Challenge #3 - Slow Carb diet for a week

It's about that time again... today starts challenge #3 for 2011. This one was inspired by a book I just started reading, the 4 Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss (more on this book later, after I finish reading it). The book itself is about different ways to drastically change your body by putting in the smallest amount of effort, which in a lot of cases is still a lot of effort.

One of the first chapters in the book introduces the Slow Carb Diet, which is touted as "how to lose 20 pounds in 30 days without exercise." Now I won't be taking this diet on for a full 30 days, nor do I want to lose pounds (or stop exercising for that matter), but I was interested to see if I would yield the same first week results as a lot of the people referenced in the book.

It seems people can lose 5-6 pounds in week one if they stick to this diet. I think this may be because a lot of the people taking on this diet were overweight to start with, and it's easier to take off pounds if you have more to begin with, BUT...let's see how it works for me if I stick with it for a week.

The diet itself reminds me a bit of the Paleo diet, but there are some differences. Here are the main rules of the Slow Carb Diet:

1. Avoid "White" Carbs
This means no bread, pasta, rice, cereal potatoes, fried food with breading.

2. Eat the same few meals over and over again.
Here are some of the foods Ferriss says should be used to fill out your diet:

• Proteins: Eggs, chicken breast, beef, fish, pork
• Legumes: Lentils, black beans, pinto beans, soy beans
• Vegetables: Spinach, Mixed veggies, Asparagus, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Peas, Green Beans

3. Don't drink calories
No milk, soft drinks, or fruit juice. No sweetened tea (goodbye for a week AriZona Green Tea...). Basically I think I'll just be drinking water here. Ferriss does say you may have up to 2 glasses of red wine a night. NO BEER.

4. Don't eat fruit
Apparently fruit makes you fat. Except tomatoes and avocados - hooray, guac!

5. Take one day off per week
Ferriss actually encourages you to BINGE EAT one day per week. Apparently it won't effect your results that much, though since I'm only doing this for a week I'm not sure how effective having a cheat day will do. Nonetheless, I must follow the rules, so one day of eating whatever I want will have to happen! We'll make this day Saturday, since my friend KIM WILL BE IN TOWN and I'll want to enjoy eating and drinking copious amounts of things with her that day.

There are some more finer points to the diet, in terms of if I can use spices (I can, but not cream based sauces), salad dressing (balsamic and olive oil), or have snacks (carrots or 5-10 almonds). Ferriss gets more into the finer points in the next chapter, but I won't get too detailed here.

The other thing - I'm supposed to eat 4 meals per day, spaced out roughly 4 hours apart. Within an hour of waking, I need breakfast, lunch 4 hours later, a second, smaller lunch 4 hours after that, and dinner 4 hours after that.

So it sounds like I'll be eating the same things over and over and over a lot of times this week! We'll see how it goes. Good news is I'm already am on my way, I had 2 eggs and some black beans for breakfast when I woke up this morning.

Gonna go shop for supplies for this diet right now. Should be an interesting week. I'll also be weighing myself every day and will give you the results at the end of the week.

Think of this as an online episode of "The Biggest Loser." Except I'm not necessarily trying to lose weight. So I guess it's not like the Biggest Loser at all.

Anyways, that's all I got for you for now. I'll give you updates as the week goes on...

One last thing -- the one part of this diet that I think will be hardest for me?
No milk.