Slow Carb Diet: An Experiment!

A little over a month ago I got my hands on the "4-Hour Body" book written by Timothy Ferriss. The book is definitely an interesting read. If you do choose to read it I would strongly recommend that you read it with a skeptics mind.

After reading parts of the book I decided to give the "Slow Card Diet" a try. I had pretty good results in about a months time. My net weight loss was low, form 185 lbs to 175 lbs, however this was mainly due to gain in muscle mass as I continued my regular gym schedule while switching onto the slow carb diet.

Here are the key points of the slow carb diet:

Avoid any carbohydrate that is — or can be — white. The following foods are thus prohibited, except for within 1.5 hours of finishing a resistance-training workout of at least 20 minutes in length: bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you’ll be safe.

The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, constructing each meal with a protein, legume, and vegetable.

Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. I’m a wine fanatic and have at least one glass of wine each evening, which I believe actually aids sports recovery and fat-loss. Recent research into resveratrol supports this.

I recommend Saturdays as your “Dieters Gone Wild” day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don’t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.

Even though the diet plan requiers for milk to be eliminated, I continued to consume it. I did this for two reasons one I love milk & second I am a vegetarian. So I did not really follow the slow carb diet but I came as close as I could.

My daily diet for about a month was very consistent and I ate the same set of meals every day. Here is what my schedule is on a non binge day

PRE GYM: 1 scoops of Muscle Milk® Light /w Milk
POST GYM: 3 scoops of Muscle Milk® Light
LUNCH: Veggie Burrito Bowl @ Chipotle /w (- rice) (+ extra beans) (- cheese) (+ guacamole) OR Tofu Basil @ Thai Cafe
SNACK: Greek Yogurt [I like Oikos]
EVE: 1 scoops of Muscle Milk® Light /w Milk
DINNER: 10 Eggs (- 8 yolks) OR Lentil + Spinach Soup (dal) OR Tofu /w veggies
PRE SLEEP: 1 scoops of Muscle Milk® Light /w Milk

Lately I have been sprouting green mung dal for casual consumption as well, its delicious!!

In addition to this diet plan I have also been following the pre & post meal light exercise routine for lunch and dinner. I do about 50 wall push ups and 20 air squats before the meal and again about an hour & half later.

Wall Push Ups

Air Squats

On binge days I ate like a pig from the get go. Main food alternated b/w Indian @ Shivas or IHOP followed by copious amounts of salsa & Late July chips (from Whole Foods) in addition to the delectable Pepperidge Farms Montauk soft baked cookies plus lots & lots of pineapples and oranges.

Even though I followed the slow carb diet very loosely I have been pretty impressed by how fast my body reacted to the change in diet. I am going to continue to stay on this diet till December 2011 or longer!