Slow-Carb First Week Update

Right to the chase…

I have lost 9.6 lbs since Monday morning! Only 5 days! Since I started on a Monday I will not be going a full 6 days before having my first cheat day today! Funny thing is I’m not really craving anything but I did make a list of the things I would eat today. Every time I had a small craving I put it on my list!

Worst Meal Ever

Half way through the week I decided to try and integrate Slow-Carb foods that Tim has listed as higher in electrolytes like Potassium, Magnesium, and Calcium. I had a shoulder cramp on Tuesday all day and that was not fun since I was a work. I know that when I was doing the Atkins Low-Carb Diet I was prone to very painful leg cramps in the middle of the night. If you see in Tim’s book he has a list of foods that naturally give you electrolytes.

I have also bought a special “HealtheSalt” to keep my sodium intake lower but giving me extra Potassium that I put on each meal.

So I created a meal with salmon with bones (from the can), spinach (from frozen with butter), lima beans (from can), and HealtheSalt!  I’m not a fancy cook and when I cook for myself I just cook the parts and eat them as is. This meal was not good at all! I forced it down just because I didn’t want to waste any food since money is tight right now.

Pleasant Surprise

I thought for sure I would have cravings like mad all week but I didn’t. I think only one time did I feel weak enough that if someone asked to would cheat. After finding our Almonds and Peanuts are Slow-Carb foods I got very excited! Now I have a bunch with each meal and it’s the perfect snack food while watching TV when other people in the house are eating junk food! On the first and second nights I did have about 2 tablespoons of almond butter to get me through the evening minor cravings.

A second surprise I had was the fact that I really like the taste of frozen veggies and Lentils! I cook the frozen veggies, Lentils from a can, half teaspoon of HealtheSalt, some garlic powder, and a little butter for 4 minutes in the microwave. Sounds boring but I’m loving it and if I’m having it at least 2 times per day it really seems to keep my satisfied.

The third surprise was the fact that I really didn’t have to make many adjustments to the size of my meals as I went along. I started out thinking I was going to be hungry so I just made a lot! It was a bit hard to eat so much food first thing in the morning when I have been use to smoothies from my last diet program. Also, I have been getting hungry by 11am but I wait till noon to eat when I’m at work. I just thought of it now but I should be bringing extra baggy of nuts to work for a morning snack!

No Exercise

I didn’t do any special exercises this week at all! I had Monday off for New Year but I spent the day sitting on the couch watching TV. I rest of the week I was at work like normal. Some days at work I do run around the office a bit trying to get things done but this week was about normal. The washroom in our area was out of order for a day so I did have to make a few trips up to the second floor washroom so I guess maybe I got a little extra exercise there but not much. Each night after work we came home and watched NetFlix but one night we did have to stop at the Real Canadian Superstore to shop so that was about an hour long slow walk that could have been counted as exercise.

Point is my week was about normal for me. As the months roll on and I loose a bit more I will be starting to do some the exercises that Tim talks about in his book The 4-Hour Body but that will not be for some time I think.

I’m off to start my cheat day! I did have a Slow-Carb breakfast when I woke up at 11am this fine Saturday and I’m just now getting hungry again.

PS – My body fat also went down 0.8% over the last 5 days.

Have a great day,
-Ian

Week 11 Day 7: Eat Less or Eat Healthy?

What is the formula for losing weight?

Food + Exercise = weight gain/loss

Exercise builds muscle but allows our bodies to burn more fat stores or use the food we eat faster so it doesn’t become stored fat. Sometimes people that start exercising get discouraged because they gain weight but this is due to the exercise. Solve this issue by tracking you Body Fat Percentage! We have a home scale that analyzes my body fat it may not be exact but it should allow you to track changes.

Eat less food to lose weight correct? Wrong!

You need to eat the correct balance of food MORE times per day. Get yourself on a balance diet that is about 40% protein, 30% unprocessed carbs & 30% healthy fats. This will help prevent cravings for processed carbs like junk food and pop.

Eat at least 4-5 balanced meals per day; women 4 and men 5. Make each of the 3 main meals about 400-500 calories. Each snack should be about 200 calories. Try to eat about every 2-3 hours you're awake. Try to eat your first meal within 30 minutes of waking up to get your machine running.

Why eat so much on a regular schedule? You body is a machine that processes food. When the machine is not working you are not burning extra calories to process your food. The longer you go without food between meals the more your body will think it's in a famine situation and start working slow to help save processed food as fat. Your body stores fat to use at a later famine. I use to never eat breakfast and not eat till 4pm. Anything I eat at that time would have been stored as fat even if I had a balanced meal.

You can also follow the Slow Carb Diet or a Low Carb diet to help you lose weight. I have never tried the Slow Carb Diet yet because we're still following our weight loss clinic balanced diet approach. The Slow Carb Diet encourages the same meals every day and allows one Cheat Day every week to allow you to deal with cravings and to reset your body. Low Carb Diets don't seem to allow for this reset but if you try to keep your meals varied and not the same thing every day then it should lessen the possibility of a weight loss plateau.

If you hit a weight loss plateau on any diet...have a cheat day! Get your cravings out of your system and don't worry about anything. Within two days of the cheat you will be back on track and losing the weight again.

Guilt and humiliation can be a very dangerous thing when it comes to long term dieting. It will only hurt you so give your self some slack. Plan to have a cheat day! Try one a month or one every two weeks. Changing your eating habits is a life changing situation and is harder than we think. Give it time don't feel guilty when you cheat just try not to cheat more than one day per week!

Look at that...I'm sounding all weight loss guru in this post! Lol I think I'm writing like this to encourage myself more than anyone. Over the last three weeks we have been cheating about every two days and that is not enough good days in between the cheat to keep losing weight. This is just enough to stay the same or gain just a little. Very demoralizing in any case.

We need to get back on track! I need to get back on track! The train has not crashed but we are slowing down to pick the fruit off the trees we pass to often.

-Ian

Week 5 Day 5: Damage Control

On Monday May 23 we had a cheat day as per page 100 of The 4-Hour Body (4HB). We did it because my wife has been volunteering down a the evacuee center for the Slave Lake fire and she has not been able to follow the program to a tee. Different companies where donating lunches to the volunteers so she had not control over what she ate because they were told they wouldn't have any space to store personal things like lunches. This change is daily routine was bothering her and in turn affecting me so we planned an organized preemptive strike!

The Damage Control chapter in 4HB is an important part of shocking the body out of routine to help spur further weight loss. The basics of it are take special supplements that day, then do special yet very simple exercises at certain times through the day and eat a couple of helpful foods during the day. The results were interesting.

I gained 4.4 lbs in that one day...is this bad? Did the cheat day rules not work?

I also LOST 0.5% body fat that day! What does this mean?

I gained weight but lost body fat so...I gained muscle! I would have to say it was a very successful cheat day even though after 5 days my body is still sore all over from the exercises we did that day.

But the real damage control I was speaking about in this posts title would be the next two days after our cheat day.

Even though on our cheat day we got very full and sick from the crap food we were eating we ended up cheating the next 2 evenings. I think we cheated these two other times because we still couldn't get back onto our regular routine the very next day. We were also foolish enough to cheat the second 2 times without following the 4HB rules of cheat days or cheat meals. This is where my problems were this week.

We needed to get right back on program as strict as ever!

Well it's been 1 full day since getting back on full program and I'm already almost back to my weight and body fat pre-cheat day. On Monday I will be getting measured again and I plan on getting the numbers from the weight loss clinic to share with you.

I think after 3 good days on program with weekend the results will be good.

-Ian

Week 4 Day 5: 8813

I'm excited this week because I'm getting new found energy and just a little ambition to do things. Don't get me wrong I will always love movies and video games but now I feel like I can start doing other things. Now this is just a feeling...getting up and doing things is still a mental fight.

Some fights I'm winning this week are: 2 lunch time walks, 22 to 24 cups of water per day, new hole on my belt.

Because of my first lunch time walk I got a new personal best steps in one day 8813! It really didn't seem that hard to do that much walking. I'm already thinking of working to 10000 steps.

On our Wednesday visit to the weight loss clinic I was informed that for my size I should be drinking at least 22 cups of water per day. That's over 5 L man this has been a challenge both for drinking and pee breaks! After upping the water intake over 3 days I lost 2 more pounds so I can't really complain.

Making the new hole so my belt was smaller was fun! This little win made me feel really good...because my jeans were beginning to slide down. Don't worry, Ethel didn't see anything!

I have decided to start tracking my Body Mass Index (BMI) as well. It can't hurt to track something else. So check out the stats page to see updates for that. Also, you can find some helpful links to Wikipedia to help you understand BMI and Body Fat Percentage.

Have a great day,

-Ian