I weigh less now than I did in high school. How many people can say that? Now, part of that is that I was pretty thick muscle bound football player in high school when a premium was given to strength versus speed, but it’s also because I dropped 3o pounds over four months last summer, and have kept them off nearly a year later.
I get asked all the time how I did it, so without further ado, here’s the secret sauce:
What you’ll need:
- The ability to read
- MyFitnessPal app
- A scale
- Lots of Nuts
- Thick Skin (you’ll get teased)
- SkinnyCrisps
- Awards and Cheat Days
- Quest & PowerCrunch Protein Bars
- Tito’s & Soda
- Darebee.com
The overall game plan:
Months 1 and 2: No more than 25g of carbs a day, some exercise
Months 3 and 4: No more than 50g of carbs a day, lots of exercise
Forever After: Lots of exercise, not a lot of carbs – match carbs with exercise – no exercise that day = no carbs that day.
The main ingredient to success is avoiding carbs. There’s some technical stuff on how your body goes into ketosis – basically increasing your metabolism and burning stored fat for energy becasue it doesn’t have readily available carb energy, but basically all you need to know is sugar is bad…way bad and way worse for you than fat. Now, I didn’t go all the way the other way, chugging bacon and eating steaks every night, there’s bad in red meat and fatty meat as well, as far as I’m concerned, but the main takeaway is avoid carbs first, fat second.
The Ability to Read:
In the beginning, what you’ll be doing more than anything else is reading nutrition labels and zeroing in on that carbohyrdrates value. My general rule of thumb was to never eat anything with more than 10g of carbs, ideally shooting for low single digit items with 2, 3, 4g or so. That’s really hard, as most everything you find in a store is 25g+… you’ll start to walk down aisles in the grocery store thinking this is a carb factory.
MyFitnessPal App:
Now, not everything you eat will have a label. Sometimes you’ll be out to dinner or at a conference or getting a salad for lunch. This guy is key in the beginning for finding how many carbs are in those non-labeled meals. BEFORE you order it or eat it, pull up the app and search for what you’re about to put down your gullet. There’s 10s of thousands of people just like you inputting meals everywhere from chains like Chipotle to homemade meals like Aunt Jenny’s BBQ chicken. And you really don’t know in the beginning what has carbs and what doesn’t. That SOuthwetern Salad is 22g of carbs…what? The Chicken wings are only 6g, cool! Find the values and avoid the carbs.
Part B: The app also let’s you set daily goals for carbs, calories and more. Set that up and know where you stand going into lunch or dinner or what not. I aimed for what seems like an insanely low amount of calories in the beginning = 1,500. And you can set targets for weight. Use the technology and track it. It gamifies things and makes it more fun.
A Scale:
Hard to believe, but I never owned a scale for over 20 years of living on my own. It’s hard to know how you’re doing without one, so before anything on this list, we ordered a $29 scale or something on Amazon. In the beginning, weigh yourself every morning, just in the morning, so you know where you stand. You’ll be terrified and amazed how the body reacts to all your hard work, at times seeing no progress and at times seeing unbelievble drops on the scale. You’ll also start to get a good feeling for cause and effect. Two parties and 30 beers last weekend, +4 pounds on Monday morning. Three days of sub 1,500 calories during the week, down 3 pounds.
Lots of Nuts:
I couldn’t have done any of this without peanuts and almonds. Let’s face it, 
our bodies need something and if you’re a snacker like me, you’ll need to be munching on something throughout the day. Those munchies used to be things I thought were ok for me – low fat items like pretzels, pita chips, bagels, etc. Now its nuts, lots of nuts. You’ll find that this is a booming industry, with everything from Chipotle BBQ spiced Almonds to pickle flavored pumpkin seeds, so there’s lots of variety here to keep you from going crazy eating your 10,000th roasted almond. Just be careful to again read labels – they love putting no carb nuts with high carb things like dried cranberry or M&Ms in trail mix type offerings. My kids loved this part, as I would often pick out the nuts and give them the M&Ms to eat while on a car trip.
Thick Skin (you’ll get teased):
I’m not sure this holds for women, but if you’re guy friends are anything like mine – one of the toughest parts of being low carb and following through on this is doing it while with buddies on the golf course, at the ball game, or out to dinner. “you’re really eating a hot dog with a fork and knife right now…do I have to sit next to you”, “I’ll have the reuben, my lady friend here will have an egg white loser omelet”, “did you just suck the guacomole off that chip and throw the chip away, what’s wrong with you?” and more like that will be coming your way fast and furious. They’re jealous, they’re threatened, they’re impressed – they’re doing what guys do – tease. So brush it off and keep doing what you’re doing. At some point later on they’ll turn to you and say… man, you’re doing a great job with all of that. Get some thick skin.
SkinnyCrisps
These are my number one secret weapon! At some point you get sick of nuts. At some point you crave something crunchy and carby… you’ll want to freebase a bag of tortilla chips. Eat these instead. They’re low carb crunchy goodness, and for me serve many days as breakfast (the everything flavor tastes just like a toasted evreything bagel) and/or dessert (the cinnamon/sugar ones have slighly more carbs, but are delicous and fill taht sweet craving every now and then).
You won’t find them in any stores outside of Boulder, CO; but they have a good enough website where you can order up any one of half a dozen flavors. Go crab a few cases here: www.skinnycrisps.com and let the snacking begin.
Awards and Cheat Days:
A race with no end is not a race… it’s a sentence. You’re going to want to have ice cream with your kids, have one of the Stan’s Donuts someone brought in the office, and in general, cheat every now and then. Go for it! But do it smartly….by tying it to a weight goal or exercise goal. Drop 5 pounds, treat yourself to some waffles! Exercise 10 days in a row – hit the custard stand! Down 20 pounds, where’s a state fair with a fried oreo. Set some goals and reward yourself lavishly for hitting them. Make it fun, but remember to get back on that train and set your eyes on the next target.
Quest & PowerCrunch Protein Bars
A friend told me about Net Carbs, which is sort of crock pot science and is bascially the concept that fiber can offset carbs, so something with 15 carbs but 10 grams of fiber is only 5g of Net Carbs. I don’t put too much stock into this, but it can help find some other snack items – like these protein bars which I used as lunch substitutes one or two times a week. The Quest bars are like eating flavored rubber cement, but what they lack in texture, they make up for in variety, with half a dozen flavors ranging from cookies and cream to chocolate mint. These have even started popping up in airports, which is good to see, so you can pass on the Southwest pretzels and have these instead. I’ve started to eat the other one, PowerCrunch Protein Bars a little more, which aren’t as low in terms of net carbs, but are way tastier.
Tito’s & Soda
Which brings us to drinking… you’ll be out to dinner, at a cocktail party, or out on the boat. What to drink with your new low carb lifestyle? Turns out Vodka has no carbs, and neither does soda (club soda to be exact). Tonic, on the other hand, is sugared uSo go with the Tito’s and Soda next time, for some no carb lubrication. Tasty craft beers, WINE, rum and cokes = sugar, sugar, sugar (carbs, carbs, carbs). Stay away. Of course, it’s not possible for a guy who golfs and sees Cubs games and all the rest to not have beer, so when that comes along, go for the Michelob Ultra. Yes, you’ll be teased. But you can’t beat the carbs. Close behind is Amstel Light… then all the other light beers.
Darebee.com
Here’s the thing. If you do all the stuff above – you’ll maybe get half way there. You’ll plateau and get frustrated and start inhaling banana creme pie somewhere late at night. To break through that plateau and really get to the next level – you’re going to have to exercise…sorry. But not just 30 mins on the elliptical or exercise bike. You have to get the heart rate screaming off the charts. You need what they call HIIT in the biz – or High Intensity Interval Training. Turns out 30mins of high intensity stuff will burn away more calories than hours of what we previously considered exercise. Not sure about you, but I much prefer the 30mins to the 3hrs.
This is the theory behind Cross Fit, Orange Theory, Soul Cycle, and all the rest; but I found www.dareebee.com, which is a free, no weights, no equipment – do at home, HIIT program. They have tons of daily workouts, as well as full blown 30, 60, or 90 day ‘programs’ where you move through different workouts each day and they mix it up for you.
It’s hard in the beginning – start with Level 1 – but soon you’ll be crushing the workouts and pulling it up on your phone during meetings to see what’s in store for you that day, and before long doing Level II and feeling that exercise high where you have more energy, and start to feel worse if you miss a day.
Good Luck