RULE 1: AVOID "WHITE" CARBOHYDRATES.
Avoid any carbohydrate that is, or can be, white. The following foods are prohibited, except for within 30 minutes of finishing a resistance-training workout like those described in the "From Geek to Freak" or "Occam's Protocol" chapters: all bread, rice (including brown), cereal, potatoes, pasta, tortillas, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating the aforementioned foods and anything else white, you'll be safe.
Just for fun, another reason to avoid the whities: chlorine dioxide, one of the chemicals used to bleach flour (even if later made brown again, a common trick), combines with residual protein in most of these foods to form alloxan. Researchers use alloxan in lab rats to induce diabetes. That's right-it's used to produce diabetes. This is bad news if you eat anything white or "enriched."
Don't eat white stuff unless you want to get fatter.
RULE 2: EAT THE SAME FEW MEALS OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat-loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. There are 47,000 products in the average U.S. grocery store, but only a handful of them won't make you fat.
Mix and match from the following list, constructing each meal with one pick from each of the three groups. I've starred the choices that produce the fastest fat-loss for me:
Proteins
*Egg whites with 1–2 whole eggs for flavor (or, if organic, 2–5 whole eggs, including yolks)
*Chicken breast or thigh
*Beef (preferably grass-fed)
Pork
*Fish
Legumes
*Lentils (also called "dal" or "daal")
*Black beans
Pinto beans
Red beans
Soybeans
Vegetables
*Spinach
*Mixed vegetables (including broccoli, cauliflower, or any other cruciferous vegetables)
*Sauerkraut, kimchee (full explanation of these later in "Damage Control")
Asparagus
Peas
Broccoli
Green beans
Eat as much as you like of the above food items, but keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place of french fries, potatoes, or rice.
Surprisingly, I have found Mexican food (after swapping out rice for vegetables) to be one of the cuisines most conducive to the Slow-Carb Diet. If you have to pay an extra $1–3 to substitute at a restaurant, consider it your six-pack tax, the nominal fee you pay to be lean. Most people who go on "low"-carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit because they consume insufficient calories. A half-cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a half-cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.
Eating more frequently than four times per day might be helpful on higher-carb diets to prevent gorging, but it's not necessary with the ingredients we're using. Eating more frequent meals also appears to have no enhancing effect on resting metabolic rate, despite claims to the contrary.
Frequent meals can be used in some circumstances (see "The Last Mile"), but not for this reason.
The following meal schedule is based on a late sleep schedule, as I'm a night owl who gives up the ghost at 2:00 a.m. at the earliest, usually with wineglass or book still in hand, à la heroin addict. Adjust your meals to fit your schedule, but make sure to have your first meal within an hour of waking. Meals are approximately four hours apart.
10:00 am - Breakfast
2:00 pm - Lunch
6:30 pm - Smaller second lunch
8:00–9:00 pm - Recreation or sports training, if scheduled.
10:00 pm - Dinner
12:00 am - Glass of red wine and Discovery Channel before bed
Here are some of my meals that recur again and again:
Breakfast (home): Scrambled Eggology® pourable egg whites with one whole egg, black beans, and mixed vegetables warmed up or cooked in a microwave using Pyrex® containers.
Lunch (Mexican restaurant): Grass-fed organic beef, pinto beans, mixed vegetables, and extra guacamole.
Dinner (home): Grass-fed organic beef (from Trader Joe's), lentils, and mixed vegetables.
Just remember: this diet is, first and foremost, intended to be effective, not fun. It can be fun with a few tweaks (the next chapter covers this), but that's not the goal.
RULE 3: DON'T DRINK CALORIES.
Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened tea, coffee (with no more than two tablespoons of cream; I suggest using cinnamon instead), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk (including soy milk), normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. Limit diet soft drinks to no more than 16 ounces per day if you can, as the aspartame can stimulate weight gain.
I'm a wine fanatic and have one to two glasses of red wine almost every evening. It doesn't appear to have any negative impact on my rate of fat-loss. Red wine is by no means required for this diet to work, but it's 100% allowed (unlike white wines and beer, both of which should be avoided). Up to two glasses of red per night, no more.
RULE 4: DON'T EAT FRUIT.
Humans don't need fruit six days a week, and they certainly don't need it year-round. If your ancestors were from Europe, for example, how much fruit did they eat in the winter 500 years ago? Think they had Florida oranges in December? Not a chance. But you're still here, so the lineage somehow survived.
The only exceptions to the no-fruit rule are tomatoes and avocadoes, and the latter should be eaten in moderation (no more than one cup or one meal per day). Otherwise, just say no to fruit and its principal sugar, fructose, which is converted to glycerol phosphate more efficiently than almost all other carbohydrates. Glycerol phosphate p triglycerides (via the liver) p fat storage. There are a few biochemical exceptions to this, but avoiding fruit six days per week is the most reliable policy.
But what's this "six days a week" business? It's the seventh day that allows you, if you so desire, to eat peach crepes and banana bread until you go into a coma.
RULE 5: TAKE ONE DAY OFF PER WEEK.
I recommend Saturdays as your Dieters Gone Wild (DGW) 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. If I drank beer, I'd have a few pints of Paulaner Hefe-Weizen.
I make myself a little sick each Saturday and don't want to look at any junk 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 and conversion of T4 to T3, etc.) doesn't downshift from extended caloric restriction.
That's right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia. There are no limits or boundaries during this day of gluttonous enjoyment. There is absolutely no calorie counting on this diet, on this day or any other.
Start the diet at least five days before your designated cheat day. If you choose Saturday, for example, I would suggest starting your diet on a Monday.
That's All, Folks!
If the founding fathers could sum up our government in a six-page constitution, the above is all we need to summarize rapid fat-loss for 99.99% of the population. Followed to the letter, I've never seen it fail. Never. When you feel mired in details or confused by the latest-and-greatest
contradictory advice, return to this short chapter. All you need to remember is:
Rule 1: Avoid "white" carbohydrates (or anything that can be white).
Rule 2: Eat the same few meals over and over again.
Rule 3: Don't drink calories.
Rule 4: Don't eat fruit.
Rule 5: Take one day off per week and go nuts.
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