The Difference of a Couple of Years

On June 23, 2012, I started the slow-carb diet. Because I religiously (except when I am out of town) weigh myself every single morning, I know that my starting weight was 258.2 pounds and 37% body fat on a 6 foot 3 inch frame (that's a BMI of 32.3, which classifies as obese).

Picture on the left was taken on August 27, 2012, at Folly Beach, SC, while on vacation visiting friends in the Charleston area. This was about two months after I began the slow-carb diet. Before I went on that vacation, my weight was 233 pounds, with 33.9% body fat.

So what a difference made by these two years. The picture on the right, on a cruise excursion at Grand Cayman, was taken on May 1, 2014. We flew to Tampa on April 26, 2014; my weight/body fat that day was 171.2 pounds/14.4%. My waist decreased from size 42/44 to 34.

That day at Grand Cayman was no doubt more than 171 pounds. On the slow-carb diet, you get a cheat day. The cruise was, well, kind of a cheat week. I certainly did not deprive myself. The first night's dessert was creme brulee (I had three since this is my favorite dessert in the world).

But I did eat differently than I did on other cruises. First, no lemonade, only unsweetened tea (I did drink alcohol when free, because I'm cheap (natch)). Aside from a couple of hot dogs, a few corned-beef/pastrami sandwiches, and a couple of bowls of nachos, I eschewed bread (every night at dinner, servers offered bread, so I just declined). I did weight resistance just about every day, and on most days used a rowing machine. For breakfasts, no toast, very few potatoes, and every morning had mushrooms and onions with the bacon and eggs. I did have fruit every morning, which consisted of a big bowl of grapefruit and dates.

Lunches were those aforementioned sandwiches and hot dogs (the second hot dog on the cruise was my third hot dog in two years; those sandwiches were the first in two years, btw) along with (really big) salads. After lunch, I usually had ice cream; I had dessert every night on the cruise.

So I did gain weight on the cruise, which I knew I would. The next time I weighed myself, the scale said 182 pounds (16.7% body fat), so a gain of 10.8 pounds. The days after cheat days ran between two pounds to about seven pounds gained, so I liken the cruise to the equivalent of two cheat days (this morning, before the next cheat day, weight is down to 174.8, so the week after the cruise I've dropped seven pounds).

This cruise was our second time on the Carnival Legend. Unfortunately, our original maître d' was not there. Just for kicks, here's a picture of us together back in 2009. Needless to say, at the time I ate what I wanted and clearly took advantage of ship's reception with free alcohol that night.

Nuclear Cauliflower Curry Slurry

This recipe is amazing. I first saw it on Dr. Oz when Dr. Andrew Weil was a guest. I think I made it better I made notations where I made major changes in Weil's recipe). Below is the double recipe.

You will need:

1 cup of cashews (Weil has raw; I think roasted cashews are okay)
1 cup of cup water
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, diced (I usually get a sweet onion, such as Vidalia)
2 large heads of cauliflower (if available, get purple or orange cauliflower)
2 14-oz cans of light coconut milk
5 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
1 tablespoon ground cumin (I actually forgot to put this in last time; it was fine)
Artificial sweetener (Weil mentions brown cane sugar, I start with ten drops of this one from Amazon)
1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon
(Weil mentions 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro; it's mainly for garnishing, so I ignore this)
1 tablespoon of salt
I also add:
1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon of cardamom

At a minimum, you will need a stock pot, a blender, and a stem blender. We also use a food processor.

The biggest pain will be prepping the cauliflower.  Cut it up into chunks. We run it through the food processor first to get the pieces a bit more manageable. If you get the orange cauliflower, you get the benefit of beta-carotene. Purple cauliflower, flavinoids.

After your cauliflower is prepped, prep the cashews. Dump them into the blender and grind them a bit. When powdery, add a cup of water. Blend it some more until it looks like milk. Weil says to strain the cashews through a cheesecloth or mesh; I find this unnecessary.

Dice that onion.

Get all your stuff together. For all the spices, with the exception of the cayenne and cardamom, I would go ahead and mix all these together in a bowl. Okay, now we're ready to cook.

Put the olive oil in the stockpot and turn the range on to a low to medium level. Add in the onions and caramelize them. Once the onions are done, throw in the cauliflower.

Following the cauliflower, add the coconut milk and cashew milk. Then add the spices and the "sugar." You can add the cayenne pepper and cardamom if you want. I like the additional heat that the cayenne brings; I also love the taste of the cardamom (it almost makes this like a dessert porridge).

When everything is in the pot, use that stem blender to really puree the cauliflower; this blender also helps with mixing the spices into the slurry.

I let this cook for an hour or two, applying the stem blender often. Throughout this process, you should add spices to taste. This includes salt, cayenne pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and the artificial sweetener.

I make this whenever cauliflower goes on sale, as in $2.50 a head. This makes a large batch and it is super healthy for you. Nuclear because it looks like it is glowing; slurry, because you can see it's kind of a liquid, but kind of not.

Beautiful Beth

My Lovely Wife

Pic taken with new camera in front our house.

Randy's Meatloaf Recipe (Update for Slow-Carb Diet)

To work with the SCD, we once tried mushrooms instead of bread.  It was ok, but but it didn't bind very well.  A couple of weeks ago, I mashed up a can of black beans and a can of kidney beans for two loafs.  That worked!  Because turmeric is like the best stuff on earth, I added a tablespoon to one and it was good (aside from the yellowish tinge to the meat).  So here's the updated recipe - it still has ketchup in it which has sugar, but I think it's pretty negligible (even using ketchup as  a condiment with the meal, my weight still went down the next day):

Not pretty, but it's pretty good.

-One to 1.5 pounds of ground turkey - they generally come in packs of this weight
-Half can of black beans; half can of kidney beans
-One-quarter cup of unflavored almond milk (this is another change, it worked also)
-Two eggs
-Half-can to one can of Rotel
-1/4 to 1/2 of a minced/diced onion (I generally like sweet, yellow onions or Vidalia onions)
-One tablespoon of ketchup
-One tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
-1.5 teaspoons of salt
-1 tablespoon of turmeric
-One teaspoon to one tablespoon of Tabasco (I use the original, but you could use others (e.g., Habanero) if you want more heat - you can also use another hot sauce if you like them better (e.g., Texas Pete)
-One teaspoon of garlic powder or granulated garlic

Get a big bowl and a meatloaf pan.  You can go ahead and spray the inside of the meatloaf pan with Pam or other cooking spray if you want.  Also, go ahead and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mash up the beans the big bowl.  I used a potato masher.  If you wanted, you could probably run them through a food processor.  Now, here's a hint - make sure the ground turkey is fully defrosted (I'll explain later).  Dump it into that big bowl.  Add the milk, eggs (duh, crack them first - don't put the shells in), Rotel, onion, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, salt, turmeric, Tabasco, and garlic.  With all that in the bowl, start mixing it up with your hands.

It will probably be a bit cold.  That's why you want the turkey fully defrosted.  I did it when the turkey was still a bit frozen, and it was quite painful.

Now that its all mixed up, it should all be one big mushy consistency.  Put it into the meatloaf pan, pushing it down a bit to make sure it's filling the pan.

Now, here's another hint - get out a cookie sheet and put some aluminum foil on that sheet.  Set the meatloaf pan on the cookie sheet.  This way, if the meatloaf bubbles up and over during cooking, it will spill on the foil and not in the oven with a big mess.

Put it in the oven for 90 minutes - time and temperature is dependent on how well your oven matches temps.  The recipe calls for 350 degrees, I generally move mine up to 375 to be sure.

After cooking, let it sit for about 15 minutes, then slice and serve.  I like to dip mine in ketchup and my preferred side is black-eyed peas.

The wife still  loves this recipe - she always makes me cook two loaves so can she can make meatloaf sandwiches; she could only eat the meatloaf sandwiches on Saturday, which is our cheat day.  

Weight Change

After my wife and I got back from a cruise in 2011, I remember finally getting on the scale and seeing 272 (I’m 6’3”).  This put me in the obesity range at 34 BMI.  I was wearing a tight 42” waist/comfortable 44” waist.  I made some changes over a number of months and dropped a bit down to 258 pounds (BMI 32; still obese), but what I was doing certainly wasn’t enough. 

I had heard that Tim Ferris’ Four-Hour Body was coming out; when it became available, I checked it out of the library.  Included in the book is a regimen that claimed to drop 20 pounds a month with no exercise.  Reading the details of the diet, I thought “I can do this.”  And yes it works (see pics below):

On the left is probably in the neighborhood of 260 - 270 pounds; on the right under 195.

I started in June 2012; following a few weeks of cheat days (more on that later), I am under 200 pounds with a 24 BMI (normal/healthy range).  Waist has moved from that aforementioned 42”/44” to a tight 34”/comfortable 36” waist.  Total weight lost is over 60 pounds.

Here are the components to the regimen:

1.            No grains/processed flours/sugar.  That means no breads.

2.            No fruits.  The only acceptable fruits are tomatoes and avocados. 

3.            No starches.  No potatoes, no sweet potatoes, no rice.   I would probably add carrots to this.

4.            No dairy products.

5.            No alcohol, with the exception of no more than two servings of red wine.

5.            Eat lots of vegetables (you can also eat nuts). 

6.            Eat lots of beans (lots of protein; lots of fiber).

7.            Eat protein; specifically, have at least 25 to 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking.

8.            Numbers one through seven are for six days of the week.  On the seventh day, (I picked Saturday), eat whatever and however much you want.  This is what I call cheat day. 

The overall concept is that you are eating low-glycemic foods.  When you eat a high-glycemic food, such as a sugar or flour, this spikes your insulin.  The insulin spike tells your body to produce and store fat, usually in your belly.  The lower glycemic foods don’t spike the insulin and the body instead burns fat for energy. 

The cheat day does a couple of things.  First, it resets your metabolism so your body doesn’t get too used to the reduced carbohydrate diet.  It also gets cravings out of your system.  On a cheat day, I've gained anywhere between three to seven pounds, but then lost it back by Tuesday or Wednesday.  

Since being on the diet, I’ve averaged 1.74 pounds lost per week.  My exercise is limited to walking for an hour a few days a week; an hour in the pool once every two weeks; and weights on my carb-heavy Saturdays.  While being on this regimen, I've determined, and I believe there is some scientific journals out there that support this, that exercise accounts for only 10 to 20 percent of your body's health and physique.  I laugh when I see those Insanity or P90x infomercials - one, the drop-off rate has got to be enormously high.  These programs are simply not sustainable for probably 99 percent of the population.  Two, in all these programs, there is a significant nutrition component that they don't talk about much (99 percent of the infomercial is the awesome exercises; maybe one percent is the nutrition component).  The Insanity system actually has you counting calories - I have yet to count a calorie on my regimen.  

Which leads to another huge misconception, that a "calorie is a calorie is a calorie."  Jillian Michaels actually believes this - she was on Dr. Oz one time stating the women shouldn't eat more than x calories a day and men shouldn't eat more than x.  That logic would mean that 1,000 calories of black beans has the same impact as 1,000 calories of broccoli which has the same impact as 1,000 calories of sugar.  It doesn't.  

A couple of other things - this diet forces you to eat healthier and the Day 1 through Day 6 meals don't have to be that difficult (see my Fiesta recipe).  Since I started this, I also have not been to a McDonald's, Burger King or Taco Bell (I can imagine eating a Big Mac on a cheat day, but I have sworn off Taco Bell for the rest of my life).  

Unfortunately, when you go out to eat, your options decrease to about 10 percent of the menu - all restaurants have a tremendous focus on simple carbs and dairy.  As an example, we go to Chili's every once in a while.  Yes, we could get a steak and mixed veg, but for their signature fajitas we go through a spiel of "extra black beans instead of rice; we can't have dairy, so substitute guacamole in lieu of sour cream/cheese; and no tortillas."  The only appetizer available on the menu is chicken wings (everything else is loaded with simple carbohydrates or massive amounts of dairy).  With the wings we substitute extra celery instead of the cream-heavy ranch or bleu cheese dressing.

One "fast food" option that I like is either Chipotle or Q'doba - but even then it's a naked burrito (meaning no tortilla), extra beans in lieu of rice, and no cheese.  Certainly no corn chips.

But also to give everyone an idea of what the food industry does (and how it's impacting us), I encourage everyone to see Hungry for Change  and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.   Both are on Netflix.  Just so everyone knows, both films strongly advocate juicing as your primary means of nutrition intake, but there is still a remarkable amount of information regarding your health and how what we put in our bodies directly affects our overall well being.   

Fiesta!

My sister-in-law Victoria introduced me to this recipe.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve modified it, especially now that Beth and I are on the Slow Carb Diet.  It tastes good, it’s not too complicated, and you get lots of leftovers making meals for the remainder of the week pretty easy.

Ingredients:

One pound of ground turkey
Two cans of black beans
Two cans of kidney beans
Two large cans of diced tomato
One can of Rotel tomatoes (we use the one with mild chilis)
Can of chopped chilis
Taco seasoning
Kale (quarter pound) (optional)
Turmeric (optional)
Avocado
Onion
Can of sliced black olives

Directions:

If using kale, I would recommend running it through a food processor before doing anything else, mincing it thoroughly.  

1. Brown turkey in a pan.  We use a really large skillet so we just add the rest of the ingredients to that, but you can use a crockpot after browning the turkey.
2.   Add one of the large cans of diced tomatoes.  Add can of chilis.
3.   For the taco seasoning, we bought one of the larger containers from Costco.  I use four tablespoons.  You can just buy some of the individual packets if you want. Add turmeric.  This is optional.  Don’t be surprised that everything turns orange.  Turmeric is added because of the extensive health benefits.  Stir everything up so that the turkey is coated with the spices.  
4. Add beans.  I empty the cans into a colander and rinse before adding.  
5. Add can of Rotel.
6. Add that second can of tomatoes.
7. Add kale.  Again, this is optional, and it’s added because kale is one of the most nutritious foods on the planet.  When I first did this, I used about a pound of kale - that was too much.  A quarter pound would be much better.
8. Mix everything up real well.  Cover, and let it cook.
9. While cooking, dice up the onion.
10. Dice the avocado.  
11. Periodically stir.  I usually consider it done when I see everything boiling a little bit.
12. Serve in big bowl.  Add some onion, avocado and olives.  
13. I also add some hot sauce.  I prefer Habanero Tabasco.  Beth like the Chipotle Tabasco.
14. Mix this last bit up in your bowl and eat!

As I mentioned earlier, Victoria introduced this to me.  Before we were on the Slow Carb Diet, we served it on a bed of rice and added cheese, as well as Fritos for texture.  Eliminating these items and adding the kale, I’m not sure if you can find a more nutritious one-pot meal.