I'm Trying the Slow Carb Diet

I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for the past year and a half and I have received massive benefits from it. I went from 108 kg to 94 kg while also adding muscle because of consistently working out in the gym. Apart from that, it was also amazing for mental clarity and energy levels during the day. Another advantage of diong intermittent fasting was that it wasn’t really hard. In the beginning, it took some time and willpower to get used to it but after that, it took minimal effort as it had already become a habit to not eat until 4 or 5 PM. I drank a Yerba Mate in the morning that crushed my hunger for most of the day and apparently has other weight loss benefits. Also, it was good for convenience because by the time I finished university, went to the gym, and came back home, it was time to eat. Therefore, I didn’t feel that I was on a strict diet, even though I was, kind of.

However, I have more ambitious physical goals for this year and wanted to lose more weight while adding muscle. That’s when I heard about the Slow Carb Diet from Tim Ferris’s podcast. It’s a far more arduous diet than intermittent fasting because it prohibits any white starchy food (bread, rice, potatoes, etc.), drinking calories, and fruit. It encourages that you pick a few meals rich in protein and fiber and repeat them. Therefore, your choices would be pretty limited to meat, chicken, eggs, and vegetables. Maybe also fish, but I don’t like fish. The only good thing is that you have 1 day a week to go crazy and eat whatever you want: Pizza, ice cream, cookies, etc.

I have been trying it for the past 2 weeks and it’s tough. To be fair, I’ve never felt hungry. It works by filling you up. However, there is more to food than just filling you up and make your hunger disappear. There is also a fair amount of joy to food. In this diet, even though it fills me up and I don’t feel hunger, I still feel the need for the joy that came from food earlier. That’s what makes this diet arduous. I suppose the best way is to mentally forget about food as a vehicle of joy and just as a vehicle to quash hunger.

However hard this diet might be, the results I’ve seen from it on Tim Ferris’s blog is enough to justify me giving it a good shot. It says people lose 20-30 kg in a matter of a few months. That’s more than I need to lose to get to my goal. Therefore, I’m publicly committing to it and will share my results periodically. I currently weigh 94 kg and my goal is to get to 80 kg and ultimately get a six pack. If I get the results from this diet that other people have gotten, I can get there by this summer which is a dream that will require a lot of sacrifice, discipline, and dedication. But I’ll do everything for a six-pack.