Lowering carbs: how to, what you can expect, why it still isn't mainstream

I've been happily married for almost 20 years ago, and as almost anyone can tell you: this tends to be fattening ...

I'm not quite 6 feet tall and gradually increased my weight over the last 20 years from about 160 in 1995 to 187 last year. Not quite like this picture, but I was filling out my 36-size slacks without needing a belt.

I had always heard about the idea of a low carb diet for weight loss but never paid much attention to it because:

• I was an ectomorph and pretty much ate whatever I wanted (at least until I was 32 or so)
• I like bread and other carbs, especially sweet iced tea

I was doing the standard mainstream plan for keeping weight in check: exercising.

 I've been wearing a pedometer for years and for a while I was being pretty doctrinaire about getting 7000 steps per day ... without much noticeable influence on my weight.

Last fall I attended a conference put on by the nutritional supplement company Rain International. A featured speaker was Brian Peskin who had a book for sale: The 24-Hour Diet.

My wife wanted a copy so I bought one and sat reading it while waiting for her to emerge from a conference session ... it turns out to promote a simple variant on the low-carb diet idea:

• Reduce carbs during the week
• Eat all the carbs you want Friday night and Saturday
• Holidays: don't worry about it, just get back on board the next day

I decided to try this and immediately lost 10-12 pounds making a few simple changes:

• Eliminating most bread, for example getting lettuce wraps instead of sub sandwiches
• Reducing rice, for example just getting 1/2 the normal brown rice and black beans I normally had been getting on the Chipotle Chicken Burrito I like
• Eating more beef and fewer potatoes

I then read a book that presented the same ideas in a narrative I found compelling:

And a book and podcast series that also promotes lower carbs:

After this I further reduced carbs, most recently by changing the sugar content of iced tea I make at home. I used to use 1.25 cups of normal sugar (sucrose) but have started using:

• 0.5 cups sucrose
• 0.25 cups xylitol
• 0.25 cups erythritol

... per pot of tea, with a drizzle of honey added to the top of some cups I pour early in the pot. (The xylitol doesn't dissolve well in iced tea and therefore the bottom of the pot it a bit sweeter than the top.)

I estimate that this changed sugar formula is about 1/2 of the carbs in the full-sucrose formula. 

The bottom line: when I weighed myself on Saturday a.m. I hit a new low:

I don't look like this and won't, but I did hit a new low: 168! And I don't see any reason I can't get down to the low 160's or even lower if I wanted. And this is without feeling deprived or hungry!

As for why this sort of dietary plan still isn't mainstream, I just read yet another book on that subject:

According to Taubes, it's impossible to do scientific studies on changes in diet and control for a single variable. A valid study is also horrifically expensive and therefore many smaller studies happen and researchers tend to stick to the mainstream "calories are all the same and obesity is a will power problem" view in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Brunch tomorrow for me: a 2/3 pound organic beef burger from Costco, with cheese ... zero carbs never tasted so good!