13 Weeks: Week 3 — The Consequences of Turkey Stuffing
(The continuing saga of my experiment with a Taubes-inspired change in diet, and high intensity training. Follow me here on PJ Lifestyle, and follow it day to day by liking my 13 Week Facebook page.)
So, Thanksgiving is over, and I’ve got to add to that “thank God” because the whole thing has turned into what a therapist friend of mind called an “AFOG” — “Another, (Freaking) Opportunity for Growth.” (No, he doesn’t actually say “freaking”.) On Thanksgiving, I had 60g of carbs, and then Friday I had 80g at our traditional day-after-Thanksgiving leftovers feast. A little bit of mashed potatoes and stuffing, a sliver of cheesecake for dessert Thursday, and a half-piece of apple pie on Friday were the main culprits. So, I had, actually, quite small amounts of two things I’d nearly completely avoided: refined sugars, and wheat.
But I only had a little turkey! (Actually a picture I took of the presentation after carving.)
On Saturday morning I’d gained nearly six pounds. I also felt like hell — my GERD was back, I was achy and headachy. Back to the eating plan.
Thank God I’m back to a normal light diet breakfast.
Naturally, my first dark thoughts were ones of panic. But here’s the advantage of keeping a careful food diary: looking at the diary, in which I’m pretty diligent, I still had a net calorie deficit for the week of about 2700 kcal. An actual enduring weight gain of 6 pounds would require an excess of 21,000 kcals (using the conventional 3,500 kcal/lb). Didn’t happen. (I wrote, middle of the week, about some deductions from my first weeks of data. Basically, my actual weight loss is hard to account for by the “calorie is a calorie” thermodynamic model — either I’m losing weight 3 tiems faster than the observed calorie deficit can account for, or my metabolism has stepped up by 40 percent or more.)
Back in my teens, when I was trying the Stillman Diet and didn’t know much chemistry, physiology, or frankly much of anything else except that I was still hurting from being teased and insulted at Baptist Church Camp, I took a one-day vacation from the Stillman diet for my birthday, had biscuits at breakfast and potatoes at dinner, and gained seven pounds overnight. And I was hysterical: was I going to have to eat nothing but boiled chicken and boiled eggs for the rest of my life? Luckily, schooll starts shortly after my birthday; I went back to glory and acclaim — I’d lost about 50 lbs — and the girls were suddenly paying attention to me. The seven pounds didn’t make as much difference then.
Make sure to read the second page.
That’s the biggest thing I dislike about PJ Media. Having to click that “Read as Single page” button first before reading the articles…
I think the recent format change makes it too easy to miss that there is a second page.
“Thank God I’m back to a normal light diet breakfast.”
I consider this to be a huge meal. That may explain why I only weigh about 165 pounds.
Dammit, I’ve got to get a sarcasm font. The thing is that breakfast is a normal one when I’m doing the eating plan that results in losing 3-4 pounds a week so far.
I consider that a small breakfast.
I’m 37, 6’0″, weigh 170 lb, deadlift over twice my body weight and run 5k in under 25 minutes.
And I consider that my normal breakfast. I’m 6’1″, 157 lbs and run a 5k in under 21 mins at 46 years of age. I have no idea how much I dead lift.
Too many people neglect strength training. It’s at least as important as endurance training for health and fitness. Probably more so.
Charlie, have you ever been into alcohol? If so, have you sworn off during your thirteen weeks?
brobro, I’ve been teetotal, or very very nearly so — I’ll sometimes drink hot tea with rum if I have a dreadful cold — for 13 years. But some people, at least, say small amounts of alcohol don’t interrupt the low-carb diet much, as long as it’s hard liquor or dry wine. Beer has significant carbs.
BUT IT TASTES SOOOOO GOOOOOOODD…..
Of course I’ve struggled with my weight my entire life as well, in the opposite direction. And before you tell me how wonderful it would be to eat whatever you want and not gain weight, let me tell you how much fun it is to be in your 40s and shopping in the kids section…
I have a friend who went gluten-free last Spring. And he’s a big beer fan (as am I). He found several gluten-free beers (mostly based on rice and sorghum) that are actually kind of tasty. He lost almost 40 pounds in less than three months, and feels so much better it’s kind of ridiculous.
I’ve been considering a similar move, but it would be an epic lifestyle change for me, as my favorite type of beer is wheat beer….
I’ve had the exact same experiences when I go off the wagon from my normal Paleo-ish diet. I just don’t weigh myself regularly anymore. It takes forever for the scale to move down for me (my clothes get looser, and body comp noticeably changes, but scale stays the same? Makes no sense to me) but a couple bites of wheat product, even staying within my normal calorie limits, and it’s up at least 5lbs overnight. It’s also down again about 48 hrs later, too. I don’t need that kind of scale-related drama. It just stresses me out. It took me a while to gain faith in myself, without using a scale for accountability, but once I stopped weighing myself daily, I was much happier.
Good luck to you on this, and congrats on learning to pay attention to how foods make you feel, and adjusting your behaviors accordingly. That takes a ton of self discipline and resistance to peer pressure…esp when its those “healthy” whole grains that you are avoiding.
“my clothes get looser, and body comp noticeably changes, but scale stays the same? Makes no sense to me”
Muscle tissue is much denser than fat tissue. Perhaps your swapping one for the other?
Everybody knows that – ounce for ounce, a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat! It’s true.
Pfthphtphthththtphtfb.
Charlie you have inspired me to get back on the regimen. Bring on the bacon and pushups!
Good! Keep us informed.
I’ve read that the sudden weight gain from eating more carbs is usually your liver rebuilding it’s glycogen stores, which also involved 4x more water than glycogen.
That may be a factor, but I’ve found from personal experience that it is primarily water retention. Carb intake raises blood insulin which increases water retention. I notice that I urinate less when I’ve had extra carbs and also that I’m far less thirsty.
Also, keep in mind that a gain of 4lbs is a half gallon of water. A human liver only weighs ~3lbs.
When I’m strict minimal carb <20g/day my weight is very constant….+/- 1 lb throughout the day. When I eat more nuts or have breaded chicken and such, ~20-40g/day carb I see fluctuations of +2 to +3 lbs, particularly at night. I then lose it all by 10am the next day. If I exceed that I've seen gains of +5lbs in one day. Most is lost by next day, but sometimes it takes 2-3 days to get back to the minimal +/- 1 lb flucuations.
Now I don’t feel so guilty for those 2 pieces of cornbread and the slice of pumpkin pie and a Coke I had Thursday. I didn’t weigh myself until today though and found I’m another 3 pounds down so 14 down and about 70 more to go.
Charlie,
Have you considered trying the ReliOn Ketone test strips to see where you’re at (other than how you feel?) Being an egg-head chemist type, I wanted to measure the effect of Taubes and the strips give me a more analysis-retentive way to see how my body is reacting.
Harry
I have, but haven’t gotten around to it. There’s also apparently a ketone test device like my glucometer.
Weight that goes up and down by POUNDS overnight can only be water.
First thing you lose on a low-carb diet is lots of water. Water is heavy, it’s about a pound a pint. It’s the first weight you gain going off.
When I run I lose 1-2 pound of water from sweating, I know this from weighing immediately before and after.
The weight gain was all water retention. My weight fluctuates 5-10 pounds a day sometimes when I’m doing low carb diets and cheat– all fluid retention. THere’s really no medical way to explain these drastic weight gains thermodynamically, and your body can’t even synthesize adipose tissue (fat) for 2-3 days anyway. Once I realized this after several years, I learned not to freak out about weight fluctuations like that even when I cheat badly. Just track your weight daily and track the trends– it’s actually important to get more data points so you can ignore the day to day fluctuations. Good for you– I waited until this week to start my diet, I can’t do well on holidays…
P.S. I meant to mention, Taubes has a whole chapter on fluid retention and carbs in “Good Calories Bad Calories”– this was a big “lightbulb” moment for me after several years of experimenting with diets and being disturbed by these overnight weight gains. In medical school fluid retention is only talked about in relation to sodium (salt) intake– the carbs concept was a revelation for me, and definitely is a real thing The “liver rebuilding its glycogen” theory someone mentioned is a bit of a common myth– the weight of the liver doesn’t fluctuate much at all, and the whole organ usually only weighs 3 pounds in a fed person… so do the math. Push in on your shins and see if it makes a divot, that’s a pretty clear sign of fluid retention.
I have noticed since I started following Taubes’s advice in Why We Get Fat that I no longer have the uncomfortable water retention in my feet and lower legs that was bothering me last year. That’s in addition to the normal blood sugars and over 10 pounds lost with no effort at all. I like this! I’ll have to get his first book, too, in order to see the additional info that he didn’t put in the second one.
If you weigh yourself daily, I recommend using a tool that tracks a rolling average of your last few weigh-ins. This filters out the meaningless day-to-day fluctuations and lets you focus on the TREND of your weight over time. I use the True Weight app on my iPhone. The free Lite version is perfectly adequate, but I ended up spending 99 cents for the paid version — not because I need the extra features, but because the app is so useful that I wanted to give the developer some money.
I found that the Nintendo Wii balance board was a fun way to weight myself everyday. It also generated a graph so I could see:
(A) my overall 70 pound weight loss
(B) the noise and short term spikes (oooh, data lol) that had to have been water gain/loss.
The only downside was I never found a way to export the the data graph.
On weighing — I favor the Weight Watchers once-a-week schedule. While it does lend itself to some unfortunate habits (eating light the day of weigh-in; saving up your weekly point allowance for a splurge AFTER weigh-in), it at least gives you a rhythm and is less likely to show short plateaus.
One thing I wish I could find — a cookbook of low-carb recipes that doesn’t depend on “Dr. Mystics Thickener Substitute” and the like. I don’t care to hunt around for oddball ingredients, and some of the cookbooks I’ve read that do use such things copped an attitude that turned me off. Ranting and railing about “industrial food” and then using an extract that requires a biochemistry degree to pull off? Please.
I’m beginning to accumulate recipes, and Sarah Hoyt has a zillion of them — we may put together a cookbook.
Here’s a site with some interesting recipies / lo carb substitutes. Cheers -
http://www.genaw.com/lowcarb/
Weighing yourself every day is like monitoring your long-term stock portfolio every day. One day you’re cocky because everything is going your way and you think “this is easy.” Then the next day, without any change on your part, things go south and you’re doubting whether it can be done at all.
Charlie,
How much have you been able to sort out the effects of wheat, specifically, versus other refined (or simple) carbs?
Not very well, honestly — I haven’t made any attempt to control for them. The difference in my GERD and IBS problems are consistent with what other people have reported from cutting out wheat.
It’s water! I mentioned in a comment after your first week that if you took a weekend “holiday” (my original words), you would gain 5 pounds weight, and that resuming the program you would lose most in a few days (through diuresis that accompanies low-carb). This is what you have observed!
It is fine to weigh yourself every day — I would suggest doing it the same time every day, under the same conditions (first thing in the morning after bathroom with minimal clothing) — but you have to understand what you are observing, and be as unemotional about it as possible. Most importantly, don’t get too excited about rapid drops, or too depressed about rapid increases. These say NOTHING about your metabolic rate or your body fat. Only by tracking calories, exercise, and weight reliably over multiple weeks can you see the trend behind the variations.
I weigh myself every day, too. I just gotta know so I can keep myself focused and on track.
I have my weak moments, though.
*Cough*
Anyway, gained four or five pounds over Thanksgiving. Didn’t need those yams or potato salad and I REALLY didn’t need that pecan pie but man it was so good.
Mr. Martin, there’s a great exercise I was just introduced to called an “8 Count Bodybuilder” that, I’m told, was developed by the US Navy to help new recruits get in shape. Look it up on YouTube, it’s quite simple. It’s a full body exercise and I think you might enjoy it.
No need to weigh. Just check how easy it is to put on your pants in the morning.
Charlie, seriously, do this, and weigh once a week. You do need to weigh somewhat to know for sure, but the clothes test is far easier to keep up with and live with than looking for that every pound and a few ounces every day. You’ll notice it when you get a notch on your belt, which’ll feel good, and when you do your weekly weighing and see how much you’ve lost, it’ll feel LOTS better than your daily loss, and you’ll eliminate the aberrational days when you gain a pound or two, like Thanksgiving, entirely.
This advice did originate in the Modern Feminist She-Woman Man-Haters Haradrim, or whatever you want to call it, but this is one of the few areas where they’re really right. For weekly and greater measurements, do go ahead and weigh yourself. But day to day, let your clothes tell you.
Thanks for doing this – it helps me make better food choices to hear from someone else in the trenches.
Thanks especially for “I’m not on a diet, I just don’t eat that anymore”.
That may become my new mantra!
Your weight’s going to fluctuate, it’s inevitable. Weighing is fine, as long as you don’t use it as an excuse to quit.
> …I took a one-day vacation from the Stillman diet for my birthday, had biscuits at breakfast and potatoes at dinner, and gained seven pounds overnight. And I was hysterical: was I going to have to eat nothing but boiled chicken and boiled eggs for the rest of my life?
You and I have had a lot of the same, or similar, experiences in life. I too tried the Stillman diet. I weighed about 230 in tenth grade, and in the middle of the school year, just after Christmas, I knew something had to be done. My mom had a little booklet on the Stillman diet. I started the diet around the middle of January that year (1970), and in two months time lost about 25 pounds, down to 205. But I wasn’t hydrating like the directions said and I got very, very weak. In phys-ed class wrestling, I was paired with a guy who was closest to my weight and had been rolling him up like a pill every day, but after losing that weight I was losing. So I didn’t stick with the plan — and wailed and gnashed my teeth when the scales shot right back up ten pounds to about 215.
I started counting calories after that and eventually lost down, at my lowest, to 143.
> The point is, though, that while I’m weighing myself every day in order to have good data…
That’s your inner engineer geek coming to the surface. I have no inclination, no desire, to track what I eat. On the Taubes/Atkins regimen, I eat what I want, when I want, as much as I want.
> …this week has demonstrated that weighing every day might not be a good thing for everyone
I do weigh myself every day. (I need the accountability.) Yes, it can be alarming to see those pounds pop right back on much more quickly than they came off. I “gained” four pounds over Thanksgiving weekend. I was in Seattle for a week early last month and put on about five pounds. But all that extra Seattle weight was gone within a week’s time, and I expect the same will happen with the Thanksgiving weight.
During the holidays, my theory is that I don’t expect to lose weight. Meat and fat have calories too, and even if everyone else is chowing down on stuffing and pie, I’m going to feast along with them and knock down many calories’ worth of meat. That’s what feasts are for. But as long as I stick to meat and fat, I figure I won’t fall off the wagon and return to my carb binges when the feasting is over.
Did the Baptist kids teasing you encourage you to become a Buddhist?
Now, actually becoming a Buddhist encouraged my father to send me to Baptist Church Camp. I would say that it may have helped keep me a Buddhist.
As some others have said, the weight is nearly all water weight. As soon as your blood sugar goes up, your body demands more liquid to dilute and process the carbs, and retains the water weight. You’ll find that if you get right back on the diet, you should lose all the weight right back in a couple (1 to 3) days.
Oh, yeah, I’m already down to 280 — 4 pounds since Friday.
Salty foods influence water retention too. Bucketloads o’ sodium in a Thanksgiving dinner…
Pretty sure that’s not it, because I use boatloads of salt every day.
Good job on the weight loss and reporting. I started out on Sept. 5th weighing 293 and weigh 257 today. I am 56 years young.
Been using the Green coffee bean extract and Carb Interceptor. I also found a site online where I could input my daily food consumption and tried to stay under what they suggested I eat in order to lose 2 pounds per week. I drink lots of water, as well.
I recently read one of Taubes books and have gone somewhat low carb. I have combined that with exercise. It seems that in cutting down upon my calories I necessarily cut out quite a few carbs.
Just thought I would chime in. Keep up the good work!
Which diary site are you using? II’ve been using http://loseit.com
I will have to check that one out. I started using the one at Livestong.com. I had the idea I was going to use their smartphone app to record on the fly. I never did though.
Not saying it is the best one,I just stuck with the one I started with. It does make a difference when you see how much you are eating. I took the supplements for 2 weeks with no result before I started keeping track of what I was eating.
Now I am trying to eat low carb, or at least restrict them. Looks like I read they suggest staying in the neighborhood of 20 a day. I am not that strict though. I do try to minimize them and stay within the calorie level suggested for 2 pounds a week weight loss.
I started exercising fairly gently for general health reasons and in hope of not losing muscle during the weight loss. I run to muscle anyway, and they feel good being used again. Also trying to hit target heart rate for the 30 minutes a day suggested.
I strongly recommend MyFitnessPal, although Fitday and LoseIt seem to have strong support as well. MFP has a truly great database of all kinds of foods, and exercises, and has somewhat better tools for tracking nutrients and progress over time.
However for tracking daily weight, calories, exercise/steps, I used an excel spreadsheet which allowed me to do a range of calculations, graphs, and projections. As a scientist none of the available trackers gives me anywhere near enough analysis tools. Maybe one day I’ll design my own app….
I have gone on a low carb diet. I got interested in it because Glenn Reynolds frequently posts articles about the Taubes approach. I was somewhere around 210 in July. I weighed myself for the first time today, and I’m at 183 lbs. I’ve added four holes to my belt, and I haven’t felt this good in years. I agree with you about not weighing yourself. When my wife goes on a diet, I keep telling her not to weigh herself so often. I think when you diet your weight fluctuates, and the downward trends act as a discouragement which could lead to fudging.
Yeah. As I say, if I didn’t have the detailed food diary it would be hard not to get discouraged when a one day laps puts on 6 pounds. As it was, even with the lapse days, my average carb intake was 30.4g/day and I was 600+ kcal/day under my budget. Yet I gained 2.4 pounds net over the week.
Hell, now I’m glad I’m weighing every day because this is interesting. But I still don’t recommend it for evryone.