The Best Diet on the Market

A couple of weeks ago I posted a challenge to the popular notion that people get fat because they eat too much and exercise to little. Instead, I argued, we get fat because we eat so much sugar and refined carbohydrates.

 

Last week, I switched gears and argued that even though most diets get this crucial fact wrong, they can nonetheless be effective for weight loss since they end up cutting the worst offenders out of your diet. I put forward the idea that the psychology of adherence was more important than the biological mechanisms of fat loss.

 

Those articles are great for people who want to wrap their head around the big ideas, but the rubber never really met the road. There are still the huge practical questions of what the most effective diet is, and what diet I actually used to lose 30+ pounds.

 

Now, obviously I’m biased, but I think the answer to the questions of which diet is best and which diet that I’m on are the same.

 

I don’t think it is the only diet that works, nor can I say it will definitely be the best for everybody. What I mean is that if I had to create a diet that both took into account the biological mechanisms of weight loss as well as the psychological component of adherence, it would probably look a lot like the one that I am on now.

 

I think the diet that I will talk about today, the slow-carb diet, is not only one of the most effective at burning body fat, but is one of the most sustainable diets in the long term.

 

The Slow-Carb Diet

 

This may or may not be a diet that you’ve ever heard of. Although it has become fairly popular, it is relatively new and hasn’t even come close to reaching the mainstream recognition of weight watchers, paleo, the south beach diet, etc.

 

The diet comes from the amazing book The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. Here are some of the rules:

 

• Eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up.
• No sugar (including all sweet fruit. Things like tomatoes and avocados are okay in moderation)
• No starch
• Really nothing white is allowed except cauliflower
• No dairy
• Don’t drink your calories (things like unsweetened coffee or tea are okay)
• Take one unrestricted cheat day per week where you can break all these rules (it’s easiest to stick with the same day each week and for most people it works out best to do it on Saturday).

 

And here’s a few recommendations:

 

• Repeat meals as often as possible, such as having a “go-to” meal that you eat every day for breakfast, and another that you have for lunch.
• Eat legumes (beans, lentils, etc) at as many meals as possible to help you feel full
• Eat lots of vegetables and eggs (the people who are least successful with this diet fail to eat lots of eggs and veggies)

 

I’ll mention that there was one rule of the diet that I did not follow: the restriction on dairy. Anecdotally, dairy seems to affect different people differently. So while I took Tim’s advice and stayed away from milk (except for cheat days), I included cheese and other dairy products like sour cream as part of my diet.

 

I’ll also mention that other than including some dairy, I stuck to this diet pretty strictly while losing weight. Since hitting a weight that I am comfortable with, I’ve still been adhering to the diet for the most part, but there has been some relaxation of the rules, such as an occasional cheat meal on Friday evening.

 

So on this diet, you are going to primarily be eating meat, fish, fowl, eggs, vegetables and legumes. In other words, real food.

 

Why Does the Diet Work?

 

I think there are a few different reasons, but the first one is that it basically eliminates sugar and processed and refined carbohydrates from your diet.

 

One book that has significantly impacted by thinking on the area of weight loss is Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes. In the book, he argues that it’s the steady drip of carbohydrates that comes with a western diet that’s causing us to experience elevated insulin levels which causes us to store fat and to be reluctant to burn it. Cutting sugar and refined carbs is the best way to bring insulin levels back down so that you are able to burn body fat.

 

You aren’t cutting carbs from your diet, you’ll still be eating vegetables and legumes, but the carbs that you will be eating won’t cause a spike in your glucose levels which promotes an insulin response. Like the name of the diet suggests, you’ll be consuming carbs that digest more slowly, minimizing your insulin secretion.

 

According to Tim, the 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up is also very helpful. The idea is that this gets your metabolism kick-started in the morning and gets you on pace for eating an adequate amount of protein.

 

He actually has anecdotal evidence that people have lost weight just using this little breakfast trick.

 

I’ll say from my own experience that eating 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up greatly decreases the chances that you’ll eat something to sabotage your diet before lunchtime. The very first time I did the 30 grams of protein trick I went to work and saw that someone had brought in Dunkin Donuts (their chocolate frosted donut is one of my all-time favorite treats). I had never been able to resist having a donut when someone brought them in, but I felt pleasantly full and I politely passed without a problem. When I eat a protein-packed breakfast, I don’t get hungry until lunch (and usually I’m not even “hungry” by lunchtime, I just eat because it’s time to eat).

 

The diet definitely does work though. In 2012 the app Lift did an analysis of 3,500 people who were on the diet and tracking it through Lift. The results were that after four weeks, 86% of the people lost weight, and the average weight loss was 8.6 pounds. As they said: “These numbers are very strong.”

 

They found that the people who were least successful weren’t eating as many eggs or vegetables as everyone else, hence my recommendation: eat your veggies!

 

What Makes Me Think This Diet is Any Better than All the Others?

 

The first reason, as I’ve just described, is the fact that it works.

 

The other reason I like it is because it is set up so that you can stick with it for the long term. I’ve continued to stick to it (with slight modifications) even though I’ve reached a weight that I am comfortable with.

 

Two weight loss books that I have read recently (Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink and the aforementioned Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes) have mentioned the same concerning statistic: 85% of the people who have lost at least 10% of their starting body weight gain it back within a year.

 

Clearly, the Standard American Diet (appropriately abbreviated SAD) is not your friend when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight and if you revert back to it, you end up right back at square one.

 

You need a diet that you can stick with for the long haul so that you don’t become part of the 85% statistic (as a side note I remember hearing recently that if you lengthen the time frame to five years, that 85% reversion rate jumps to 95%, although I don’t remember where that figure comes from).

 

The good news is that as far as I can tell, the Slow-Carb diet is set up perfectly to allow you to stick with it.

 

First of all, there are no restrictions on calories. The number one thing that will kill a diet is hunger. If you’ve hit your calorie limit on a given diet and are still starving, you can only fight the temptation to eat more for so long.

 

Plus, not having calorie restrictions means that you don’t need to count calories. Counting calories is inaccurate, annoying, and a difficult practice to sustain.

 

If hunger is the biggest thing that will kill a diet, a feeling of deprivation is definitely second.

 

Everyone, everywhere knows that ice cream is bad for you, but if you tell me that I can’t eat any more ice cream or that I need to restrict my serving to a bowl the size of a soda cap…well we probably can’t be friends anymore.

 

No one wants to know that there is a world of delicious food out there that they could be experiencing, but they have to miss out because they are trying to lose weight.

 

With the Slow-Carb diet, you can eat as much as you want all of the time, and whatever you want some of the time.

 

You like cookies? Great, have as many as you want on Saturday.

 

Donuts are more your thing? I know what you’re having for breakfast on Saturday.

 

Think it’s totally crazy that this diet doesn’t allow fruit? Yes it does…on Saturdays.

 

As a bonus, by responding to your cravings by telling them to wait until Saturday, you will start cultivating the virtuous practice of delayed gratification, a critical habit for achieving your long-term dreams and ambitions.

 

The diet even adapts fairly easily to eating out. As Tim explains, most restaurants will offer a meal that is some variation of a meat, a starch, and some vegetables. The key to eating out and sticking to the diet is to order that meal, but to ask for extra vegetables instead of the starch.

 

Mexican restaurants are great for the Slow-Carb diet, just avoid rice and tortillas.

 

Making the Diet Even Easier to Stick to

 

With all that said, the diet is still very restrictive six days a week, and I can’t sugar-coat that fact.

 

In order to be sure that you are able to stick to it, there are a couple of hacks that I consider to be critical to sticking with it.

 

The first is to start eating the same thing every day for breakfast and lunch. You want to minimize the amount of decisions that you need to make each week, especially considering the fact that those decisions have no become more complex in light of your dietary restrictions.

 

If it comes time for shopping each week and you have no idea what to buy because you haven’t decided what you are going to eat next week, you’re pretty much sunk.

 

I’ve settled into a routine of having what I call the Buffalo Breakfast in the morning, and a Super Salad at lunch.

 

The buffalo breakfast is 3 eggs (remember what I said earlier: people who eat less eggs get poorer results), grilled chicken, cheddar cheese, scallions, and Frank’s Red Hot sauce and it takes me about two minutes to whip up.

 

The Super Salad gets made in a big batch on Sunday so that I have all my lunches for the week ready to go in mason jars on Monday morning. The salad has a hard boiled egg (again with the eggs), romaine lettuce, arugala, carrots, cucumber, tomato, and either oil and vinegar or a homemade vinaigrette. As was mentioned earlier, you have a better chance of being successful with this diet if you eat your veggies.

 

The next step to making it easier to stick to the diet is to develop six go-to dinner meals. On cheat day you can eat whatever you want, so that means that you need to have a solid plan for Sunday-Friday.

 

Since you’re eating the same thing at breakfast and lunch, it’s important to work a little variety into your core dinner menu. I recommend two different variables to change up: the protein, and the type of cuisine.

 

For instance, my wife and I are starting to think about developing a Slow-Carb friendly meal for each major national cuisine, Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Greek, French, American, etc.

 

So for instance, we already have one go-to meal that is Greek chicken with tzatziki, onions, tomatoes, and cucumber salad.

 

Our Mexican meal is a Chipotle-style burrito bowl.

 

Our American meal is steak and “potatoes.” My wife finds a steak big enough for us to split, makes “mashed potatoes” out of cauliflower, and we’ll also have some steamed broccoli.

 

Soon we are thinking about adding a Chinese inspired fried rice using cauliflower rice.

 

Each of those has a different kind of protein, chicken, ground beef, and steak. When pork is on sale we also have a couple go-to pork recipes. One of my favorite go-to meals has yet a different protein: Salmon with pesto, tomatoes, and green beans.

 

Having a variety of proteins and cuisines helps keep things fresh and minimizes the chance that you will grow bored.

 

Of course, you should also remind yourself that Saturday will offer endless potential for variety. It’s a good thing during the week to remind yourself that eating the same thing again and again will make your cheat days even more exciting and enjoyable.

 

The third step is to find a go-to non-cheat meal for eating out. Look, I get it, sometimes life is crazy and you forgot to defrost meat, and you forgot you were out of a key ingredient, and you had a really bad day and didn’t get started on dinner. That’s okay.

 

The important part is not to come up with some delusional fantasy world where those kind of things never happen to you and you don’t need to develop contingency plans.

 

For my family, our go-to non-cheat meal when we are not eating a home cooked meal is Chipotle.

 

I am completely unfazed by reports of food-related illnesses. I love Chipotle. It’s the best value out there, the most delicious food imaginable at a reasonable price.

 

I get a burrito bowl with (no rice), black beans, fajita veggies, steak, mild salsa, medium salsa, cheese, sour cream, guac, and lettuce. Before the diet I used to get a soda and no guac, so that exchange was close to break even in terms of price (it turns out guac is a tiny bit more expensive than a soda).

 

Find a place that you love going to and find a delicious Slow-Carb friendly meal for when you just need to get out of the house.

 

The fourth step in making sure you can adhere to the diet is stocking up on Slow-Carb friendly snacks. According to Tim, you should fill pretty full on just three meals a day with no snacking, but you wan’t to be prepared with something in your house to much on besides that box of cheese-it’s.

 

For a protein-packed snack you could boil some eggs ahead of time. Another one that keeps longer is peanut butter (you need one where the only two ingredients are peanuts and salt, and it’s good to remember that peanuts and peanut butter should be used in moderation on this diet). Believe it or not, for me having a jar of pickles on hand works wonders for when I want a snack. Because it has something of a sour taste, it doesn’t trigger any cravings the way something more salty or something sweet might.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Again, I am biased toward the Slow-Carb diet because I used it to lose a lot of weight and get into the best shape of my life (and I really mean that, I’m 30 right now and in much better shape than I was at 20 before I started to put on weight). The Slow-Carb diet is perfect, nor is it probably the best diet for everyone.

 

However, after seeing how easy it has been to stick with and after reading as many articles on diet as I could get my hand on, I’m convinced that this is going to be the most effective diet for the greatest number of people.