Well we are one week into Tim’s lifestyle hack diet of low or slow carbs and already 3 kgs lighter (both) which is pretty amazing loss for one week. Before you ask, it’s not water as we are both careful at drinking a lot of water (especially as it’s a hot summer at the moment).

So… what did we do? Followed Tim’s guidelines with modifications within the concept of low-carb. That means - some protein, beans and vegetables with every meal. No high GI products meaning no white starches or sugars including all breads, rice, grains, potatoes, sugars, etc. Beans are there to fill and provide some carbs, but better carbs (low GI). Some are avoiding red meat on this diet - with the low amounts we eat of any meat these days, I don’t really see the point in cutting it out. Plus we could both do with the iron content. I also can’t vouch for the “grass feed”, “hormone free” or “free range” aspects of our protein here in China, but if you have a choice it’s probably better.

Meals that work really well for flavour and little of the naughties are Mexican and Indian. You can make refried beans, chilli con carne, pinto bean mex things, any form of daal, Rogan Gosh (we do lamb) or most Indian curries. Cut out the tomato paste/sauce and yoghurt (made with sugar - homemade without sugar would be fine) from Indian and you’re done!

Here’s our diet for week one (and yes, we ate the same thing for a week) it was dead easy to do and we felt happy and full the whole way along.

Breakfast (1 person)
Coffee with low sugar soy milk (no added sugar).

2 microwaved scrambled eggs (microwaved is fluffier) with butter and low sugar soy milk (allergic to cow’s but also way better for diet). Oh, and we did whole egg (can’t be bothered separating for lower taste).
Sometimes tomato or shallots or mushroom (or all) in the eggs.
1/4 Onion, 1/2 tomato, garlic, and small handful of black beans fried up (with salt/pepper/etc).

Lunch (1 person)
NB: for first 3 days we ate the dinner meal here. But it’s a better idea to make something different.
some Tuna salad (spoonfuls) from
- 1 tin Tuna (water, oil doesn’t matter) drained
- peas
- corn kernels
- can of white beans (or any bean you like) drained, washed.
- carrot finely diced.
Haven’t really found a good dressing that’s low-carb, but it’s tasty as is or with salt, pepper & tarragon.

Plus some kidney bean salad (we probably over did the bean thing this meal)
- 1-2 cans Kidney beans
- corn kernels
- 2 eggs hardboiled, chopped
- celery
- 1/2 onion finely chopped
- 2 tomatoes finely chopped
- 1 large red chilli (sweet chilli size the ones that measure 15-20cm)
Again dressing is experimental - a small drizzle of olive oil and balsalmic vinegar, salt & pepper.

Dinner
Some Mex Pinto beans (kinda like our version of chilli con carne) made with beef or pork mince and pinto beans (and mexican stuff!) without adding sugar such as no tomato sauce or paste. Raw ingredients only.

Some homemade salsa (and careful with the sugary ingredients, only fresh stuff).

Some Kidney bean salad (as above)

Supper, snacks & movie watching
Any diet should include this category mandatory! We ate almonds for snacks. Good calcium and other things, and nut oil (or oil in general) doesn’t matter on this diet - only carbs and GI index.

A glass of red wine at night - gotta love the diet that includes red wine! Sometimes we also had a little cheese but not creamy ones, more like jack or some holey German one we can get here. Don’t eat that disgusting coloured orange crap (American cheese). Cheese is not naturally orange! So it at least contains colours let alone other nasties.

I’m sure there are more imaginative snacks out there, but nuts are great for us. Besides the fact that we really weren’t that hungry for snacks. Sometimes we’d get a little hungry and hour after where the meal should have been (e.g. 1pm instead of 12 noon) which is amazing because we weren’t that hungry at 12 and often had to look at the clock to know when to eat!

Cheat day!
Best of all, this diet allows for cheating. Everyone’s going to cheat on a diet… yes, everyone. There’s dinners out with friends, that icecream/chocolate/cake that is literally calling your name, etc. This way it’s allowed on one particular day - we chose Saturday as dinners are more likely with friends. On Saturdays all rules are broken. Chocolate, icecream and pizza is all yours.

Some might think of it as a step backwards, but the cheat day does two important things.
1) It spikes your intake of calories and therefore metabolism. It says to the body, “don’t worry there’s plenty more calories - no shortage what-so-ever”. Which means the body doesn’t go into starvation mode and doesn’t lower its expectations on amount of calories (causing dieting plateaus).
2) It allows for human nature therefore, people can stay on the diet for longer, if not, forever. By allowing 24 hours of any desire, people are more likely to stay on the diet through the other 6 days. After all, it’s not that you can’t eat chocolate (or anything for that matter) it’s that you can’t eat it Sunday through Friday. That situation seems a lot less permanent. Anyone can be good for 6 days! It’s the diets that expect you to be good forever that fail because it’s against basic human nature.

Some have adjusted the cheat day to every fortnight however I don’t know the math. How many diet days does it take for your body to go into slow-down starvation mode? I don’t know. So until I do know, I’m sticking to the every week thing.

Our first cheat day was a doozy! We had chocolate, pizza, icecream, yoghurt & muesli (sweet toasted), pancakes and dumplings (the boiled version due to laziness of walking outside and getting the fried version). It was fun and definitely spiked the calories. We’re thinking of not going so crazy next time, but still doing enough to spike it, such as more savoury things with white carbs.

So, with a glass of red in hand… Cheers to the new eating plan and may there be many more kilos to wave goodbye to (if only Dr. Who were true).

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Life, eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.