Southern Bread Blog

On January 18th of this year(2011), I weighed 204 pounds. Right now, I weigh 156 pounds and have fluctuated between 156 and 157 for about 5 months now. Before that, the last time I weighed in the 150′s was high school. I don’t exercise at all and I eat until I’m full at every meal. In fact, I eat more now than I did 50 pounds ago. I feel fantastic.

My weight loss (and yours too) is about restricting the intake of simple and refined carbs and increasing the intake of animal fats, protein and vegetables. But, I had to do it in a way that was easy to manage as a lifestyle. Simply counting carbs was never going to work. I just can’t keep that up. Life is too unpredictable, and I can’t carry around a bunch of carb lists and a calculator. The good news is that none of that is really necessary when it comes to a low carb lifestyle. You don’t need to know how many carbs are in each food. All you really need to know is a short list of ingredients to never eat and a short list of ingredients to be careful about. Anything not on those two lists can be eaten in as much quantity as you want. Go ahead and stuff your face.

Here’s my list of absolutely never eat ingredients:

• Refined Flour
• Sugar
• Potatoes
• Corn
• “Nonfat” or “low fat” things (inluding milk)

That’s a short list. Sugar includes every form, but especially fructose. I stay away from all non-naturally occurring fructose and all forms of corn syrup. Especially high fructose corn syrup. High Fructose Corn Syrup(HFCS) is a diabetes/fat creation machine like no other. Avoid it like the plague.

Now for the list of ingredients that I only eat in small quantities:

• Fruits & Berries
• Greek Yogurt
• Whole Milk
• Soy Flour
• Whole Wheat Flour
• Vegetable Oils

Again, it’s a short list.

Anything that doesn’t appear on the two above lists I can(and do) eat any amount of that I want. If it’s not on those lists I can literally stuff myself with them and they will have zero impact on my weight.

Now for the explanation.

The first list(the never-eats) are the most common ingredients found in food that will spike your blood sugar, causing an insulin flood and subsequent crash. The insulin flood briefly puts your body into fat storage mode until it subsides. Basically, these foods are so highly digestible that they just go straight to the blood stream and spike your glucose(i.e. you get fatter).

The second list are ingredients that will still increase blood sugar levels, but they are more complex carbs and so the effect isn’t as drastic. It takes your body longer to break them down, so the effect isn’t a spike in blood sugar, but more of a low arch.

So how does all of this play out in a real world scenario? Here’s an average week of meals for me:

Monday

• Breakfast: 4 pieces of bacon and 2 eggs with cheese.
• Lunch: Gyro plate from Purple Onion(toss the pita bread, toss the rice)
• Dinner: Large hamburger patty loaded with condiments and green beans
• Dessert: A square of dark chocolate.

Tuesday

• Breakfast: 2 sausage patties and a 2 egg omelet.
• Lunch: Taco salad from Salsaritas on a plate(not a shell) with steak and chicken
• Dinner: Pork chops with black soy beans(topped with salsa) and a salad
• Dessert: A chocolate whey protein shake made with 1/2 almond milk, 1/2 whole milk.

Wednesday

• Breakfast: 2 sausage patties and a 2 egg omelet.
• Lunch: Taco salad from Salsaritas on a plate(not a shell) with steak and chicken
• Dinner: Pork chops with black soy beans(topped with salsa) and a salad
• Dessert: Bowl of chopped up strawberries and blueberries with heavy cream on top

Thursday

• Breakfast: Greek yogurt with blueberries and Splenda.
• Lunch: A huge salad from a salad bar with bacon bits, cheese, broccoli, olives, dressing…
• Dinner: Clam chowder with bacon or ham, and cauliflower instead of potatoes
• Dessert: Some chocolate flavored almonds and other nuts

Friday

• Breakfast: Cinnamon toast made with low carb bread
• Lunch: 12 hot wings from Buffalo Wild Wings with cole slaw on the side instead of fries
• Dinner: Rotisserie chicken with some broccoli and cheese and a salad
• Dessert: Dark chocolate

That’s a typical week of food for me. In addition, I drink a moderate-gravity beer almost every night after we put the kids to bed. I have no idea how many grams of fat that is, or how many calories it is(probably in excess of 3000) per day, but I know that it’s almost always less than 40 carbs a day. For comparison, there are 65 carbs in a single 20 ounce coke. There are 48 carbs in a single serving of McDonald’s french fries. It’s not the oil in the fries that makes you fat. It’s the potatoes.

I can’t stress enough that when I leave the table at each meal, I’m stuffed. I eat until I’m full every time. The only downside to this type of lifestyle is that it’s going to require some cooking. Pre-packaged stuff is just too loaded with refined carbs. The good part is that it takes just as long to fry up a hamburger patty and some green beans as it does to heat up some Bagle Bites, so there’s really not much difference.

There is a paradigm shift beginning in metabolism/fat research right now(thanks to guys like Gary Taubes) and I fully expect that in 5 years or so, the low-fat/calorie restriction diets we’ve all grown up with will start to fade away. They don’t work. They’re based on just-so story science.