (which is hard, cause my wife’s favorite foods are rice and pasta) Also no more cokes, juice, candy and snacks. I’m feeling hungry, but resisting the urges. Just wondering if cooked eggs are really that bad cause I hate hard boiled eggs. I much prefer cooking in a pan with olive oil spray to keep it from sticking and adding cheese to it. Does it make that much of a difference?
Well, actually cooking the eggs with olive oil or butter is probably better — I just really like hard-boiled eggs, plus I’m semi-conscious at best first thing in the morning and it’s easier to take out some cold boiled eggs than it is to actually cook. This is actually a high-protein high-fat diet — if you look back last week, or at the eating plan on Facebook, I’m shooting for 200g protein, 200g fat, and less than 30g net carbs (total carbs minus fiber). The literature, for example in Why We Get Fat suggests that refined carbs have more to do with hyperlipidemia — high cholesterol — than dietary fat anyway.
So when I cook eggs, I fry them or scramble them with butter or in bacon grease after I cook the bacon.
My one complaint is I like soft-boiled and over-easy eggs too, but there’s no toast to sop the yolk with.
Thanks for the reply. Was worried about the eggs but that makes me feel better.
I woke up late today, so Lunch was 2 eggs w/cheese and 5 strips of bacon. Dinner was pan fried zucchini & about a dozen wild Carolina shrimp (also pan fried in olive oil). 1/2 pint of blueberries for dessert. Are avocados OK? Mushrooms? Dill Pickles?
Sure. I tell you what I’ve been doing: I got on http://loseit.com . I keep a food diary there and it tells me all this stuff. So, for example. an avocado is 29.5g fat, and 17.1g carb but of that 13.5g is fiber (which surprised me). That makes a whole avocado have net 3.6g of carbs. A cup of whole mushrooms has about 2g carbs, a half-cup of cooked zucchini has about 2g net carbs, a dill pickle has basically nothing — I eat a fair number of those — and shrimp have basically no carbs. The blueberries are the most carb-rich thing you mention: a half pint, eg, a cup, has roughly 18g net carbs. So that sounds like you’re in the neighborhood of maybe 25g carbs total, which would be right in line with what I’m doing.
Robert, I have been on the low carb “lifestyle” since March 1st and have lost 30 pounds and feel much better. Since you just started, the hunger pangs may be the adjustment to withdrawing from high carbs. It fades away with time. I now only eat two meals a day (early lunch and dinner). Hunger now comes on gradually. Make sure you eat enough fat, fat is good.
Oh, and the answer to feeling hungry is “eat more”. Even if you’re targeting calories — which I don’t think is a good idea — what you describe sounds like half (or less) of what I’ve been eating and I’m only averaging about 2000 Calories a day. You’re probably feeling hungry because you’re hungry, and you don’t need to be.
I have been doing the Gary Taubes diet since July. The first month, I did not lose much, because I took to heart that I could eat as much as I wanted as long as it was protein and fat, and very low carbs. I would eat 4-5 eggs and half a lb of bacon for brunch (usually about 10-11am- I get up most mornings at 4am, go to the gym and do an hour of cardio and then weight lifting from 20-60 minutes), so by 10am, I am pretty hungry. I am not a cooking person, so everything has to be something you buy, or VERY easy to make. I can cook eggs, bacon, sausage in the morning and I can grill a LOT of meat. My wife will sometimes cook and when she does, I eat vegetables. I like fruit, but have to limit it to low carb, low sugar fruit. I like salads, especially if there is a lot of meat and cheese.
I once lost 70lbs on a low fat, low calorie diet, higher protein, but only lean protein(chicken & fish, over and over) but it was HARD. As Charlie’s early life experiences attest, I was hungry all the time and miserable. But, I did lose weight. All the weight came back when I could not sustain that lifestyle.
And here is a word everyone should banish from their vocabulary if they want to lose weight forever: diet. You will only lose weight forever if you make true lifestyle changes, so – you better like the lifestyle. I will say that with the Taubes plan, it is the most comfortable lifestyle that helps me lose weight that I have ever tried. I am a caveman. I LOVE meat, and could live on it. As long as it is not chicken and fish, over and over. If I can grill steaks, seafood, veggies, pork, hamburgers, brats, chicken, fish, turkey – and then throw in some salad and fruit – I am a happy camper.
Oh right – the reason that I was going to post here is that the thing about this lifestyle change is that, although I ate a ton and was hungry as normal the first few weeks, by week four, I had noticed that I just was not as hungry as I used to be, and I was eating much less calories, without feeling hungry. That is when the weight just started dropping like it was supposed to. So, give it some time, and then you really see the magic of low carbs, low sugar, high protein lifestyle.
I had not been targeting a specific calorie mark. I started on the loseit.com website you suggested and entered my targets as losing 2 pounds a week (it won’t let me go more than that), and to get down to 210 pounds. It gives me target calories of 2200 a day. I entered some meals for past days and find I’m only eating around 1100 to 1400 a day.
Also, I weighed myself for the first time in a week. Last Monday I was 295. Today I was 284.
Well, as I just posted on the Facebook page, it’s hard to not to focus on weight when it’s going down. It’s also hard not to focus on calories when they get rubbed in our face so often. What I did with LoseIt! was change the weight loss goal to 1 pound a week, which raised their calorie limits, and if I lose more than that, they don’t seem to care.
In any case, 295-284 is 11. Congratulations!
I would stay away from the olive oil in cooking, too many issues.
I’ve started using butter and bacon fat, old school is best.
Per Taubes, you can eat all the eggs you want, cooked any way you want. Olive oil is a good choice for the cooking.
Cheese is OK, but I think they recommend 4 ounces or less daily – since cheese is pretty dense, that can be less than you think.
Also on the diet – “If it’s a leaf, you can eat it.”
Check out http://www.boresharesearch.com. Your diet is fine, but some of us need to program our brain to use fat for energy and not store the stuff. On a calorie restricted diet you loose mostly muscle, so when you ease up on the restrictions you gain your weight back and wind up being even FATTER because you used muscle for energy while dieting. All products are low glycemic and diabetic friendly. I am a 58 year old nurse, have lost 30 lbs of fat and have kept it off for 3 years! I look younger because I have lost that layer of fat and retained muscle. Ask me questions.
Great report, Charlie. But I’m not surprised. As a daily reader of Glenn R. I had read, “Read Gary Taubes” over and over again. Finally, I read Gary Taubes this summer. My husband didn’t have too much of a weight problem, but he was getting into serious blood sugar territory. I had given up on dieting and it showed. We started on low carb in July. Our weight loss is slower than yours, but my husband is out of the woods now with his blood sugar–a big relief==and we’re both pleased with our slimmer selves. Good luck!
Even better than olive oil, though, is eggs cooked in butter
per Alton Brown’s method, I like to melt some butter in a pan on really low heat, crack two-three egss into a small bowl, then tilt the pan slightly while I pour in the eggs to keep them all together. Then continue frying them at low heat until just barely setting on top, flip for 60 seconds and done. No rubbery texture at all, just silky smooth yummyness.
Read Taubes two years ago. Lost 60 pounds the first year, 30, the second. 285 to 195. No dieting, just no carbs (except for beer, which by itself, doesn’t seem to have too much effect).
Also M Rippetoe weightlifting, barefoot interval running (not really barefoot, vivobarefoot).
Last goal is 180-185.
People who know me over this time frame claim I look 10-15 years younger. Apparently being overweight makes you look old.
A lot like what I do, and after more than 6 months I still don’t get very hungry. You can eat a lot of different things [and I love eggs cooked about any way], and you don’t really need to count calories. I don’t, anyway. I’ve been easily losing a pound plus per week with almost no effort.
Plus, if I fall off the diet on one day [so far I may have done that 3 times, I don't count that, either] I don’t worry about it since resuming it is a snap.
I have found that cutting out the snacking was easier than I thought. Don’t know why. I don’t snack now and don’t really want to. My sugar consumption is close to nothing and I don’t miss that, but then I was never very much for sweet stuff.
No sugar, no potatoes [I have one about every other week], no pasta [I have that about once a month], no rice [I eat Thai about once a month] and the pounds melt off. And I’m not hungry. What can I say that Taubes doesn’t say better?
Yeah. I think one reason the snacking cuts down is that you’re actually eating a fair bit of food, and it’s the kind that digests slowly, so you just don’t get the urge. I had one day where I got up to my goals by eating 4 meals with lots of vegetables, and I wasn’t hungry the next day.
On the other hand, I’ve been pretty strenuously low-carb for a month, although I didn’t officially start the experiment until two weeks ago. Today, while watching the Broncos game, I ate two little mini-brownies, which meant some refined sugar and some wheat, another thing I’ve been avoiding. An hour later I felt like I’d been hit in the head — a little woozy, and foggy. But as a cheat it wasn’t that big — today I’m up around 40g carbs.
As a cheat, it’s nothing, but boy the way I feel is quite a negative reinforcement.
See my comment earlier. I think around week 4, if you are sticking to the plan, the hunger starts going away. I am doing with much less overall calories than before I started, or even the first few weeks after I started. I am just not that hungry anymore. I think it all has to do with cutting the carbs/ things that metabolize as sugar quickly. Once that is out of your system, not near as much hunger, craving, etc.
Charlie, good on ya. Back in 2011 I read Taubes’ book “Why We…” and the Eades’ book, “Six Week Cure…”
Since then have lost 60+ pounds. Last time I had it checked, my cholesterol was the lowest I have ever seen it.
I exercise regularly and for the first time in my life I look forward to going to the gym. Keep it up, and power on through the plateaus which will inevitably come about.
Do not expect the rapid weight loss that some report on this program. I have been on it several weeks and am satisfied with it. I am losing about 1.5 pounds per week. My point is do not get discouraged if that is your pattern. Also check your ketone levels regularly.
I have been on low carb diet for a month or so now and am losing two pounds a week. I have read both of Gary Taubes’ books and am now finishing “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney. I highly recommend their book.
Glad this is working for you. I cut out wheat a little over a year ago, and when I woke up on the second day, I knew something was different. Then it hit me: I wasn’t hungry. That’s been the best part, eating a meal and actually being full for hours and hours and hours. I don’t crave all the stuff I used to, and some days I actually have to remind myself to eat.
Then I started reading Mark’s Daily Apple and Mark’s Sisson’s books. I’ve lost 50 pounds and kept it off, and it’s easy.
My only word of advice is not to get discouraged when your fat loss slows down, which it will. It’ll plateau from time to time, and might even go back up a bit, but that’s just the nature of the human body. Stick with the program and it’ll work in the long run.
That’s interesting. I’m certainly thinking the refined carbs have a lot to do with it. Also, I have had both gastric reflux disease and irritable bowel. I realized this week that instead of the usual dose or two a day of antacid, I hadn’t needed one in a couple weeks.
The stomach and intestinal issues were what got me on a similar diet. Strictly by coincidence. After three trips to the ER last year the doctors put me on a diet consisting mostly of high protein soy shakes. Which I didn’t care for. One morning, for no apparent reason I drank a can of V-8. I felt good. So I did away with the shakes and started adding in food that made me feel good. If my stomach felt bad after eating something I didn’t eat it again. My usual breakfast is a can of V-8, black coffee, a one egg omelet with a little cheese and some sort of meat and a grapefruit. Lunch is similar to yours and dinner is the usual fare for the family but we don’t serve rolls or biscuits anymore. If I do need a snack I eat pecans or almonds…and not too many of them.
Fifty pounds since January and it’s hardly seemed like an effort at all.
> Then it hit me: I wasn’t hungry. That’s been the best part, eating a meal and actually being full for hours and hours and hours.
Jim, that has been precisely my experience so far. I’m about eight months into this low-carb thing, have lost almost forty pounds, and for the first time in my entire life (at age 58) I’m not hungry.
I’ve always had trouble with my weight. I was a fat kid, the miserable laughing stock of my high school, and finally when I was up to 235 (at five feet ten) in my sophomore year, I couldn’t take it anymore. I tried the Stillman diet, which was both low-carb and low-fat — essentially, if it tastes good, spit it out — and lost thirty pounds in two months. But I couldn’t sustain it. Ten pounds came back on very quickly, but my mom had bought me a little pamphlet that provided enough information to start counting calories. Gradually, I cut back my caloric intake to about 1300 a day, and by the time I was a freshman in college, I was down to about 155.
Now I call that period of my life the “white-knuckle diet”, because that what it took to sustain it: absolute, indomitable will power. I was hungry and stayed hungry for much of my adult life, all the time, but I did succeed at keeping the weight off. That is, until I hit my mid-40s. Finally, my waning will power and my slowing metabolism conspired to knock me off the slim track, and it took about ten years to crawl my way back up the scales, fighting tooth and nail every inch of the way, to 240.
I had given up hope. But I had not really lost the battle to food, just to carbohydrates. Reading Gary Taubes, I realized I just might be one of those people who cannot tolerate carbs. To test that theory, I adjusted my diet. All I did was eliminate starches and sweets, and add fats such as bacon, just to see what would happen.
The amazing thing is that I started feeling much better by day four — more awake, more alert, more alive. After eight months, I’m down forty pounds to 200, with about forty more to reach my goal. Most importantly, it was easy getting here. You can lose weight on practically any diet, but I’m a veteran dieter and there are two things I can tell you about diets: they’re hard to sustain and they make you feel miserable. I know a man who lost a hundred pounds in seven months by cutting out both carbs and fats and hitting the weight room every day. That’s amazing. But here’s the kicker: he has had to lose a hundred pounds several times. Right now, he’s dreading the Thanksgiving season, worried what’s going to happen if he gives in to his hunger. That’s no way to live. The idea is to do it once and for all. I have no idea how I was able to white-knuckle it for about 25 years after my initial weight loss, but whatever secret formula I had, I don’t have it anymore.
You have to change your eating permanently to lose weight and keep it off. The low-carb high-fat approach, so far at least, is allowing me to do just that. Controlling your weight is supposed to feel good. In fact, it has to feel good, or you probably won’t sustain it.
feeling much better by day four — more awake, more alert, more alive.
Exactly my experience.
A cheat on cooking liver and onions — cook the liver first, then put the onions in the pan, lay the liver on top and cover. The onions will cook down — and brown — and the steam will effectively braise the liver. Even overcooked, leather-tough liver will be fork-tender by the time the onions are done. Voice of experience here; it’s been the family way to cook liver and onions for at least three generations.
I tried to join in the fun, but had one of those days… and with Thanksgiving coming along, it’s easier to wait until after that. Stupid, I know, but I’ll be back to it. The short experiment taught me that I *MUST* have plenty of appropriate food on hand and ready. I can manage bacon and eggs in the morning; it’s trying to cook when I get home from work that drives me around the bend.
Rob, I was like you for a long time. I was a believer — and a trier — for two years, but I couldn’t make it stick. I don’t cook well, and certainly was never taught to cook a bunch of meat. But this time I’m really doing it, and I could hardly care less about what (or sometimes IF) I eat. I do keep some things on hand that are foolproof, like pre-cooked dinner sausages. When you can get it to stick, you’ll cruise. Your brain changes.
These are awesome results! More power to ya.
Tonight my husband cooked Johnsonville beer brats, and we split a steamed cauliflower tossed with a sauce of mayo, grated cheddar cheese, yellow mustard & butter. Carbs: 0, except for my glass of white wine & his Michelob Ultra. Yeah, we can do this.
Robert, don’t feel hungry. Pork rinds. Nueske’s honey ham sticks. Hard boiled eggs. Ocean Spray cranberry juice can be had with no sugar and only a few carbs.
Charlie, are you in ketosis?
Bill, I haven’t gotten around to getting any Ketostix — it’s been an ugly couple of weeks for other reasons — but my pee sure stinks. I’m pretty sure I’m in dietary ketosis. If I’m not and I’m losing 4.4 pounds a week anyway, then what the hell…..
I was diagnosed as diabetic in mid-August. I started the Taubes method the next day. I didn’t start testing my blood sugar for a month (my first A1C was 12.2…ouch), but when I did I was at 137. It’s leveled off at about 100-105 now. I’m down around 45 pounds in the three months since starting Taubes, and no plateau in sight.
Keep up the good work, Charlie. I see good things coming for you.
Yow, A1c 12.2 percent is pretty high. My highest was 7.5 about the time I decided I needed to start this.
You might think about adding some high intensity strength training. I don’t have room to go into the whole biochemistry here (which you could reasonably read as “I want to make sure I understand it myself”) but basically, this sort of training where you bring the muscles to failure both leads you to grow new muscle tissue that’s young and virginal and more insulin sensitive, but also gets your old haggard sugar-saturated muscle cells to pick up the pace. I’m going to write more about it next week, but I have a bunch of references and sources over on the Facebook page (http://facebook.com/13Weeks) as well.
Thanks for the pointer, Charlie. I’ve got all the weights and equipment I need, I just need to get off my (smaller) ass and do it.
Charlie
Last February I started a very low carb diet and lost 30 pounds between February and May. I’m still on the diet and have not lost an ounce since May
Right now I’m on about 20g Carbs and 1500 calories a day (and I’m generally 200-300 cal/day below my number). I exercise 6 days a week, walking, strength workout, etc., and burn about 400-600 calories a day on exercise. And I’m still stuck. I haven’t figured out why I’ve plateaued but I have. The good news is that I feel much, much better, I’m never tired during the day and I’m almost never hungry.
John, maybe you’re at your “right” weight. What’s you’re height and weight?
Sounds like you’re not eating enough and exercising way much. try exercising 3 times a week.
Try spicey mustard on those hard boiled eggs in the a.m., me n DH have been on this since January-I’m down 50 since then, he is where he wants to be, I’m still working on it. Also, if you like brussel sprouts that way, try roasting your broccoli or some cauliflower the same way. Cauliflower was aparently made to be roasted, then try either mashed avocado with honey mustard mixed in to taste or sour cream wi sharp cheddarn a tspn of lemon juice for a sauce-good stuff. Fast dinner side-frozen organic green beans (huge bag available from Costco for $6) drop some bacon grease, or olive oil wi a tablespoon of butter in a black skillet on medium while you set the table and pour the wine. Stir a bit, let them get a bit brown even better. I would never have thought green beans could possibly taste that good! Supplemental reading=new Atkins diet book. I haven’t felt this good in years and the not hungry thing is totally worth this. (also, think I have discovered a gluten allergy, I can occasionally cheat wi rice or potato wi no ill effect, wheat and I am miserable for about 3 days) Gary is incredible. And like most things, the goverments advice is worse than useless. Liberty, Freedom & Bacon forever!
Please keep track of how much hair you are losing. I’m interested in dropping ~20 lbs, but not at the expense of developing a bald spot. I’ve heard this can be a side-effect of a ketosis diet and am curious how wide-spread it is. Thanks and good luck!
You know, I’ve just heard that recently; Google tells me that for about as many people who wonder about that, there are an equal number reporting that their hair is growing thicker and faster. My hair is quite thick and dark, something that frustrates the hell out of my younger brothers, whose hair is thinning and graying. I’ve certainly not noticed any hair lose, but that’s just anecdotal.
I started the no sugar, no carb eating on Jan 1 this year. From 297#, blood sugar around 300, and A1C of 12.8 to 210#, effectively normal blood sugar, and A1c of 5.1. I am mid 60′s and have taken to swimming about 30 to 45 minutes 5 times a week as well. Have never felt so good. Keep at it Charlie, you’ll get where you want to be and it won’t be that hard.
I started this kind of diet when Taubes original article appeared because I’d had a heart attack and my cardiologist wanted me to lose weight. It works extremely well as you’re experincing. I found that the Ketostix were really crucial psychologically. When you hit a plateau, which is inevitable, it keeps you from getting discouraged while your body adjusts prior to the next stage of weight loss.
Charlie, do you have any suggestions for those of us who absolutely hate eggs?
Don’t eat them?
Seriously, try something else. I eat a lot of eggs because I like eggs; they’re not some magical diet food. What *do* you like to eat?
Bacon. Sausage. Spam.
Interesting you don’t like eggs. Is it the texture? or the flavor? Because I find eggs to be marvelously receptive to any flavor I try to impart to them. This morning, for instance, we had leftover spinach that my wife had sauteed yesterday with olive oil and garlic. We had a fresh tomato. And we had some breakfast sausage I fried up the day before. Took all of these and scrambled them in with some eggs and bacon fat. The texture of the sausage and the flavor of the garlic were heavenly. Eggs will pick up on any flavor. Onions. Peppers. Smoky links. Hot sauce. Worcestershire sauce (but don’t overdo that stuff, it’s potent).
If it’s the texture you don’t like, try whipping them up in a bowl and add a small amount of water. That makes them fluffier, as the steam rises when you cook it. Also, we prefer not to make omelets. About halfway done toward an actual omelet, we prefer to scramble them at that point. Some people call it a “frittata”, I guess, but to me it’s just scrambled eggs.
Charlie, why do you call this a 13-week diet? This is the way you’ll eat for your lifetime, isn’t that correct?
Kevin, I’ve been eating Charlie’s (Taubes’/Atkins/Eades) fashion for 10 years and haven’t lost a hair on my head — nor anything else except unwanted avoirdupois. Since I got rid of 30 pounds without pain the first year, my weight has been pegged at 135 ever since (I’m a female, 5 ft. 8 inches).
Seems to me, though, that the 13 weeks is a deception. If you return to carbohydrates you are sunk. There’s very little self discipline necessary. Once you learn to cook and dine in this fashion you will eat better than you ever have.
Barbara, it’s not a 13 week diet, it’s a 13 week experiment: if I do this for 13 weeks, what happens? “This” being low carb, high intensity interval training and high intensity strength training.
I’m really not in need of losing weight (did the 200 lbs.-to-130 lbs. thing about 15 years ago), but I’ve cut the carbs down to 50-100 per day…90% from whole grain/low gluten sources. Now, trying to get the wife and kids to do it.
I’d cut more carbs, but I’m training for a 5-mile run on Thanksgiving and a Warrior Run in the spring, plus weights (maintenence lifting) 6 days a week. Anyone out there more sure than I am about keeping the carbs down while working out?
John, carbs tend to be used pretty much first for energy; if you’re trying to get real cut, it might be worthwhile, but if what you’re doing is working for you, why change? Or, try cutting down to 30g for a few days — if it’s not enough for your current level of exertion, I think you’ll know pretty quickly.
These ketone-producing diets all are basically working to get your liver to do gluconeogenesis, pulling triglycerides and glycogen from the liver to make glucose, and pulling triglycerides from the adipocytes to supply the liver. (I don’t think the adipocytes, ie, fat cells, can release glucose directly from their reserves of fatty acids, but don’t trust me on that, i’m away from my references.) If you’re already pretty lean anyway, there won’t be a lot of triglycerides to work with, and if you run down your glycogen it’s liable to reduce your endurance.
Which is all a complicated way of saying “I dunno, try it and tell me what happens.”
Here’s something that might interest you: http://www.jissn.com/content/9/1/34
Keep up the good work, man!! I’ve been following the primal/paleo diet for about 2 years now and wouldn’t go back to old school dieting if y’all paid me. I’m a Weight Watchers vet, and just about any other “calories out, calories in” diet you can think of, too. None of them worked very well for me, especially long-term, and this type of eating clicked for me, almost instantly. I’m down at least pants 2 sizes, and feel incredible. Good luck to you and congrats on your successes so far!!
If you want to keep that vinaigrette emulsified without the mustard flavor, try a little mayo,1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon should do the trick.
Thanks, it’s a good idea. Store-bought’n mayo has lecithin in it which is an emulsifier and keeps everything in place.
Congrats Charlie, I’m happy to hear you’re progressing so well. If you’re getting bored with some of your food options, here’s a couple of low-carb meals that you can make large batches of and that are pretty simple to make, even for people that don’t cook a lot:
Meatloaf – especially like Nigella Lawson makes it, with a hardboiled egg in the middle, wrapped in bacon
Chicken salad – buy a rotisserie chicken at the store, chop it up and add your mustard, mayo, nuts, or whatever you like in yours. Try it with chopped up radicchio or endive mixed in – delish!
Stir fry up whatever veggies and meat of your choice with some soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and chili paste (if you like it spicy) in either a wok or a very hot frying pan. Tip: use peanut oil to fry in, as it tolerates high heat better than most other oils.
Polish sausage/bratwurst and sauerkraut – I know not everyone likes sauerkraut because it’s well, a bit sour, but add some butter and chopped up bacon to it and I guarantee it’ll be your new favorite side dish.
Easy Mexican carnitas (pulled pork) – Get a couple pounds of pork butt or shoulder (but not pork loin, it doesn’t have enough fat), cut it into 2-inch chunks, rub with salt, pepper and a little bit of that Kitchen Bouquet stuff. Stick it in the oven and bake low and slow at 250 degrees for two hours or until it pulls apart easily with a fork (you might have to drain the fat half-way through cooking). You can either toss it in with scrambled eggs or make lettuce “tacos” with romaine or bib lettuce and all your favorite taco fixins like chopped onions, cheese, avocado, etc.
The more options you have, the more you’re likely to stick to the diet. Good luck with all your future low-carb endeavors!
Heh, wurst und kraut is my plan for tonight. Meatloaf is a good idea, I usually don’t bother but a big one would make for several days of lunches. Chicken salad is a good idea, my tuna salad recipe would work well with that too, and since I usually eat the legs from my rotisserie chickens first I end up with lots of breasts around. And carnitas is a brilliant idea, lettuce leaf tacos is even brillianter. Thanks!
I started this diet last Wednesday and I’ve already lost 6 lbs (which probably just water weight). I’m never hungry and I don’t crave food like before. I also don’t seem to have the same emotional attachment to food. Last week when Hostess declared bankruptcy I thought I’d run to the store and pick up some Twinkies. Then I changed my mind and put them back and for once didn’t feel like I was leaving behind my best friend. Then I went home and cooked a steak in butter with mushrooms. Ha! Take that Twinkies! Ok, maybe I still have a couple of emotional issues.
Then I went home and cooked a steak in butter with mushrooms. Ha! Take that Twinkies!
Living well is the best revenge.
I can’t recommend this, but for me, the despondency I felt from the election results just ruined my appetite for a few days. I lost about four pounds and have kept it off. True story. I’m feeling better now, by the way.
Well it’s official, I am going to try this out fully. Two weeks ago I tried it out sorta, didn’t stay true to the plan fully but I did feel different and it was nice feeling. I will ask one question though for those of us who like to drink(beer, liquor) what kind of options are there?
You know, I’ve very nearly completely teetotal, so I hadn’t looked into it. Here’s something I found:
http://www.shapefit.com/alcohol-calories.html
Looks like most whiskeys and whiskys and vodka have no carbs, a real beer has about 1g per ounce. There doesn’t seem to be agreement on how many grams carbs are in Guinness, but it looks like the values average around 1.5g per ounce.
Here’s an article on the metabolic process involved in metabolizing alcohol. I’m one of those American indians who doesn’t metabolize alcohol well, which is why I rarely drink.
http://hamsnetwork.org/metabolism/
Light drinkers, according to some of the studies I’ve read, are not affected at all by an Atkins-style diet. If you drink a glass or two of wine a day, you may probably continue to do so and still lose weight.
Spirits (whiskey, vodka, gin) have no carbs, but they do metabolize and the body will use them before it dips into its own fat for energy.
Beer can contain a bunch of carbs. Some brands of Sam Adams have maybe 15-30 carbs per 12 oz. serving. The alcohol in beer is no worse for you, weight-loss-wise, than the alcohol in wine or gin, but the carbs in beer might do your weight loss plans in.
I’ve changed my habits quite a little bit in the nine months I’ve been on this program. I have drastically reduced my beer intake and when I do drink beer I stick to the “lite” beers with fewer than 5 carbs a serving (e.g., Mich Ultra, MGD 64). I don’t drink much wine either. I do have about a martini a day — that’s 1.5 shots of gin, 0.5 shot of vermouth, which I think (I could be wrong) is a “fortified” wine like port or sherry — half a shot shouldn’t be a big deal. A martini is really a double — two drinks. I can’t say whether it’s slowed down my progress, but it hasn’t stopped me from losing.
The Atkins literature warns against more than two drinks a day. You have to take that seriously. On the other hand, they say to avoid diet soda, and I drink that by the cartload.
So if you want to try the low-carb lifestyle, and you want to keep using alcohol, I think you’re better off finding some low-carb drink that you like. Use martinis like I do. Or develop a taste for bourbon or Scotch. Or lite beer.