For those of you who know me you know I think a little bit different. For those of you who don’t know me, now you know. I’m rarely content to sit by and let things beat me. My drill sergeants at basic training and AIT gave up on trying to crush me fairly quickly because I made it clear that I couldn’t be crushed. That I couldn’t and wouldn’t lose. So it is with most things in my life since I decided to embrace change and exploration at the age of 22, or 23..I forget, to busy changing things.

All that being the case the change to a new job and new schedule over the past year has been wearing on me. “On me” being a literal statement. I’ve gained approx 40lbs since last year. I’m still down half the weight I originally lost back in my twenties. Still not a good feeling or a healthy thing. Christmas is upon us and shortly following that new years. Most of us have made statements about how next year we are going to make changes. I say thats rubbish. When the idea/mood or what have you strikes you have to grab it and go with it not put it off. My new years resolution doesn’t happen at new years. It happens now. I’m going to take that 40lbs back off and then some. This motivated in part due to Nick’s awesome Christmas gift “The 4 Hour Body” by Tim Ferris.

While the name might sound insane and unbelievable rest assured that Tim, being the insane genius that he is, titled the book to do nothing but grab eyeballs. Whats inside is an introduction to the Slow Carb(low GI) diet. But it’s Tims version of the diet which is nothing short extreme while remaining more or less medically sound. Slow carb diets aren’t new. In fact some of the biggest most recognizable diet plans are based in part or in whole on slow carb, low GI, diets. I think the best example is the South Beach diet. The notable difference being that the frozen South Beach meals at the super market don’t seem to feature beans the way that Ferris presents them and many slow carb websites seem to feature them. Bean seem to be the key to the whole deal. High in fiber, a reasonable amount of calories and low in insulin response the beans seem to enable higher energy output and more rapid fat loss.

I could pretty easily go on all day about this diet but I’ll leave that to you to explore. Day one has been pretty good. I work night shift so I started the night with some tacos from taco bell. The corn shells are questionable in terms of enabling fat loss but the rest of the meal, meat, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes are pretty sound. I followed that up with a healthy choice meal of lemon herb chicken with green beans, tomatoes and pasta. Of course I ate the chicken, tomato and green beans and left behind the evil pasta. Finally for breakfast I had a nice fat three egg omelet with green pepper, onion, green onion, bacon, basil and some salt and pepper. I also, in the name of science, decided to attempt to cook some Quinoa I picked up at the super market last night. I think it went fairly well. The consistency of Quinoa is a bit different but not unlike a rice. A little nutty flavor and kind of bland but after adding some bacon chunks and a little cheese its not to bad.

So far not cravings like I used to have with the Atkins diet. I chalk that up to the higher protein intake than what I was getting on Atkins. I know it isn’t the most scientifically sound unit of measure, feeling, but it’s what I have on hand and so far it’s pretty good. If this diet is for real I could see sustaining this sort of eating indefinitely. If you want to know more about slow carb diets you are all ready at the right place, the internet, and you’ve got the tools, google, that will get you what you need to know. I will of course highly recommend both of Mr. Ferris’s books “The 4 Hour Work Week” and “The 4 Hour Body” as great reading, very enlightening and a good source of knowledge.

I’ll attempt to report back on day two tomorrow morning before I go to bed after I’ve done some shopping for food. This should be fun!