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Arjun's Easy Weight-Loss Diet
When I thought about a diet, the idea of simply reducing my food intake wasn't particularly pleasant-- I don't have the willpower to force myself to go hungry. While looking around at different options, I came across several different diets out there, none of which quite suited me. So instead of simply taking on one of the diets that I saw out there, I came up with my own monstrosity. Reading below I'll show you the principles behind other diets that I've seen, then I'll show you my own diet. I sell no food products and no books, so I have zero financial stake in this. I'm putting my diet out on the web because it's helped me and hopefully it can help others. DISCLAIMER: I'm an engineering student, not a health professional; I'm not going to make any guarantees of any sort about this diet.
Diets I've come across :
The Atkins Diet operates on a simple concept: insulin prevents you from burning your own fat, and carbs cause you to secrete insulin, thus carbs prevent you from burning fat.
With that in mind, the Atkins diet starts you off in an "induction" phase for a couple weeks-- in that phase, you eliminate carbs-- you eat under 20g of carbs per day. I found that this was an easy thing to do in terms of willpower, but difficult in terms of available foods-- that really limits you to only meat and eggs. Not a very diverse menu.
Once you're through the induction stage, you keep your carbohydrate intake low by minimizing your consumption of starches/grains/sugars. Don't have pasta for dinner, don't have baked potatoes for dinner, don't order the "extra value meal", and what the heck are you thinking with that can of Coke in your hand? ...You can have pasta or rice or potatoes with your dinner if you like, but make sure you don't have much of them, and your main course had better be some kind of meat (red meat, poultry, fish, etc.).
The aim with the Atkins diet is to get you into a state of ketosis-- that is, bringing your insulin levels to near-zero such that your body is only burning energy from fat-- fat (from food or your own fat) is converted into ketones, which your body then burns. It's through this ketosis state that the Atkins Diet allows you to eat as much food as you want-- as long as you're in ketosis (eating only low-carb foods), your appetite will be suppressed and you'll feel full even though you are in effect starving yourself. Note that ketosis should not be confused with ketoacidosis, which is a dangerous condition that can be experienced by insulin-dependent diabetics. A state of ketoacidosis means that (due to diabetes) your body will have zero insulin, and thus be creating and burning ketones from your body fat, but your blood will be acidic due to high blood-glucose. The reason ketoacidosis isn't a concern is because it CAN'T occur unless you're diabetic, and if you are, it won't occur unless you're consuming sugars or carbs.
As far as health goes, while you'll be ingesting more fat and cholesterol than you were previously, you won't be taking in anywhere near as many carbohydrates. Since you've dramatically reduced your carb intake, your triglyceride count (a heart disease risk-factor) will drop. As far as cholesterol goes, you'll likely have an increase in both your "bad" cholesterol and your "good" cholesterol, netting you zero increase in heart-disease risk. Dr. Atkins, 71, recently suffered heart failure, however it was not at all related to his nutrition-- it was caused by an infection that he'd been battling for the previous two years. A study suggests the Atkins diet is safe.
LowCarb.ca is a good resource for carbohydrate-restricted diets.
The Zone Diet advocates balance-- a 30/40/30 ratio for protein/carb/fat. With this balanced approach, it's far less radical than the Atkins diet. The Zone claims to never enter ketosis due to its 40% carb intake. The Zone's website is *heavily* focused on selling their own food products, and just about all of their informational pages are havily-laden with marketing-speak, which makes me wary. I get the impression that the Zone diet exists solely to make money, which doesn't particularly impress me. One thing that I do like about the Zone diet is that for its carbohydrate intake it recommends using the Glycemic Index to determine "favourable" and "unfavourable" carbs. From my experience (I'm hypoglycemic) the Glycemic Index is an important indicator of the blood-glucose reactions that you'll experience with different types of food. Foods with high GI values will cause quick insulin reactions, and will cause you to get hungry again quite quickly. Foods low with low GI values will leave you feeling satiated for longer.
The Zigag Diet claims to help you to lose weight by keeping your body in a state of metabolic confusion-- some days you go low-carb, some days you go high-carb. Bottom line is that you don't do any one thing for a long period of time, so your body never goes into "storage" mode, where it tries to hoard fat-- it prevents the plateaus that some other diets can experience. Note that FitnessOnline.com is a Weider publication. Weider Nutrition has gotten itself in trouble with the FTC in the US a few times for marketing products with unsubstantiated claims-- eg, herbal pills that help you lost weight. I don't think this diet's quite on that level, since the diet doesn't explicitly try to sell products.
Articles critical of high-protein low-carb diets :
QuackWatch.com: critical of low-carb diets. Many of their criticisms are claimed advantages of those advocating low-carb diets.
American Heart Association: critical of high-protein diets. Major criticisms: lack of food choices, initial (first-week) weight losses being primarily water, low consumption of fruits and vegetables, potential burden of additional protein on the kidneys and liver, and the lack of studies proving these diets to be safe in the long term. My response: with obesity being such an epidemic, there should be more studies aimed at finding safe ways of losing weight; high-protein diets may, for all I know, be hard on the kidneys in the long term, but I don't plan on eating high-protein for the long term-- only until I've met my weight-loss goals; Atkins recommends acceptable quantities of fruits/vegetables once the "maintenance" stage is achieved; once off the low-carb diet, people will quickly gain back a few pounds in water-- as long as people are aware of it, it's no big deal; lack of food choices making the diets hard to stick to can be battled by the abundance of low-or-reduced-carb recipes available on the internet. The AHA article focuses on these weight-loss diets as being long-term diets; I'd say that they're not intended for long-term use-- you lose your weight, then move onto a "normal" diet.
Arjun's Diet :
First, a quick note about myself: I would not be able to hold myself to a diet where I am constantly aware that I am starving myself for a long period of time. I love eating ice cream for dessert a few times a week. I enjoy going out for Slurpees with my friends a few times a week. I enjoy my "anime nites" where me and a friend consume massive 1.18 L Slurpees and a 300g bag of Doritos in one evening.
So, with that in mind, my diet involves bits of the Zigzag diet, Atkins, and Zone. I zigzag between a "normal" diet, the radical Atkins diet, and the moderate Zone diet. I allow myself to have massive bowls of ice cream a couple times a week, when I get an urge for ice cream. I allow medium-sized Slurpees two-three times a week with my friends. I allow Super Slurpees and big bags of Doritos once or twice a week with one of my buddies. I usually snack on cans of tuna fish, or sunflower seeds (50% fat, 25% carb, 25% protein), or celery/carrot sticks dipped in ranch salad dressing.
Most days I start my day off with a tasty egg-based breakfast: scrambled eggs or omelettes with cheddar, cream cheese, green onions. Combine this with (some days) bacon or sausages, and it makes for a tasty breakfast. Some days, for variety, I eat oatmeal or shredded wheat cereal. Usually these "variety" days are my "normal" diet days-- lots of carbs, veggies, fruits, grains, etc. Some days when I eat egg breakfasts, I go low-carb all day, and eat a dinner of almost entirely meat. Other egg-breakfast days I go for a more moderate veggie-based dinner, sometimes adding some meat, sometimes adding some grains.
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