This is a continuation of a previous post. Please click here to read The First 40ish Pounds (Part I -Exercise). In this post I will be talking about what kind of diet I followed to lose my first 40ish pounds.
Diet
The diet I followed is called the slow carb diet that I found in the book The 4 hour body by Tim Ferriss. Here is his website if you’re curious. The diet is pretty straight forward. High protein, low carb. Fruit, dairy, grains, and starchy vegetables are all off limits for 6 days out of the week. The 7th day is a cheat day with no restrictions, just go crazy. For your meals you could eat vegetables, meat and beans with portion size unrestricted. Do not drink your calories. No pops, not even diet, no juice, no smoothies. All you need to drink is water.
Curious about snacks? Snacks are not encouraged. In theory, you should be full enough from your high protein meals to not need snacks. If you’re not, then you need to eat more. If you really must have a snack, I believe he said a small amount of carrots was okay. Perhaps an ounce of nuts would be fine too. I’m doing this from memory, I lent the book to my boyfriend, so forgive me if I’m not exactly correct. So what did I eat?
Breakfast
- 2 large eggs sunny side up
- 2 Jennie O turkey sausage patties
Lunch
- Salad with no dressing, cheese, fruit or croutons. (You can have oil based dressings, I just don’t like them. Only ranch fits my taste buds so I had to do without.)
Dinner
- Some kind of meat (chicken breast, brat, hamburger)
- Some kind of vegetable (green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach)
- Beans (black, kidney, or pinto are my preferences)
(If I didn’t have time to cook my dinner ahead of time, because I work the second shift, I would always have acceptable soups in my drawer at work. You have to make sure there is no noodles, rice, potatoes, or corn, in your soup and it needs to contain meat and beans. I’ve found Target is the best place to find soups that meet these requirements.)
That’s it.
Having a lot of variety is not recommended. Have your set meals and stick to them. As you can see, my dinner is the only thing that changed every day. Technically, I should have probably been eating more beans at each meal, but I lost weight regardless. At this time I was weighing myself daily. Every day that I followed this my weight would go down quite a bit. I could lose up to 5 lbs a week. The damage you would do on cheat day, which was Saturdays for me, would be gone by Tuesday or Wednesday and you’d be going down again. It really takes quite a bit of effort to gain a pound of pure fat. Most of the time sudden big gains are caused by water retention.
Another key note: don’t eat too late. Your dinner should always be about 4 hours before bed time regardless of the diet you are following. If you don’t give your body enough time to digest your food, the second you go to sleep your body will go into storage mode (because you’re not expending energy anymore) and will turn everything left in your stomach straight to fat. You don’t want that.
Always make sure you are drinking enough water and getting enough sleep for the day as well. When you are properly hydrated and rested your body acts like a well oiled machine. This means that it can work at its best to keep your metabolism going and to keep you full of energy. When you become dehydrated and tired this can lead to exhaustion and headaches that will make you not want to work out. By drinking enough water, and getting enough sleep you can cut out these excuses before they even form.
Curious as to why I’m not currently following this diet? It’s as simple as I don’t have time to cook anymore. This diet heavily requires you to cook your meals ahead of time. I’ve found that, in my current situation, it’s either cook or go to the gym. I figured going to the gym was more beneficial. I’ll tell you more about this when I post about what I’m currently doing. I do plan to go back to this diet in the fall when I am in my new apartment. I’ll be closer to work and won’t have to commute as much in general.
Another tool I used during this time was lose it. I would track my calories in and my exercises on this site using the app on my phone. It’s free and has a great, supportive community. There are even challenges to help motivate you with things you have trouble with like eating more vegetables, exercising more, or drinking water. It’s a really great site. During this time in my life I didn’t really have a support system. I didn’t have anyone to work out with or diets with. I was on my own and I probably would have failed without this lose it community to keep me on track and motivated. I still use this program today although not as much. I’ve gotten a support system through my boyfriend now, and from not varying my diet too much I know what I can and cannot afford to eat. I do like to input my weight and look at all the charts and graphs they provide in the reports section though.
That’s it for how I lost my first 40ish lbs. If you have any questions or notice that I’ve left something out, please feel free to let me know. Hopefully the next 40lbs ish will come off just as easy as the first.
Happy Losing!
Hopefully Bikiniskinni 