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Slow Carb Diet: How to Avoid Going Bat-**** Crazy

I received an email recently, asking “what kinds of things are you eating so that you don’t go bat-**** crazy?”

First, some background.

On January 2, 2011, I started Tim Ferriss’s Slow Carb Diet and, as of 2/18/2011, I have lost 30 pounds. The first 11 or so were water weight, but I’ve still been losing 4-5 pounds per week. This diet has a few—but only a few—rules.

Eat nothing white. That means no sugar(including fructose), no flour, no potatoes, no rice(even brown), and no milk(or any dairy). Beer is white.
Breakfast is high-protein.
Cheat day once a week. On cheat day, there are no rules after breakfast.
Meals should consist of 40% protein, 30% vegetables and 30% legumes(beans or lentils).
If you get hungry between meals, you didn’t eat enough at the last meal.

That’s it. The rules are simple and don’t require that I refer back to the book for anything.

Here is a typical day for me on this diet:

For breakfast most mornings, I have 3 eggs and 2-3 sausage links. I bought brown-and-serve sausages so this takes 10 minutes to cook in the morning.

On the way to work, I have a diet soda if we have any in the house. If not, I skip it. I like pop, but I’ve broken my caffeine addiction completely.

For lunch, I will either have leftovers from the night before or some stir-fry with beans and whatever protein is convenient. I’ve been keeping pre-cooked brats(wurst, not kid) or polish sausages as a convenience food.

Several times a week, I make some stir-fry. I use a basic, flexible recipe.

Chop whatever vegetables are on hand. We usually have onions, broccoli, a variety of peppers, and mushrooms. If I have celery, asparagus, or almost any other vegetable. Lettuce works poorly in a stir-fry.
Put some oil in a hot pan. I prefer sesame oil, but I’m not picky. I’ll use whatever oil we have on hand.
Cook the vegetables, stirring constantly. Cook them in the order of how long they take to cook. Onions are usually first. Celery tends to be last.. While they are cooking, I sometimes sprinkle ginger powder over the top.
If you are getting sick of eating beans, toss them into the stir-fry, cooked. They mash and disintegrate, giving you the benefit and some flavor, without the mouth-feel.
When the vegetables are cooked to your satisfaction, put them in a bowl. They will keep in the refrigerator for a few days.

I tend to cook the meat separately, as that lets me vary the meal more. I’ll make some chicken or steak ready to toss in the stir-fry before I re-heat it.

I vary the seasonings, vegetables, and oil to get different flavors I rarely make the same stir-fry twice. The real trick to keeping the food satisfying is to experiment with seasonings. They make a huge difference between bland and yummy. Seasonings can make or break a meal all by themselves.

If I don’t have any stir-fry or leftovers, I’ll bring some salad and a polish sausage. Most salad dressing is sugar-based, so I either go light on the dressing, or use balsamic vinegar. I try to avoid doing this more than once every couple of weeks. It’s boring and doesn’t taste that great. It’s okay, but that’s all.

I try to always have cooked beans or lentils in the refrigerator. They provide a significant part of my calorie intake. Beans are kind of a necessity. Vegetables taste better, but are a low-calorie, bulky food. You can’t stay full all day on nothing but lettuce. Beans get old. I’ll usually toss a few spoonfuls of salsa to change the taste. When I cook lentils, sometimes, I’ll cook it in beef broth with fried onions and garlic to make a tasty change.

For dinner, I have whatever vegetables we are cooking for the kids, a scoop of beans, and a protein that usually isn’t cooked for the family.

The protein source varies based on whatever was on sale when we went grocery shopping. It can be steak, chicken, or anything else. This week, we bought 16 chicken drumsticks. We spread them out on a cookie sheet and seasoned them 3 different ways, just for variety. Some got garlic salt, some got Italian seasoning, and some got a Greek rub. After an hour in a 350 degree oven, we had a delicious meal.

If I feel a need for a snack, or a craving for sweets, I just take a spoonful of peanut butter. It helps.

Exercise

I’m not doing any major form of exercise. I wanted to test the diet on its own merits, first. What I am doing is some timed exercises shortly before and 90 minutes after I eat, when I remember. The exercises are resistance-based and 60-90 seconds in duration. The purpose is to crank up my metabolism before the food gets introduced into my body, and then keep it up and running for a while afterward.

I use a mid-level elastic rehab strap, doubled-over twice. I do 75 chest extensions about 5 minutes before I eat. Most days, I forget to do them again 90 minutes later. There are any number of other exercises that would work, including air squats or push-ups.

Supplements

I am not your doctor. In fact, I am not a doctor in any capacity. Similarly, I am not a nutritionist, a dietitian, or even a board-certified snake-oil salesman. I have no qualifications here, in any way, shape or form. Follow this at your own risk.

I take 5 supplements.

Policosanal. This is an herbal supplement that is supposed to help with cholesterol, which is a helpful thing to do when you are on a low-carb, high-protein diet. More importantly, a side effect is weight loss. Hurray for helpful side effects!

Alpha-lipoic Acid(ALA). This is an antioxidant that helps your body produce vitamins C and E. It is also supposed to inhibit triglyceride and fat storage. To quote from the book, “ALA helps you store the carbohydrates you ea in your liver as opposed to in fat.”

Decaffeinated Green Tea Extract. This inhibits your body’s ability to store carbs as fat and it accelerates fat cell death. The second bit means it should help prevent the rebounding so many dieters experience.

Garlic Extract. This assists with cholesterol management and the inhibition of fat regain.

B Complex. I take a B complex vitamin with vitamin C. The B vitamins help balance out some of the things the rest of the supplement regimen does to cellular metabolism while giving your overall metabolism a boost.

I take the whole mess in the morning and again before bed. Shortly before lunch and dinner, I take the ALA, green tea extract and garlic extract.

Ice

As a pure body-hack, I ice my upper back every night. I have an ice-pack sheet that I place on my upper back for 30-45 minutes each night before bed. This lowers my core body temperature, forcing my body to work harder to maintain 98.6 degrees. That burns calories. An additional benefit: getting cold makes you tired, which helps with my chronic insomnia.

This combination of factors has resulted in my losing an average of .7 pounds per day, without meaningful exercise. It’s a violation of a number traditional dieting principles, but it’s working. Is everything I’m doing necessary? Useful? Possibly not. Over the next few months, I’m going to be experimenting with dropping individual pieces of the plan, to see if my rate of loss drops for any of it.

For now, it’s working, and doing so at a rate I like. Dieting usually sucks, because the results are so slow. This is much more satisfying.

Quit Smoking: My First Frugal Move…Ever

Finance, Life

: Image via Wikipedia

It’s nearly the 5 year anniversary of my last cigarette, so I though I’d bring this post back to the front page.

A bit over three years ago, we found out that my wife was pregnant with baby #3. When we decided to have #2, it took us two years of trying. Naturally, we assumed we’d have the same issues with #3. Imagine our surprise when it only took 2 weeks. At that point, we were getting ready to celebrate brat #2’s first birthday.

That mean’s 2 kids under 2. Two kids in diapers. Three kids in daycare. Baby formula again.

We weren’t making ends meet with two kids, how were we going to manage three? I dropped my pack-or-two-a-day smoking habit.

But, I’ve gone over that before.

This post is about how I actually quit.

Some Facts About Me

I don’t do things by halves; I tend to do things all the way or not at all. For years, my wife would ask me to cut back, to just smoke a little less, but that never worked. If I had cigarettes, I smoked them. I always had cigarettes. When I eat, I eat. I’ve never managed smaller portions. I used to drink a case of soda each week, just because it was there. Moderation has never been my friend.

As a corollary, I don’t cheat. At anything. Ever. Because of the above fact about myself. I don’t moderate myself when I give myself rules either. If I draw a line, I obsessively avoid crossing it.

The problem comes when I try to give myself a “gray area” rule. “Smoke less” always leaves room for “just one more”, which easily leads to “I only cut out one cigarette yesterday, so what’s the use?” I had to be done.

After smoking for fifteen years–more than a pack a day for at least 12 of those–that’s an intimidating thought.

The Plan

The first thing I did was set a day to quit. I chose the day after my Halloween party. Before that would have been setting myself up for failure. Booze, food, and long conversations in a smoking-friendly environment were just 3 of my many triggers. I always smoked more at my parties, so the day after, I didn’t feel up to smoking much, anyway. I’d just ride that wave of “I don’t feel like it” to to holy city of “I quit”.

I didn’t quit smoking the next day, I just quit buying cigarettes. That left me half a pack to curb my cravings.

I also knew that nicotine cravings are about the most distracting thing I’ve ever had to deal with. That doesn’t make for a productive computer programmer, so I bought a box of the generic patch that Target carries. I started with Phase 2, because I wasn’t interested in prolonging the process. I just didn’t want to spend my work days thinking about smoking instead of designing software. I needed something to take the edge off, without actually smoking.

My plan was to have the patch at work, so I’d be able to work and to stretch those last 10 cigarettes out, as long as possible.

The Result

It worked. The pack lasted 4 days, I think. I smoked during my commute and after dinner. I used the patch only when the cravings got to the point that I couldn’t concentrate. After a week, I stopped using it at all. A few days later, I had a particularly stressful day and cheated. I took 3 puffs of that cigarette and threw it away, because it tasted like crap and I wasn’t enjoying it. That’s when I knew I was successfully done smoking. It was a 10 day variation of “cold turkey”. More than 3 years later, I have an occasional cigar, but never due to a craving. The day I experience a nicotine craving is the day I burn my humidor.

That’s how I quite smoking, strictly to try to get my finances in line. That has saved me at least $10,000 over the last 3 years.

Sunday Roundup: It’s Push-Up Time

Life

I Knew Pushups Would Pay Off Someday — Image by reid.gilman via Flickr

It’s the end of a month, so it’s time to announce my new 30 Day Project. Last February, in 22 days, I went from having my abs cramp after doing 15 push-ups to doing a set of 100. Yes, really.

The problem is that the push-ups weren’t perfect. Funny things happen to your body when you are doing 100 push-ups. It’s hard to tell what your body is doing. I had good form for the first 80, but after that, my body wasn’t perfectly straight. I looked like a typical second grader in gym class. But I did it. They were push-ups.

I haven’t done a push-up since.

In March, I am going to get myself back up to 100 push-ups, only this time, I will only be doing perfect push-ups.

Here’s the plan, based on what worked last year:

This weekend, I established my baseline. I did as many push-ups as I could, until the point of failure. Failure for this purpose is defined as either my form faltering or me collapsing. I went until I couldn’t hold my body straight.

Starting on the first, I will be doing 5 sets of push-ups, twice a day.

Set 1: One half of my baseline. Starting from 24 push-ups, this set will be 12 push-ups. As I progress, this set will never be more than 20 push-ups. It is the warm-up set, after all.

Sets 2-4: ¾ of my baseline, so 18 to start.

Set 5: Go to failure. Once again, failure is defined as faulty from. This will establish my baseline for the next session.

If I don’t progress for 3 days, I will take a day off to recover and–given previous experience–come back with some serious improvement.

This is a self-correcting progression. If I can’t meet the previous day’s baseline, my last set will be lower, which will lower the baseline for the following session.

An interesting question I have is how it will affect my diet. I haven’t been exercising at all, to see how well the slow carb diet does on it’s own. Now, I’m going to be adding an aggressive exercise plan on top of it. A plan that involves a bit of muscle bulking. I’m guessing that my weight loss will slow down a lot, but I will shed inches like mad. I will be tracking my progression, and my weight and measurements. The graphs should be fun.

30 Day Project Update

I am on the Slow Carb Diet. At the end of the month, I’ll see what the results were and decide if it’s worth continuing. For those who don’t know, the Slow Carb Diet involves cutting out potatoes, rice, flour, sugar, and dairy in all their forms. My meals consist of 40% proteins, 30% vegetables, and 30% legumes(beans or lentils). There is no calorie counting, just some specific rules, accompanied by a timed supplement regimen and some timed exercises to manipulate my metabolism. The supplements are NOT effedrin-based diet pills, or, in fact, uppers of any kind. There is also a weekly cheat day, to cut the impulse to cheat and to avoid letting my body go into famine mode.

I’m measuring two metrics, my weight and the total inches of my waist , hips, biceps, and thighs. Between the two, I should have an accurate assessment of my progress.

Weight: I have lost 33 pounds since January 2nd! That’s 3 pounds since last week. Only 9 more to meet my goal for February. Oh wait. I won’t be hitting it this month.

Total Inches: I have lost 17 inches in the same time frame, down half an inch since last week.

Giveaway

I’ve got some codes for H&R Block Premium Online. It’s federal only and the state return costs an extra $35, but that’s still a screaming deal. Premium handles small business and investment tax issues. If you want to get it, leave a comment saying so. First come, first serve, until I’m out of codes.

Best Posts

Yes, I Am Cheap has a post about growing up poor.

Public Service Announcement: Liquidation sales are rarely good deals. When one store in a chain closes, the profitable merchandise always gets shipped to another store. The rest of it will often get marked up, in anticipation of people shutting off their critical thinking skills in the face of big “On Sale” signs.

I’ve found a new life goal: underground glowworm cave tubing. Wow.

OpenLibrary is offering up 80,000 ebooks to borrow, for free. 10,000 of them are still in copyright. I need a kindle.

LRN Timewarp

This is where I review the posts I wrote a year ago. Did you miss them then?

A few years ago, I sold a truck(on payments) to a friend, who promptly quit paying me and disappeared. I ended up playing repossessing the truck.

There was also a story about how I convinced two big companies that collecting on me for a bill of more than $800 wasn’t worth the effort. It was good, because I didn’t make the call.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Slow Carb Diet: How to Avoid Going Bat-**** Crazy was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Three Alternatives to a Budget was included in the Totally Money Carnival.

Protect your home was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

Budgets Are Sexy ran my post, Side Hustle Series: I’m a Gun Permit Instructor. I forgot to link back to this, last week.

Prairie EcoThrifter ran my post, The Luxury of Vacation for the Yakezie Blog Swap.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Yakezie Blog Swap

Eric hosted the Yakezie Blog Swap, which is a bunch of bloggers writing on the same topic and sharing the posts with each other. Here is his list of the participants this round.

I wrote about my journey to become a DJ at Beating Broke.

Beating Broke wrote about shoe shopping at Narrow Bridge.

Barbara Friedberg got a really nice couch and shared the experience at Wealth Informatics.

Suba doesn’t think the rent is too damn high, in fact, Suba thinks it is worth it and shares at Barbara Friedberg Personal Finance.

Mr. and Mrs. BP spent a lot when they got a dog. Read about it at 101 Centavos.

101 Centavos went nuts on an anniversary, but you know what that can get you… Read about it at Broke Professionals.

Latisha Styles’ post at Bucksome Boomer is I Spent How Much?! My Birthday Trip to the Bahamas.

Kay Lynn spent her heart out on a new car with all the bells and whistles and you can read about it at Financial Success for Young Adults.

Derek got a sweet new digital camera and tells us about it at My Personal Finance Journey.

Jacob has splurged a couple of times on travel and outdoor gear and has no regrets and shares the experiences at My Life and Finances.

Miss T. likes to splurge on travel. We have something in common. The difference? She wrote about it at Live Real Now.

Jason is a fan of the luxury of vacation. You can read about it at the Prairie EcoThrifter.

Squirrelers went to Europe for three weeks. Totally worth it! Read about it at Money Sanity.

Money Sanity likes good champagne. I can’t judge, I like good Scotch. Read about why at Squirrelers.

Melissa took 10 days and took the trip of a lifetime to visit a friend in China. Read about it at The Saved Quarter.

The Saved Quarter bought a Blendtec blender. Yes, the blender from “will it blend.” The story is at Mom’s Plan. (In case you were wondering, this blender can blend anything. Well, anything but Chuck Norris.)

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.

You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

Have a great week!

Sunday Roundup: Diet Redux

Misc

I had total diet fail last month.

From April to May, across 4 consecutive weekends, I put a bit over 1500 miles on my car on 4 separate trips. That is something like 10 times my average mileage.

That’s a lot of driving, squeezed around a regular schedule of work. Have you ever tried a drive through for low-carb food? Because of that, and the circumstances of some of my trips, I abandoned my diet on those weekends. Funeral food is rarely low-carb.

By the time those trips were over, I had spent so much time off my diet that “What’s one more sandwich?” became an easy justification. There is a reason I don’t break the rules I give myself. I can’t seem to cheat just once. Once I cross that line, it’s over.

So, instead of cheating on my diet and feeling guilty, I officially dropped it for most of the month of May. I decided it would be easier to get it out of my system than to continue worrying about it.

May’s over, and I’m back on the Slow Carb diet. My little fail cost me 7 pounds and 6.5 total inches(waist , hips, biceps, and thighs). I’m reasonably sure that most of that is water and will evaporate before next weekend.

Best Posts

My goal is to live my life so that I have no regrets at the end of it. That means pursuing my dreams and doing the things I love.

It’s easier to do the things I love when my life isn’t weighed down by the crap I don’t need.

Sweating the Big Stuff wrote a killer post on saving money simply by asking. Often, the easy things work.

Carnivals I’ve Rocked and Guest Posts I’ve Rolled

Shopping Online: The Money-Saving Secret was included in the Festival of Frugality.

Money Problems: Paying Off Debt was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.

5 Ways to Help Your Friends Stay Out of Debt was included in the Totally Money Blog Carnival.

Should Pupils Focus on Personal Finance was included in the Yakezie Carnival.

Thank you! If I missed anyone, please let me know.

Get More Out of Live Real, Now

There are so many ways you can read and interact with this site.

You can subscribe by RSS and get the posts in your favorite news reader. I prefer Google Reader.

You can subscribe by email and get, not only the posts delivered to your inbox, but occasional giveaways and tidbits not available elsewhere.

You can ‘Like’ LRN on Facebook. Facebook gets more use than Google. It can’t hurt to see what you want where you want.

You can follow LRN on Twitter. This comes with some nearly-instant interaction.

You can send me an email, telling me what you liked, what you didn’t like, or what you’d like to see more(or less) of. I promise to reply to any email that isn’t purely spam.

Have a great week!

Debt Burnout

Finance

You’ve got a budget. You’ve got a debt repayment plan. You’ve been paying off your debt. You’ve even paid off a few of your smaller debts. Now you’re staring down the barrel of your big debts: your mortgage, a $30,000 credit card, maybe a car payment. You’re looking at months of payments with no quick wins; no more watching your debts die every few months. You’re in the middle of a very long slog.

All of the easy milestones have been reached and the next one is a year or more away. This is when debt repayment gets hard. How can you avoid getting burnt out doing the same thing, month after month, with no major visible progress?

1. Keep your eye on the prize. Try focusing on the end result, while ignoring the time it takes to get there. Do you have a reward planned for when you pay off your debt? If not, consider that to be your new shining goal-post. My wife and I plan on taking an Alaskan cruise when our debt is repaid.

2. Ignore the prize. If #1 doesn’t work for you, try focusing on just the current month’s progress. How much did you pay off this month? Was it more than last month?

3. Make micro-goals. Try breaking the long slog into bite-sized pieces. How fast can you pay off the next $1000? How many months will it take to pay off that TV you bought last year? Sometimes, meeting a smaller goal can make the whole works feel like it’s going by faster.

4. Take a snowball vacation. For just one month, take every dollar you would normally apply to your debt–except your required payments–and have some fun with it. Take a weekend trip, have a fancy dinner, or pick up that video game system you’ve been eying. Something. Anything to take your mind off of your repayment plan for a while. Be careful not to make this a habit or you will never get out of debt.

5. Start a blog to share your pain.

A debt snowball is a long, intense process. If you’re not careful, you can burn out and let the whole thing collapse. How do you avoid burnout?

Sunday Roundup: Outta Town

Misc

Scrapbooking Cupcakes! — Image by clevercupcakes via Flickr

This weekend, my wife is off scrapbooking with my mother and sister-in-law. Instead of hanging around the house trying to keep three kids entertained, I’m at my brother’s house, since his wife abandoned him with their kids, too. I’ll let his kids keep mine entertained, and vice versa. Woo!