The following is a lonnnng post about the slow carb diet. If you’re not interested, skip it and I recommend this drool-worthy post instead. However, if you are interested in losing fat fast while not exercising and still stuffing your face but in a totally healthy way, then read on!
Over the past few months, I’ve been feeling down about my health. We haven’t cooked for months (except for the stint on Koh Chang), due to the lack of kitchens and the convenience of affordable street food. I felt my body slowly changing… a tummy more jiggly than usual, thighs with less gap… I hated it. Life on the road is not always healthy.
Finally, in Singapore, we arrived to a house with a huge kitchen, fully equipped with everything you can possibly need. A kitchen of our own for a whole month! We decided this was the perfect opportunity to make a diet change and get back on the path to good health.
D picked up Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Body
The Four-Hour Body in brief:
- No carbs. No food that is white! This means potato! And no grains, whole-wheat or brown rice.
- No sugar of ANY KIND because nothing makes you fat faster than sugar. This includes even fruit. NO FRUIT! And no honey either.
- So what do you eat to get full? BEANS! Of all kinds. Beans are your best friend. Eat as much of it as you want.
- And of course eat your meats & veggies too.
- Sodas, juices, and alcoholic drinks are huge no-no’s. However, 2 small glasses of RED wine a day is allowed.
- No diary. No yogurt, cheese, or milk. If you must, a tiny bit of heavy cream is okay in coffee.
- Oh, did I mention that these rules are for only 6 days a week? On the 7th day, you are allowed to eat whatever you want! You are allowed to shovel food into your mouth until you’re physically sick. More on this later!
Month 1 in Singapore
I found Singapore to be a hard country to be on this diet in. First of all, Singapore is an expensive country. Groceries were ridiculously pricey, probably more than hawker meal costs! And second, if we wanted to go out to eat, it was hard to find diet-approved foods, as most Singaporean cuisine is heavily carb based. We ended up buying a lot of crispy pork from the corner roast meats stall. And Indian was a good option as long as we didn’t order rice or naan.
Most of the time, we cooked, though it was hard to come up with variety after a while. The grocery options weren’t too impressive. After trying out some different types of beans, we decided we like red lentils and chickpeas the best. We made a lot of channa masala (sans cream). A LOT.
our daily food: channa masala (chickpea curry) // greens with store bought ready-made chicken // green beans with crispy pork // hard boiled eggs as snacks
our diet staples: veggies, onions, chili peppers, curry powder, chicken broth, and beans (red lentils & chickpeas)
Let’s see how I fared. Here are my notes during the first week:
Day 1 // Hmmm…I don’t like beans. But it’s really not too bad, I guess.
Day 2 // Still not too bad. I can probably do this! But I need to learn some more recipes.
Day 3 // Uh oh… startling new development: I’m having the stinkiest farts ever… All these damn beans… At least D tolerates it.
Day 4 // beans again?! This sucks. Is it cheat day yet? I want rice and bread. And chocolate. And ice cream.
Day 5 // This diet blows. I definitely don’t feel thinner yet. In fact, I feel fatter than ever as I’ve never been so bloated. And cooking beans is literally an all day job. Thank god I have nothing better to do than stand over the stove all day.
Day 6 // Dear god, I’m even dreaming of pizza now. Mmmm delicious, carby, cheesy, greasy pizza… Great, I’m awake and my reality is beans all day. But only one more day, I can get through it.
Day 7: CHEAT DAY!!! THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE! GIVE ME MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF CARBS!!!
Cheat days
Cheat days are epic. My entire life now resolves around counting down to cheat day. The whole week, I’ll jot down cravings and note places I want to try as we walk around town. Then on cheat day, we hit up them all.
I actually set an alarm on cheat days so I can get my grub on as early as possible (later, we learned that your first meal on cheat day is supposed to be a normal meal of beans and protein… but I think we can break this rule!). Here is everything we eat on a cheat day!
cheat day: pain au chocolat for breakfast // crispy pork over noodles // a couple of orders of xiaolongbao at Din Tai Fung // chocolate cake and ice cream // huge Indian feast with lots of biryani rice and naan // ending the day with ginger beer!
I LOVE that cheat day is a must on this diet. I love that you’re encouraged to gorge yourself until you’re sick. Your body NEEDS this binge day to prevent from going into starvation mode and storing fat instead. This keeps you from plateauing. So basically, eating a massive amount of fat and sugar promotes more rapid fat loss. Score!
Having this day once a week actually makes this an incredibly easy diet to stick to! And surprisingly, by the end of cheat day, I feel so gross that I’m ready to get back unto the diet.
Some notes & observations:
– We stayed indoors a lot more. Is it just me or are outings a lot less fun when food is not involved? Or maybe this is also because this diet now requires me to be in front of the stove four hours a day. (Tim Ferriss doesn’t recommend starting out this way. It’s tough and you may give up. He actually recommends using frozen veggies and canned beans to start.)
– You will loose fat, but you may not feel it for a while because you will be bloated all the damn time (and let’s not talk about how stinky your farts will be too). Don’t worry, these all shall pass.
– One good thing about this diet, compared to others, is that I don’t feel hungry all the time. When I did Paleo, I got hungry every 2 hours (beans are not allowed on Paleo, as far as I know). But on this diet, the beans keep you pretty full.
– I think having a kitchen is a must, which isn’t always available to us. It was also good that we were in Singapore for a whole month, so we could be on the diet and still have plenty of cheat days to eat all the local food. It’ll be interesting to see if we can maintain it as we travel.
Results after one month:
So, after all this, I know you’re dying to know my results after one month, right? I’m not going to put my exact measurements, but here are the results:
I lost one inch around the smallest part of my waist while my hips stayed the same, giving me a much more defined hourglass figure. After the bloat died down, my belly area feels significantly less fatty. I lost one inch from each thigh, measured from the thickest part. My arms stayed the same. (Note: we only measure by tape because we don’t have access to scales during travel. But I think tape is the best method to measure progress anyway.)
And did I mention that I (purposely) did not do one bit of exercise? Tim Ferriss promised that you will lose fat on this diet even with zero exercise. I wanted to test this claim and be able to report genuine progress.
Final thoughts:
I have never ever had such fast progress from any diet (and I lived a pretty healthy lifestyle before). The tape measurements prove that I have lost fat in just ONE month with no exercise and while still eating like crazy (guilt-free too!) once a week. I’m kind of in awe of the results. I think this is also the easiest diet I’ve been on, due to the fact that I don’t feel hungry every two hours and I have cheat day to look forward to (it’s seriously like having the best day of your life once a week!!). The only annoying thing is having to hunt for beans (and cooking them). We’re currently in the middle of our second month and we want to continue for as long as possible, though I’m not sure if I see it as a permanent lifestyle change.
Is this diet something you would try? What kind of diets have you tried? Is this something you are interested to read regular updates about? Let me know and I’ll continue!
*Disclaimer: this is not an ad, even though I realize it sounds like an infomercial. I’m just excited to share this diet!
This is really interesting (and a great way to get back on track!) It’s really helpful that D did this with you because as a part of a couple, I don’t think I would succeed unless the other person did this too… especially when I’m the person always cooking for us! Is whole-wheat pasta (brown rice, whole wheat grains, etc) allowed? & how about honey? :) And are you sick of channa masala yet?
This was actually D’s idea! Otherwise, I don’t think I have the resolve! I’m always the one moaning about how I want cookies or pizza. Ohhhh I should amend the post to say that brown rice, grains, etc are not allowed! Basically no carbs at all until cheat day. It’s hard but the beans make up for it, and then the cheat days are SO worth it!! And no honey because that’s sugar! Oh god we got so sick of channa masala, but we’re out of Singapore so we found other beans in the Phillippines. And eating out here while still being on the diet is really easy!
You have some sort of strength in you! I don’t think I could hold to this strict of a diet. The no fruit thing would totally drive me crazy. I have fruit everyday so it would be a giant change! Good for you, though! I’m glad you saw some awesome results.
I wasn’t happy about no fruits either! But I wanted to try the absolutely zero sugar thing. Until cheat day, that is! Cheat day makes everything so worthwhile!! And I can’t believe you get results so fast!
Nice, that’s great that you are both doing it together! I’m always skeptical of diets that take out entire food groups (I’m more for moderation) but it sounds like you’re getting great results so far! (And yay for cheat days!) No carbs would be so hard for me!!
It’s hard for me too because I LOVE breads and noodles. It’s not technically taking out whole food groups because you can eat it all once a week! I have to admit that the 6 diet days are really hard (especially since I’m not that good of a cook and can’t think of different dishes to make), but I love that we have the 7th day to eat whatever! The thing I couldn’t do with Paleo is that there are no cheat days.
Woah!! This kind of looks like the paleo diet minus 1 day a week– right?? I’ve never done a true “diet,” but we’ve really been focusing on “real food” and avoiding restaurants, packaged foods, processed foods, and sugary drinks. What can I say, we LOVE to cook, so we actually really enjoy eating well. Still, I’m always fascinated by diets though and love reading reviews of them (like this one!). Thanks for sharing about it!
That’s great!! Just eating real food is what’s important! That’s really good that you love to cook. Cooking is really hard for me and I get frustrated spending so much time in the kitchen!! But I guess since I’m blessed with so much freedom, the least I can do is making sure that we eat healthy!
The difference between SCD per 4 Hour Body and Paleo is that Paleo doesn’t prefer legumes, and 4HB doesn’t prefer fruit. Even paleo has variations that allow for a cheat day. I consider them cousins, and even Paleo gurus like Chris Kresser (I think it was him) are changing their stance on legumes depending on how you prepare them.
I completely relate to the fact that it’s so hard not to put on weight whilst travelling long-term. I’m lucky that I love healthy food, especially salads, beans and lentils (although beans don’t tend to make me fart, I guess because I’ve eaten then on a regular basis from childhood!), but when travelling I tend to combine all that with A LOT of bread and cheese, because it’s cheap and readily available (although the cheese not so much in Asia but it’s replaced with rice and coconut milk in everything!) I think I might just give this a go at home and see what sort of results I get. What are the rules on proteins like yoghurt, eggs and cheeses?
Oooh if you already love beans and lentils, this should be really easy for you! I had to get used to the introduction of beans to my diet. And I still don’t know how to make beans interesting! I’ll be interested to know if you have any good recipes. Diary is not allowed on this diet, so no yogurt or cheese (I amended the post to put this in… thanks!), but eggs is okay. I just keep a bunch of hard boiled eggs handy for snacking!
I’m about to try a modified diet similar to this based on a book I read (name totally escaping me). I loveeeeeeee beans, i might have to try this before the beach. Also have you tried – sauteed onions and carrots, then you mix in dry lentils, can of tomatoes various seasoning, bring to a boil and then simmer 45mins? It’s soo delish we eat it for days.
Yes!! This is the perfect quick beach body diet!! One reasons we did this is because we’re on Boracay island now and we wanted to tone down a little for the beach. If you love beans, you could totally do this no problem!! And that sounds reallllly good. I did something similar by backwards… Where I cooked lentils then added sautéed onions & carrots and tomato. I’ll have to try your version!
I think it’s hilarious you set your alarm clock on cheat days to maximize your eating time! I love this idea, so I’d like to hear about your progress if you guys can keep it up. When your main goal of travel is to eat as much as possible, staying thin/healthy is hard! And does this diet actually recommend the beans or did y’all just find it’s what gets you the most full??
He specifically recommends the beans! The beans are the cornerstone of this diet because they keep you from crashing, and they don’t turn into sugar (unlike potatoes). We definitely had to change the way we travel and eat! It’s good that we’re in each of the next places for a month so we can do this, and still be able to experience the local foods. But I think it’ll be hard if we’re only in one city for a few days!
That sounds awesome. Thank you for sharing! I want to hear more from your experience every month. I am on week 3 myself and somehow my weight is the same this whole week :-/ I started to get worried if this Tim’s method would work. Do you get fluctuations at all? Also, I found out that the cheat day is painful. Somehow my body just doesn’t want these bad food anymore. I was excited for the first 6 hours but then I realized sugar was so overrated! Ha :-) Still tomorrow is my cheat day and I am going all in!!
Yay, hi Nikki! I love meeting someone who’s also doing this!! We don’t have a scale so I have no idea about my weight loss. I only have a tape measure and by that, it’s definitely working (though I’m afraid I may be plateauing now after 6 weeks… I guess I need to add exercise back in)! Are you measuring with tape? I would say that’s the most accurate. I feel so gross by the end of each cheat day too. And I actually get sugar highs now after a week of no sugar! Enjoy your cheat day!!! Today is mine too!!
Hi Anna, Thanks for reminding me about measuring with a tape measure. I will do that. Hopefully I will see better results ;-P For the exercise, my hubby and I are doing kettle bells. What is your plan on the exercise? Good luck and have fun eating lentils and chickpeas!! (+ beans)
Oooh I’ve done kettle bells in the past. They’re really effective! I told myself I would start exercising the 2nd month (after purposely not working out in the first) but I’ve been lazy. But we have been on an island this month so we’ve been swimming. Does that count? haha! Good luck with the measurement! I’d be really surprised if you don’t see any results.
I got stomach pains really bad. Started taking a chromium capsule every morning. It took it away instantly.
My husband and I were on the diet for 5 months, and also had weeks when we plateaued. Make sure you’re drinking lots of water and eating 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking. Once I fixed those things, I started losing weight again.
It’s great that you are able to lose weight and trim your thighs, and I’m sure if you look strictly in terms of losing weight then this is a great diet plan, but I’m not so sure about keeping up a beans diet for very long. Beans of all sorts have high purine content, that’s the thing that gives you gout and arthritis long term. Omitting carbs in your diet is definitely a surefire way to lose weight (I do that as much as I can nowadays too), but for long term health purposes, I think we still need some fruits for a balanced diet. :/
Ohhh I didn’t know that about beans. But like half the world has a diet heavy on beans! Yeah eliminating carbs and sugar definitely work the best, and is the healthiest. Fruit isn’t allowed 6 days a week because of the sugar content, but it is on cheat day!
I’m a fan of Tim Ferris, so I wanted to read on to see how it worked for you. Cheat days looked awesome and amazing and I think I’d want to be on the cheat day 24/7….Oh, wait. I am. I’d be curious how you feel on after month 2 and 3. I’m glad you found something that works for you two. I probably will need to do some sort of revamp soon. Although, did Tim mention anything re: not wanting to lose weight? Is the diet only good for losing weight?
Haha, before, I was eating like cheat day every day too. So something had to change!! This diet is good for if you want to lose fat fast. I think I was careful to not say “lose weight” because I have no idea if I’ve lost weight or not (no scale). But the tape measurements definitely prove I lost fat!
My husband and I were on this diet for 5 months. We would take an extra cheat day when birthdays or holidays would come around, or when we would be on a week-long mission trip, because being on the diet while travelling was impossible. But my husband lost 60 pounds, and I lost 30 (10 in the first week). It was pretty simple once we got into it, and after the first month, food felt like a nutrient tool. We ate more for our body’s needs rather than it being yummy. We stuck to the same meals every day, which made cooking easy. I could make batch meals, to cut down on prep/cooking time.
Anyways, we finally stopped because my husband reached his goal, and I didn’t want to do it alone. We have been off it for about 3.5 months, and we each have gained less than 10 pounds – and it was because we totally went crazy while on our last trip. Lol We started it back up again yesterday.
Oh, and Tim mentioned somewhere (can’t remember if it’s in the book or not) that if you are following the 5 basic rules, you will lose weight until you get to your ideal weight for your body type. He said your body will only burn as much as you have to spare, so once you see that you’re at your ideal, you can keep doing it or go off it. My husband and I didn’t notice any change once we went off it, until we binged big time a couple weeks ago. Our weight would fluctuate a couple pounds, but never great gain. We felt better too, as in we had more energy, werent tired all the time, etc.
Okay, now whilst I admire Tim for his various projects and continual output; I just don’t see why any diet should require a ‘cheat day’. Why not just spread out the food eaten on that 7th day to make a more varied eating plan during the week?
Of course for a full opinion I should try the diet first to see how I feel myself, but from an outsiders point of view it feels a bit fad-like, like the Atkins diet or something.
I’m more than content with the weight loss and overall better feeling I’ve had since going vegan than any other dietary plan I’ve stuck to before.
As far as I understand, certain food causes you to gain fat, so if you refrain from eating them for 6 whole days, then that’s a lot of fat you’re loosing without anything getting in the way (in my totally unscientific explanation, heh). I’m really happy for you guys that going vegan is working out so well! As an eater of animal protein, we would have to respectfully have our own opinions on this one, hehe.
That’s about right. The main reason for the cheat day is to shake things up. The goal we’re trying to get on the SCD is fat loss – when you don’t have a bunch of carbs to burn, your body starts to preferentially burn fat (after all, it’s what our body stores for energy later). Sugar is easy to burn, but fat is more efficient. He admits, though, that a cheat day is also to keep people sane. I go back and forth over whether or not I want to promote a cheat day the way he does, because most of us also have gut issues that can get cleaned up, and eating SCD helps with that (check out “leaky gut” for more), but then our cheat day kinda jacks with that.
@Dale, I think you’re right about it being a fad in terms of calling it a diet, but it can be a sustainable way to eat, and when you take that 7th day as more of a refeed day (ie, just upping carb intake without upping refined sugar and grain intake) it’s not an unhealthy way to lose fat.
-j
I’ve never been a dieter myself, I just find them too complicated and full of rules. Plus, I have a bit of a bad history when it comes to food and dieting and I find that I can get a bit “over enthusiastic” with diet ideas and then it’s not healthy any more. I just try to enjoy food and listen to my body and trying to feed it what it needs. I kind of suck at that, but I try :)
Diets never worked for me before because as soon as I slip once, I would just start binging on carbs like crazy!! The 6 days on this one is really hard, but having the binge day makes it okay to suffer through hehe. And it also ensures that I won’t cheat!
I’m glad you had such amazing results! Although I don’t think I’d be super successful at this diet because I’d be bummed out 6 out of 7 days of the week and just waiting for that 7th day to roll around! x
Trust me, that’s like my entire life now!! Just counting down to cheat day! But then when it comes, it’s sooooo worth it!
Hmmm this is interesting — I have never been a big fan of diets, not because I don’t think they don’t work, but because I really dislike restrictions. For the last couple of months I have been trying the 2:5 diet, which I heard about on NPR. Basically you eat normal for 5 days, and restrict yourself to fasting on 500 calories the other 2 days on the week. It’s pretty easy — but I haven’t been really tracking my progress, so I have no idea if it’s working. Do you think you will be able to keep up with 4 hour diet for good?
Ooooh that sounds really hard!! 500 calories is like nothing. And I get sooo grumpy when hungry. This one does have hardships but at least I don’t feel hungry all the time. We’d like to do it for a couple of more months, but I’m not really sure if it’s possible because soon, we won’t be staying in each place for a whole month anymore, and we’re going to want to eat the local food!
I have not heard about this diet. It’s good to know that you got good result from it. I’d say though that it maybe tedious cooking the beans from scratch, but it’s much better and healthier than going for the short cut – canned beans with tons of salt and preservatives. Kudos for you for trying it. I’m not sure if I have the discipline to sustain this kind of diet. Do you think you can stay with it long term?
As much as we’d like to (because we both still have some more fat to lose before we get to our ideal shapes), I think it’d be really really hard. It was doable in Singapore because we were there the whole month (and I didn’t loooooove Singaporean food) so having 4 binge days was completely fine. But we’re going to China next, and then Europe after that (!!) and there’s no way that I’m going to eat beans all day and not the delicious local food!! We’ll see though! Maybe we can find some sort of a balance. :)
the gas due to beans – general consensus seems to be that soaking beans overnight, removing the water and then cooking helps. We throw in a bay leaf or two while cooking.
Are you still following this diet? If yes, are you still happy with the results or you started experiencing ill conditions (i.e. vomiting, etc..)? If no, how did you stop it? why did you stop it? .. I am actually trying to stop it and failing each time so please I am looking forward to hearing from you about your current thoughts about this diet :) thank you, :) additional info: I have been on this diet for exactly 100 days :) :) thanks
Wow!! 100 days! That’s some dedication to this! I don’t think I could do it for that long! I’ve done it on and off over the past year (like maybe 1 month on, 2 months off), and I’m not on it right now. I think it just got to be a little annoying for me to cook beans ALL the time. And plus, I travel a lot, so it’s hard to be on it while traveling. I’m just trying to eat healthier in general now, instead of doing an extreme diet that cut out entire food groups. I’m surprised you’re having trouble stopping it, because it’s always been easy for me to stop! And no, I’ve never had any ill effects from the diet (except for the gas, haha!).