The Slow Carb Diet was popularized in “The 4-Hour Body” book by Tim Ferriss. It is a fairly simple diet to follow and many body builders and others use it as well..
Tim claims he lost 25 pounds of fat in six weeks on this diet!
The basics are simple. Eat almost anything you want, with the restriction of high glycemic carbs.
That means no bread, grains, milk (a very little milk or cream in coffee in OK), cheese, fruit except for avocados and tomatoes, refined soy, grains, and starches. Many of the recipes in The Anabolic Cookbook are fantastic for this diet.
One day a week you can eat anything you want to help prevent the body from going into starvation mode. Go wild and have fun, eat till you are sick if you want, then back to the basics the next day.
So what can you eat?
Meat (emphasis on grass feed organic), eggs, fish, seafood, veggies, beans (be careful with densely caloric beans like chickpeas and hummus), oils and more. Salad dressings that are not cream based and do not have sugars added are fine, as is a glass of red wine a night.
We can describe the basics of the diet extremely well in 5 simple rules!
1) Avoid White Carbs – with the exception of cauliflower, avoid all white carbs: breads, potatoes, rice (even brown rice), pasta, cereal, crackers, etc. They are almost universally high glycemic, and the chemicals used to bleach them are often nasty! Many diets recommend this.
2) Eat the same few meals over and over – most people do this naturally and do not eat the variety they think they do, so this should be hard. Choose proteins (allowed include: eggs, egg whites, chicken, beef (grass fed is best), pork, and fish), legumes (basically beans and lentils), and vegetables.
Most restaurants will let you replace junk like French Fries or rice with a salad, and if they charge extra, just consider it a slight fee for keeping you fit!
3) Don’t Drink Calories – admittedly a tough one for me. Avoid soft drinks and juices for example. When it comes to diet soft drinks, they have nasty stuff in them, so try to limit to no more than 16 oz a day. I’ll admit to having the occasional energy drink. One or even two glasses of red wine a night is OK. If you drink coffee, no more than 2 table spoons of cream!).
4) No Fruit! – fruit is full of sugar! The two exceptions are tomatoes and avocados (eat sparin
gly as they are high calorie).
5) Take One Day Off Per Week – and go wild! This is important.
Of course exercise is also recommended, including 2-3 workouts in the gym. The workouts in the Muscle Maximizer can be used.
No calorie counting, just as in most low carb and low fat diets. If you think calorie counting is all that matters, well, maybe you still think the world is flat. The human body simply isn’t that simple!
This morning, as an example, I had an egg/eggwhite omelet with mushrooms and hummus (humm
us is awesome in omelets), and coffee with just a little cream. For lunch, I’m having simple roasted garlic and grass fed steak tips. For dinner, I’m thinking of making an Indian flavored bean dish that will last me a few days.
The slow carb diet, also called the 4-Hour Body Diet, is pretty simple to follow and works well for most if you stick to it. Remember, one day a week you can go wild!
I’ve just started the Slow Carb Diet and am already 2kg lighter than I was 4 days ago! I’m not enjoying the no fruit rule and am finding that I am slightly hungry in the evening, but apart from that it is going well!
I’m looking forward to the cheat day though! We’ll see what the results are like after a full week of it! Hopefully this is my year
Great blog!
Hey, congrats – I’m slow carbing for the new year also – haven’t jumped on a scale yet myself but feeling good.
And to throw in some aerobic exercise, blowing off work today to go skiing!
Loved reading the book (The 4 Hour Body), enormous Tim Ferriss fan, and an easy diet to stick too even when travelling.
I don’t need to lose weight, I just want to keep my bodyfat low (and muscles large) and I can do it with this diet when when eating out a lot and with lots of travel
I like the diet (and lifestyle) but it is easy to stay low carb and eat too many calories, if you wild on foods like hummus, ground beef, etc – Tim Ferriss does talk about that in his book and covers it very well. The allowable red wine at night makes this a happy diet for me (although I’ll sometimes have 2 and finish the bottle with a friend)!