Losing Weight Sustainably: New Habit 2--What to Eat



New Habit 2: Just Say No to Carbs

It’s more what you don’t eat. You don’t eat high-carbohydrate foods.

Forget glycemic loading, you’re just going to (mostly) say No to carbohydrates. While you are developing your loathing of carbohydrates (sugar in all its forms, bread, rice, pasta—you know where the carbs lurk), you want to initially have your carbs in Cronometer be fewer than 50 g. Eventually you’ll knock that down, because your aim is to turn your body into a fat-burning machine, which is pretty simple but does require, as Tom Hanks said in You’ve Got Mail, some “tweaking.”

Don’t go crazy on protein, especially in the beginning. You’re going to be breaking down lots of fat, and you’re going to be drinking lots of water to lubricate that process, and you don’t want to burden your kidneys with unnecessary protein.

For a video about the importance of water in ketogenic diets, please spend fewer than six minutes watching


And yes, at the end he misspoke; he recommends adding a quarter to a half a teaspoon of salt (he says water in the video) to the gallon of water you want to drink.

So no/low carbs, modest protein, and, yumm fat. The irony is that this will not clog your arteries, it will get your body burning your own fat. Yeah—who knew? At the end, your blood chemistry will look much better.

Here is a sample cronometer.com day for me.

A few things to point out:
·       25 g of carbs
·       This was from two weeks ago, so I’m down another 3 lb and 0.5% bf to 185.2 and 18.8%. I won't tell you my %bf when I weighed 228 (and more). SMH!
·       There is a significant caloric deficit, which is the foundation of the weight loss. But the ketogenic diet makes it so that you’re not hungry. It’s the insulin spike that accompanies carbohydrate consumption that stimulates grehlin, which makes you ravenous. Not useful! You will probably come to feel much freer once the addiction to multiple-times-per-day eating/snacking becomes a thing of the past.

But first the chart:



Vodka?! Vodka!! Isn’t that a carb????

The net carbs from spirits are negligible, and despite what the naysayers say, I find it helps me nod off. Half an hour before bedtime, I get my drink, I read a book, and in half an hour I’m looking for my bed.

The downside is that the liver handles alcohol preferentially, so while it’s detoxing the alcohol, it’s not contributing to your fat burning. But good sleep is essential to good weight loss. Some people attain the same sleepiness from good exercise during the day. You’ll find what works for you.

But sleep is important because it is restorative and, especially important, when you’re sleeping you are not eating. Or being tempted to eat. It’s “free fasting” time.

Which will bring us, next time, to our next tool: intermittent fasting.

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