To Your Health - Part 5

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I hadn't expected to write a fifth part to this series, but with the recent developments, I think it's a good idea, and I feel like I have to share the good news: Over the past two weeks, I lost eight (8!) pounds by eating all the junk food I wanted!

Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking my calendar broke and I still think it's April 1st and you're still upset that Mopjockey.com isn't actually the official website of Florida (yet). I couldn't possibly have feasted on chocolate and Doritos for the past week, could I have?

After you've petitioned Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio on my behalf, check this out:

A month ago, I clued you guys in on Tim Ferriss's Four Hour Body. I spent a bunch of time reading it and thinking about how to apply the precepts, and remembered key parts of my own weight-loss story in which I lost over 50 pounds throughout 2009. A lot of the ideas in Tim's fat-loss section meld nicely with my own experiences from that year. During that time, I ate basically the same, reasonably healthy meals over and over, and occasionally sucumbed to my craving for chocolate.

That's exactly the way Tim suggests you eat: the same meals, over and over, and then once a week go nuts without any guilt. For maximum fat-loss, he gives a handy list of the most effective foods you can choose from. Follow the plan for six days, and then on the seventh you get to eat anything and everything you want!

Two weeks ago, I assembled my particular choices of foods (which I'll tell you in a minute) and mostly stuck to them. I wanted to see how well I'd like them, and how hard it was to stick to the diet. I was pleasantly surprised to find it tasted okay, and it wasn't too hard to stick to it. I did "cheat" a couple times, but largely kept to it. And then on Saturday, I ate like a total pig.

I started my day with two huge candy bars, totalling nearly a pound of chocolate, and that was just breakfast! Over the course of the day, I had about half a package of peanut butter and chocolate chip cookie dough, some cookies, half a bag of Doritos, some pizza, and some other stuff. I was full the whole day, practically forcing myself to overeat. I didn't quite take it to the point where I got sick, or felt any pain from having too much food in my belly, but it was a heckuva gluttonous day! I ate enough that Sally Struthers will no longer speak to me.

Then this past week, I stuck strictly to my diet, straying only once because I had to have something for breakfast and didn't have time to peel a couple eggs, so I had a cup of fruit. Here's my diet:

Breakfast: Two hardboiled XL eggs, topped with cinnamon and a variety of spices to combat the blandness.

Lunch: A can of tuna, half a can of black beans, and half a can of mixed vegetables, again topped with cinnamon and a variety of spices to combat the blandness. Adding tomato sauce helped a lot, but it's okay without it.

Dinner: Three slices of chicken or turkey lunchmeat OR some low carb peanut butter, on half a low-carb lavash bread wrap, plus 8 ounces of Vegetable juice and sometimes a few bites of raw broccoli.

Second Dinner: Repeat one of the above smaller meals, or 2-3 handfuls of unsalted peanuts.

And, of course, all the water I needed to feel full, generally about 12 ounces or so during each meal and probably another 24-30 between them. There's a small amount of variety to the above, but that's pretty much the whole menu for me. I've had some carrots to fight off between-meal hungers, which are recommended. Tim's list is bigger, but I took his advice to keep things as simple as possible and just stuck to these. I did basically the same thing the year I lost 56 pounds.

There aren't a whole lot of calories in the above, but more importantly, there aren't a whole lot of carbs, nor a whole lot of the "white poisons" (sugar, salt, flour, potatoes). I'm not being super-strict, because each meal is supposed to have a protein (meat, fish, or egg), legume (beans), and vegetable (mixed vegetables being best), but I'm not eating the forbidden foods either. (Not counting this particular bread, which is super-low carb.)
 
Each meal is somewhat boring, but they're also no-brainers to heat up or make and eat in a couple minutes.
 
I initially tried three eggs in the morning, but oddly, that was too much, and even with two I feel full enough for hours afterward. I eat about every five hours too. I also tried red beans, which were okay, and tried green beans as my vegetable, which were also okay, but decided to stick with the black beans and mixed veggies, and went to the veggie juice for my third meal.
 
And then, yesterday, I once again pigged out. I had lost eight pounds, and it was BECAUSE I had eaten so much crap the previous Saturday!
 
See, my diet is low calorie and low carb, and eating that way consistently will slow your metabolism. Going wild once a week keeps the metabolism high, so that you can continue to burn off the fat on the days you behave. Between a week of loose experimenting to see what I'd like and a week of strict adherence using what I did like, I lost eight pounds.
 
What makes this even more incredible is that I'm NOT exercising much at all. I walked five miles Monday and Friday, and two miles Wednesday. Otherwise, I've been chained to the computer.
 
But what's going to keep the pounds off? I lost over 50 pounds in 2009, and regained about a third of them very slowly over 2010. How to make sure the weight lost isn't found again, and retain the no-brainerness? You have to kill off the bad fat cells. Tune in next time to find out how.
 
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More awesomeness to whet your dhrystones:
To Your Health - Part 4
In my Quest to Offend You
Hey baby, what's your sign? (Updated!)

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