Busting Through My Stall

One of my new year's resolutions was to do a 30-day, very clean Paleo experiment. I chose a hybrid of the Perfect Health Diet and Chris Kresser's Personal Paleo Code reset diet. So for the past 30 days, I gave up dairy, artificial sweeteners, dark chocolate, most packaged and processed foods, and all forms of sweeteners, artificial or not (e.g., no more maple or rice syrup). I avoided eating out as much as possible and concentrated on eating real, whole foods that I cooked myself. I made sure to eat safe starches each and every day, in the form of sweet potatoes, potatoes, or rice. I do not drink alcohol, coffee, and caffeinated teas, so they were not a problem for me. And I paid attention to calories, as they matter. Today is day 30 of this experiment.

What Happened 
So what happened? Several things, all of them good.

First, I busted through my stall. For about six months, I had stalled in the 242-245 pound range, though in recent weeks I had gotten up to has high as 249. That was a good 25-30 pounds above my ideal weight (I am tall). On January 1, 2012, I weighed 249.8 pounds and this morning, January 30, 2012, I weighed 233.8 pounds, for a total loss of 16 pounds.

Second, my blood glucose levels were excellent. They fell, and rapidly. In particular, my fasting blood glucose levels were a bit high (the "dawn phenomenon"), but they fell to below 100 most mornings. One-hour readings were almost always below 120 and two-hour readings were close to 100.

Third, I broke an addiction to artificial sweeteners. I haven't had anything with an artificial sweetener for 30 days now and have drunk nothing but water and herbal tea. Something caused me to have big headaches the first week, as I was weaning myself from non-natural foods. It was like the caffeine withdrawal I had when I finally gave up diet colas three years ago (I am not a coffee or caffeinated tea drinker). I don't know what caused the headaches, but I am wondering if it wasn't all the artificial sweeteners I had been consuming.

Why I Believe it Worked
So why was I able to drop 16 pounds in 30 days, when I was stalled for six months? Because I was consuming fewer calories, bottom line. When you cut out dairy, sweeteners (artificial and real), chocolate, and other processed foods, you simply eat less. I noticed that immediately, when I realized the range of foods available for me to eat was quite limited. I also stopped snacking. Plus the foods I actually ate were whole and real. I only ate out when I absolutely could not help it.

After going gangbusters on a low carb diet, I got sloppy and started eating things that were probably not good for me. Dark chocolate tops that list. I pretty much ate some chocolate almost every day and for me, chocolate is a trigger food. Also, I bought into all the "high fat low carb" fairy tale hype I had seen on the Internet. So I was making an effort to add fat to everything. What I didn't really realize was that a low carb or Paleo diet is already high fat; you don't have to add fat to make it high fat. When you cut back on carbs, fat fills the void. Naturally.

I also ate a lot of energy dense foods as snacks, such as cheeses, almonds, almond flour, other nuts, and ice cream. You simply cannot eat all you want of these types of food and lose weight; calories count. This is a message that needs repeating on the Internet.

Challenges I Faced
It wasn't easy to do. I got withdrawal headaches from something that were very unpleasant for the first week. Then my father passed away and I spent 10 days on the road, eating what I could, when I could. On only one occasion during the funeral trip was I forced to make a compromise. I hadn't eaten much and, because of traveling, had to eat on the road. I probably consumed fewer than 1,000 calories that day, but I did buy a stick of beef jerky and some smokehouse almonds from a convenience store to get through that particular situation. I also had a really bad cold two weeks into the process and took some cold medication (but not a lot) . I had wanted to have a chemical free experience, but life happened.

Lessons Learned
Here are some lessons I learned:

• Calories count. 
• Whole foods are best. 
• I was addicted to chocolate, which means I will probably have to avoid it in the future. 
• I can survive without diet soda. 
• I miss cheese, but will not go overboard with it when it is reintroduced. 
• Coconut oil is my friend. 
• I got sloppy and careless on the low carb diet, and consumed too many calories each day, which is why I stalled.
• Paleo is a much better eating philosophy than low carb.
• The low carb conventional wisdom found on the web (e.g., "Add fat!") is wrong.
• However, as a road warrior, low carb is easier to live with than clean Paleo, if one is forced to eat out a lot.

Moving Forward
I will be gradually reintroducing some of the foods I have not eaten for a while, but continue to pay attention to calories. I am getting near my goal of 215-220 pounds and I want to reach that, as I want to go paragliding in Switzerland this summer. I am still taking refuge in the Carbsane Asylum and not blindly accepting what I read on the web anymore. There are many wise voices on the web, but also lots of fairy tales.

Low Carb Fairy Tales

Obesity is a complex problem. But, as is human tendency, we want a simple answer to a complex problem. And low carb is a simple answer. Yes, you can lose weight, but this is almost by accident, as when you go low carb, you cut out wheat and sugar, two very problematic things.

Low carb proponents tell the obese exactly what they want to hear:

1) It's not my fault I am fat; my metabolism is broken.
2) I can eat all the fat and protein I want and still lose weight, because low carb gives me a metabolic advantage.
3) Calories don't count, only carbs matter, since all carbs are fattening.
4) Exercise doesn't matter.
5) Carbs increase insulin, which increases fat storage. Cut the carbs and burn fat.
6) Add yummy fat to your diet to be even more healthy and speed up weight loss.

Isn't that nice? Only it's not true: it's merely a fairy tale, with very little empirical science to back it up.

But it is one heck of a persuasive argument to tell an obese person. It shifts the blame from your willpower to something you can't control: an out of whack metabolism. And it worked! At least at first. Then it stalled as it always does after 17-20% weight loss and I got wiser.

It was like learning that Santa Claus is not real: low carb is not the magic weight loss bullet I thought it was.

What I really wanted was a simple solution to what I now know is a complex problem. I didn't want my being fat to be blamed on my sloth and gluttony, I wanted another explanation (broken metabolism, fattening carbs!). I didn't want to exercise and I didn't want to count calories. I wanted to eat until I was full and lose weight. Nice, neat, simple, compelling, and wrong.

I am currently following the Perfect Health Diet, a scientifically developed Paleo diet that is not based on fairy tales and which encourages exercise and calorie counting, is already high fat (you don't have to add any more), and complex. But that is okay, because I no longer believe in Santa Claus.

A Limit to Counting Calories

I am on record as stating that calories count. However, I am about to revise that opinion slightly. I have been counting calories and measuring my macronutrient ratios using the free software at livestrong.com. Since I began counting calories in August, I have lost nine additional pounds, after a mild stall. But I have discovered one thing that gives me pause in counting calories: I may still be eating too much.

It is all psychological. I have been rigorously tracking every calorie I consumed, but recently I have noticed that at the end of the day, I often have several hundred calories left. Since I have the calories left, I have felt obligated to use them, even if I wasn't hungry. After all, livestrong.com tells me I should be losing two pounds per week based on my height, weight, and age. But I am not losing two pounds per week and it occurs to me this is because I am consuming too many calories, even when I am below the level stipulated by livestrong.com for a two pound weight loss per week. I think all of these months on a low carb diet have slowed my metabolism.

So I am trying something new this week: eating until I am full, but stopping when I am no longer hungry, even if I have hundreds of calories left. Yes, I will still track the calories but won't feel obligated to consume them. We'll see how this goes.

In the "Good News" category, I have not regained five pounds by switching to the Perfect Health Diet, even after increasing my daily carb intake to around 100 grams per day, mostly from rice, potatoes, and whole milk yogurt.

Mayonnaise Substitute

Homemade mayonnaise is wonderful, and not made with U.S. subsidized farm products like soybean oil used in most brands of mayonnaise. We use olive oil at home when we make homemade mayonnaise and it tastes very good, like the mayonnaise we encounter in Europe.

But homemade mayonnaise has one big problem: since it has no preservatives, it doesn't last very long. It is also somewhat of a mess to make, though using a food processor definitely helps. Thus, the inconvenience of having to make mayonnaise all the time led me to find another solution. And I found a great one.

Use sour cream instead! There are fewer calories per serving (mayonnaise: 90 calories per tablespoon; sour cream: 60 calories for two tablespoons), and it tastes great. Since I am now counting calories, this is an important benefit for me. I use Daisy sour cream, as there are no additives or preservatives and it is made with 100% grade A cultured cream. Tuna salad, egg salad, and homemade salad dressings all taste really good, without any of the health dangers of using products made with soybeans.

Counting Calories Works For Me

To misquote James Carville, "It's the calories, stupid." I have successfully broken through my stall, by limiting my calories. I bought into the low carb hype about a "metabolic advantage" and the idea that "calories don't count." About four weeks ago when I started slowing down in my weight loss I decided to restrict calories, since some voices I respect talked about the necessity of counting calories.

Thinking back on it, it is remarkable that I lost almost 50 pounds without counting anything except grams of carbs. I guess that shows how overweight I was. The greater satiety from eating fat and protein filled me up and I spontaneously consumed fewer calories, which directly led to the weight loss. However, as I am losing weight, my metabolism is adjusting as well, and the weight loss started slowing, then stalled. But since I started counting calories (and exercising more), I have started losing weight again. Even though I have been restricting calories (using the free livestrong.com program), I am still not hungry most of the time, so this is clearly the way to go. I guess it helps that, with exercise, I can consume 2,700 calories per day and still lose weight. Only about thirty pounds to go until I hit my goal.

"Low carb" is still the way to go, as it is a much more pleasant weight loss experience. However, I think I am redefining in my own mind what "low carb" actually means. But that is the subject for another day.

A High Fat Diet--But Don't Overdo It

A low carb diet is really a high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diet. If you cut out carbs, they must be replaced with either protein or fat, and since too much protein can be toxic, that means it is, of necessity, a high fat diet.

I have posted the macro nutrient content of my diet for a couple of days (here and here) and you can clearly see that fat makes up between 2/3 and 3/4 of the calories in my low carb way of eating. So, indeed, it is a high fat diet.

The temptation, on the Internet at least, is to eat more fat to see how it positively impacts your health. Couple this high fat folk belief with the erroneous belief that only carbs matter in weight loss, not calories, and you have a recipe for weight gain. If you add substantial calories in the form of additional fat, you will likely gain weight or stall out your weight loss. I fear that is what has happened to me over the past few weeks. I have been adding butter and heavy whipping cream to many things, and stalled out. Adding 12 tablespoons of fat will lead to weight gain, not increased health (though to be fair, this is the only day where he went overboard by adding 12 tablespoons of additional fat to a meal. The other meals on his blog within a week or two of this one are much more normal).

So this is why I have started this new blog: to add a rational twist to low carbing, instead of following all of the latest fads I see popping up on the Internet. The low carb way of eating is naturally high fat; we don't have to add any more fat to make it high fat! I like the taste of fat, and I guess I so desperately wanted to be able to eat as much of it as I wished to without weight gain that I didn't stop to think about how silly that idea really was.

As an addendum, Volek and Phinney, in their book, The Art and Science of Low Carb Living, show that for maintenance, after you have lost your weight (but not during weight loss!), you must gradually add more fat to your meals, up until you hit the calorie level for your age, weight, and height. This makes sense, as you are no longer burning through your own personal stores of fat, but they very clearly specify calorie levels. As I have mentioned before, calories count.

The Low Carb Honeymoon is Over

Since February 14, 2011, I have lost 52 pounds by following a low carb way of eating (complete weight loss statistics are here in this chart), but the weight loss is beginning to slow down in the past few weeks. Perhaps it is because I have eaten too much, but there is also the possibility that I have hit the stalling point, when you lose between 17 and 20% of your original starting weight. To date, I have lost 18% of my starting weight, and I am still 30 to 40 pounds heavier than I would like. Have I stalled? I don't know, yet.

In 2005, I started Weight Watchers and lost over 100 pounds. I tracked that weight loss, too, and actually lost more weight per week on WW than on the low carb way of eating. Unfortunately, Weight Watchers is a semi-starvation diet, and when you stop starving yourself, the weight comes back on, and quickly. That happened to me, too, and it was quite embarrassing. You can see my WW weight loss statistics here.

To be clear, I vastly prefer the low carb way of life, as it has put my type II diabetes in remission and normalized my blood pressure. For that reason alone, I will continue low carbing and not go back to Weight Watchers, even though the weight loss there was more dramatic. Also, fat and protein offer greater satiety than anything on Weight Watchers; my hunger demons have been slain. I am full after eating and for me, that is the key to weight loss and weight loss maintenance. Those intrusive thoughts of food have simply vanished. Since this is a way of life for me, and not a diet (thanks to how it controls my type II diabetes), I plan on eating this way for the rest of my life.

Nevertheless, I am seeing that the low carb way of eating is not the magical silver bullet many claim it to be. Calories count. Gary Taubes, a science journalist I respect, and whose book, Why We Get Fat introduced me to low carbing, says calories do not count, only carbs. However, other people who I also respect, including Jenny Ruhl and Stargazey, tell me calories count. Most importantly, Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney tell me calories count.  I am retrenching and learning to a) eat a high fat, moderate protein, and low carb food plan and b) stay under the calorie threshold that will allow me to continue losing weight. Volek and Phinney devote a whole chapter in their recent book showing me how to do this. A very useful calorie counter, with an extensive database, is available for free at livestrong.com. This database blows away any others I have seen and has pretty much everything I eat in it. Now it is an essential tool for my weight loss management.

So the low carb honeymoon is now over. The lifelong process of living low carb, losing weight, and getting lean has begun.