Tim Ferriss promises that you can lose 20 lbs. of fat in 30 days without exercise. Let’s just ignore the fact that Tim’s diet spanned six weeks (not 30 days) during which time he lost 15 lbs. (not 20), and forget the fact that Tim’s diet role model cheats by exercising a little (50 marathons in 50 days) and eats Hawaiian pizza with a cheesecake chaser. This slow-carb diet at least sounds good on paper.
But does it work?
In the past I’ve had pretty quick results with a pretty clueless combination of Power Bars, celery sticks, moderation and exercise. Typically I’ll drop 10 pounds in the first two weeks. But then homeostasis starts putting up a fight and nothing more happens. I eventually give up.
This time I decided to follow a diet to the letter, notably Mr. Ferriss’ because I tend to believe everything I read on the internet. I made a couple of modifications:
- I gave myself Saturday and Sunday as “cheat” days (losing 2.5 lbs. per week seems fair enough, I figure)
- Instead of beans, vegetables and meat for breakfast I substituted plain yogurt and raw unsalted nuts
- Instead of beans, vegetables and meat for lunch I substituted vegetables and cheese
After two weeks of this, (1) I’ve lost all of two pounds, a figure that is uncomfortably within the margin of error on our crappy bathroom scale, and (2) I feel like hell. I think nuts are too low of a glycemic index and by the end of the day my brain feels like it’s pumping peanut butter. No kidding…I can literally feel the thoughts getting stuck in one region of my cortex and I have to mentally squeeze them like toothpaste to get them moving.
So, I’m cutting out the extra “cheat” day and I’m adding legumes to breakfast and lunch. I’m also thinking of upping the exercise factor beyond the two days a week I’m going to the climbing gym. I’ll keep you posted on how this works.