While I’ve based Reclaim YOUR Waistline heavily on Tim Ferriss’ Slow Carb Diet, I’ve adapted the rules to make it easier to understand and incorporate the lessons from Gary Taubes’ Why We Get Fat.
1. Focus on What You Can Eat
One of the things I love about this way of eating is that you still have an amazing variety of food to choose from. Get excited about the possibilities rather than being afraid of the limitations.
Here’s a list of things you can enjoy:
- Vegetables – broccoli, cabbage, asparagus, zucchini, mushrooms, avocado, peppers (capsicum), tomato, salad greens, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, peas, beans, onion, bok choy, endive, chard, collard greens, broccolini, radish, snow peas, sprouts, summer squash, cucumber, celery, eggplant (aubergine),
- Leafy Greens – spinach, kale, salad greens, bok choy + other asian greens, endive, chard (silverbeet), collard greens, any lettuce, radicchio
- Legumes – All lentils, black beans, pinto beans, white beans, butter beans, chickpeas (although these have the lowest protein level so minimise)
- Meat – beef, pork, lamb, venison, chorizo, ham, bacon…
- Poultry – chicken, turkey, duck, quail and any other bird you fancy.
- Eggs – as many whole eggs as you like
- Fish & Seafood – tuna, salmon, snapper, lobster, scallops, octopus, all the creatures from the sea are fine.
- Tofu & tempeh – while ‘fake meat’ products are a no-go. Natural soy based protein like tofu and tempeh are great.
- Fats & Oils – butter, olive oil, peanut oil, macadamia oil, coconut oil, mayonnaise (make sure it doesn’t contain sugar). Avoid highly processed ‘vegetable’ oils.
- Herbs – parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, tarragon, chives and more.
- Seasonings – All spices, soy sauce (use Tamari which is wheat-free if possible), wine vinegars (only use limited amounts of sweetened vinegars or balsamic), lemon juice, lime juice, sea salt or kosher salt, pepper.
2. Avoid Grain, Starch and Sugar
Pretty straight forward. Includes whole grains, quinoa, potatoes, honey, anything made from flour, agave syrup or other natural sweeteners.
3. Don’t Drink Calories – Drink Lots of Water
Fruit juices, sugary drinks and beer are like an instant transfusion of fat to your thighs. Because of their liquid form they are rapidly absorbed by the body and give your blood sugar an instant spike. One of the most beneficial changes you can make is to switch to drinking water.
Avoid milk and sugar in your tea and coffee. Tim Ferriss recommends flavouring coffee with cinnamon or vanilla extract. If you can’t stand the thought of black tea or coffee, use a little cream instead of milk. Cream does contain some carbohydrates but significantly less than milk.
While diet soft drinks are OK if you must, limit them as much as you can because aspartame can stimulate weight gain.
The less alcohol you drink the better. Avoid beer and mixed drinks except for your cheat day. If you must drink dry red wine is the best but no more than 2 glasses a day. Any more will effect your sleep patterns.
It’s also really important to drink LOTS of water. I keep a 500mL (2 cups or 16 fl oz) bottle of water in the fridge and have started drinking that every morning before I do anything else.
4. Don’t Eat Fruit
While fruit does contain vitamins and antioxidants, it is loaded with sugar. So the carbohydrate content of fruit unfortunately is too great to justify the vitamins. It’s much wiser to rely on vegetables for their antioxidants and other benefits and leave the fruit for your cheat day.
Tomatoes and avocados, which I think of more as vegetables, are technically fruit. They are allowed because they aren’t high in fructose.
5. Avoid dairy products milk
Apart from butter which is mostly fat and water, try and avoid cheese, yoghurt and milk except for cheat days.
While dairy products have a low glycemic index, meaning they don’t cause a spike in blood sugar. They do stimulate insulin which is something we don’t want.
UPDATE: After reviewing the studies of dairy products and insulin response, the evidence against dairy is for milk and fermented milk or yoghurt like products. Cheese wasn’t tested. I’ve been including small amounts of cheese in my diet and haven’t seen any adverse effects.
6. Learn to Love Fat
It’s time to change your view of eating fat. It’s not going to make you fat, it’s the carbohydrates that are.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they reduce carbohydrates is to still try and maintain a low fat diet. It’s not going to work. We need fats because they help us feel full, fats also minimise insulin spikes and lets face it, they taste good.
This is one of the most difficult mind sets to overcome. Repeat after me: low fat = bad.
7. Take One Day Off a Week
Choose one day a week to eat whatever you like. And however much.
I agree with Oscar Wilde that ‘the best way to remove temptation is to yield to it’. However, yielding to temptation every day isn’t going to help your waistline. Once a week on the other hand means you can’t do too much damage and you get to enjoy all your favourite things as well. It’s something I intend to do for the rest of my life.
When you’re first starting out, make sure your first ‘cheat day’ is at least 5 days after you started the diet. As you think of food you’d love to eat, make a list (mental or otherwise) to include it on the menu for your cheat day. Its amazing how knowing you can have something on Saturday makes it so much easier to say no for now.
8. Eat Slowly
There’s more to minimising spikes in blood sugar than just choosing the correct food. The faster you eat, the faster your body absorbs the nutrients and the more likely you are to have an increase in blood sugar that causes insulin to be released.
Eating slowly, especially at the larger meals of lunch and dinner is also needed to keeping your insulin down and maximise fat loss.
Tim Ferriss recommends taking at least 30 minutes to eat lunch and dinner. Either divide your meal into three on your plate and allow 5 minutes between eating each third. Or commit to chewing each mouthful at least 20 times. Drinking water with your meal will also help.
9. Eat Until You Are Full
After years of always trying to ‘eat less’, it can be scary to make the change to learning to listen to your body and eat until you are full. But take the leap and you’ll be well rewarded.
The aim is to eat until you feel full but not over stuffed. The slower you eat, the more easy it is for your body to have time to send signals that its full.
By applying this rule, you’ll be amazed how cravings and the desire to snack seem to dissipate. It also encourages you to develop a healthy relationship with food and see it as a wonderful source of fuel and goodness for your body rather than something sinful and bad that must be controlled and dominated.
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making your own rules
Basically the less carbohydrates you eat, the faster your weight loss will be. While lentils and beans are an important part of this way of eating for the longer term. They still contain carbohydrates (lentils contain the least) so it’s up to you to choose how much of them you include in your diet.
If you’re finding yourself getting hungry between meals or if you’re having problems with how you feel, it might be wise to increase your lentils and beans and aiming for a more steady weight loss. Rather than being grumpy and irritable.
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