A Year of Low Carb

About a year ago now, I started on a low carb diet. There were a number of factors that lead me to that point. Ironically, none of them had anything to do with my weight or fitness level. First, I got curious about Gary Taubes’ book Why We Get Fat so I read it. The book is a well written essay about the benefits of a low carb diet. I did some subsequent research, scouring the internet for Taubes’ critics and I found that critics fell into 1 of 2 catagories: the ones who called him a flaming idiot and the ones who disagreed with his science in an uber-technical way (these were essentially scientists or food researchers.) I took this to mean he probably had stumbled across something good.

I also knew people who’d gone on the Atkin’s Diet and swore by its results for cutting weight and, in particular, fat. So I’ll admit I was somewhat predisposed to Taubes’ thesis.

As for further reasons, the Wife was looking for a way to drop some weight at the time as well and I decided that it wouldn’t hurt for me to drop a couple of pounds as well. Having read Taubes’ book, it also seemed like there were other potential health benefits, so we started the shift.

Since then, I’ve basically all but stopped eating bread of any sort. No more bagels in the mornings, no more breakfast sandwiches, no more sandwiches in general. Further, we stopped eating potato and any of it’s variants and we stopped eating pasta.

Ironically, it was stopping eating those 3 food types that made me realize how much of them I ate in the first place.

The other part of Taubes’ advice is to cut out carbs from sugars- so no more soda or candy. But this particular piece of criteria was a real killer because there are some things that everyone associates with “healthy” that doesn’t cut it. Yogurt would be one example. Many fruits like bananas and pineapple are also no-nos because of all the sugars. Even carrots don’t pass muster because of the sugars. Fruit juices? Nope. Not even OJ.

So, in the end, what I did eat was eggs, meats (of any sort), greens and leafy greens and other vegetables and nuts. Even though strictly speaking, milk doesn’t satisfy Taubesian criteria, I refused to part ways with it. I figured the rest should be more than enough to get an idea.

The tale of the tape is that I lost 10 pounds. That may not sound like a lot, but I’d basically been 245 for years. Exercise was not enough to get me below that weight for any extended time- it was my mean that I always came back to whenever I fluctuated away from it. After the first 2 months, I dropped down to 235 and that’s basically where I’ve been without any other changes to my lifestyle. I will say that of late, I’ve been more consistently around 235 whereas after those first couple of months, I bounced between 235 and 240. This tells me that the diet continues to work, but at a slower pace.

I’ve also eased up on some of the restrictions. I still don’t eat bread, but I allow myself potato in some form or another a few times a month. I’ve also introduced fruits that initially didn’t pass muster. Truth be told, the one other thing I refused to give up was my ice cream, especially the late-night-before-going-to-bed variety.

To whatever extent the diet change can be considered a success, I attribute it almost entirely to a rebalancing of my diet. I’d never realized how many carbs I consumed prior to this diet. Between pasta, pizza, bread and potatoes I was eating one of those things at every meal every day. I now look back and wonder how I wasn’t bigger.

Early on, the one trick to the diet I had to figure out was learning to eat more portions of meat to satisfy my hunger. For instance, with the bread gone, when we had hamburgers I started eating 3 burger patties, with whatever dressings deemed appropriate as well. For breakfast, I eat 4 eggs and 4 sausage patties, whereas before I might eat 2 or three eggs on occasion with a couple of sausage patties.

The one thing I want to mention before wrapping this up is one thing that Taubes mentions very briefly in his book that can happen as a result of going on this diet: muscle cramps. I suffered some of the worst leg cramps in my life over the course of the past year. Including one in my inner thigh that woke me up in the middle of the night that I couldn’t get to stop. I tried for a couple of seconds to make it stop and finally resolved to just lie there and take it- it was excruciating. It raised a bruise on my leg several days later. Generally, until the past month-and-a-half or so, I was subject to cramping at any time, most particularly after any kind of strenuous activity. I’m not sure why the cramping has finally let up, but it’s been a relief. Perhaps some aspect of my body chemistry had to adjust to the lack of steady carbs and the cramping was a side effect. So with all that said, consider that fair warning.

As I said, I’ve now adjusted my diet to slightly increase my carb intake. I’ll on occasion eat a normal sandwich with bread or even have a pizza or an occasional pasta dinner. Generally not more than once a week. My goal was never to cut weight for the sake of cutting weight, it was to try something that might be a healthier way to eat than what I’d previously thought. Having done it for a year, I can say I felt good, with the notable exception of the cramps. But I didn’t consider those enough to make me stop and the fact that they seem to have abated at this point makes me think I was basically right. I was never overly tired and never felt like crap because of what I was, or wasn’t, eating.

Based on all that, I’ll be continuing the diet as I’ve structured it now. If it continues to be smooth sailing like it has been so far, I expect it won’t be a diet for me anymore. It will just be the way I eat.