In which I tell you all about my avoidance of refined carbohydrates.

As you may remember, I went on a traditional low-calorie, low-fat, semi-starvation diet on January 5th. I did this because I was so fat I could barely cut my own toenails and I felt uncomfortable in my own body. I was twenty pounds shy of obesity, and at the rate I was gaining I’d have been clinically obese in a year or two.

I lost both weight – mostly water, at first – and inches for about five weeks. The experience, after the third or fourth week, was nothing short of miserable (save the pride I felt in my accomplishment): near the end of the diet I was obsessed with food and calories, and I literally spent most of my time planning my next meal.

By the end of the diet, my body was buying and consuming entire bags of potato chips without my consent. I was hungry all the time.

Then I read Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, more or less by accident (someone must have recommended it to me, because I found the sample on my Kindle). It was astonishing, this book. Game-changing. Mind-blowing. It challenged every single thing I knew about diet and weight loss, and it did it with actual science. I decided that although a lot of the author’s conclusions were, by his own admission, anecdotal or theoretical at best, and needed more studies, I could do some experiments in my own lab: my body.

We all know that overweight is the gateway to a host of diseases, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and high blood pressure. And nobody wants to be fat.

So I quit eating the following foods:

  • white flour
  • white sugar
  • white rice
  • potatoes
  • high fructose corn sweetner

This meant no bread, no soda pop, no sweetened juices. No candy, cakes, pies, or cookies. No hash browns or potato chips. No silly breakfast cereals. No sushi maki. No pasta.

But I did allow my fat intake to go back to where it had been pre-diet, and ate anything I wanted that didn’t contain any of the five things listed. Including entire wedges of brie, and olive oil, and daily whole milk lattes.

The result was no hunger, no food obsession, no starvation. No calorie-counting, no exercise.

And I started to drop inches like you wouldn’t believe.

After about 6 weeks, I could feel my spine, collar bones, and hip bones again for the first time since my very early 30’s. Slabs of fat I’d been packing on for most of my life were sloooooooowly melting away (and still are).

I noticed other side effects as well. The dry, scaly, flaky skin on my heels, knees, and elbows is gone. My anxiety is gone (save one brief attack that I think was related more to the horrific hangover I was experiencing than anything else). My generalized physical fatigue is gone. My gum disease symptoms are practically gone and I only need to see the dentist half as often. My joints make fewer noises and ache less. I don’t mind doing physical activity when I need to. I feel like me again; what I’d attributed to normal aging was mostly diet. I still have wrinkles on my face and sagginess where a 42-year-old woman will, but it turns out that exhaustion and disinterest and weight gain aren’t normal aging but perhaps instead the result of a lifetime of metabolic weirdness caused by blood sugar spikes.

The five foods listed above cause a complex metabolic condition in which blood sugar spikes alarmingly, and then insulin, which regulates fat, spikes, leading eventually to insulin resistance and weight gain and possibly adult-onset diabetes or other related conditions. Apparently, intake of dietary fat has never been scientifically implicated in any health or weight conditions despite what you’ve been told, and neither has calorie restriction alone ever proven to cause satisfactory, permanent weight regulation.

And exercise does not make you lose weight. The more work you do, the more you eat.

I am again capable of sprinting around the corner to the grocery store; a year ago I couldn’t have managed it. I mean, my normal disposition wouldn’t choose to – I’ve never been sporty – but I could do it if I wanted and I have.

I no longer get insanely hungry. If I’m hungry, okay, I’m hungry, but it’s not a crisis like it used to be. If I’m busy or traveling I can skip meals without feeling that bone-deep, desperate need to put something in my mouth.

I no longer feel like I have some sort of psychological failure (sloth and gluttony) causing me to be fat and lazy. I can sprint up and down stairs. I wake up less groggy. Walking and bike riding are enjoyable methods of transportation rather than slow, exhausting slogs to get from point A to point B.

I’ve lost five inches off my middle and three inches off my upper arms. My fingers aren’t fat. I can see the bones in the tops of my feet again. I can feel my kneecaps because they’re no longer covered in fat. My monthly water gain is 2 or 3 pounds instead of the 8 or 11 it had been. When I lie down on the floor, there’s light under my knees, the small of my back, and my neck again.

Overall, I’m extremely pleased with the results and intend to keep avoiding empty, processed, nutrient-free, blood sugar-spiking calories. I now believe that what’s making this nation fat isn’t the cheese or the burger, but the bun and the fries and the Coke. I now believe that calorie- and fat-restriction don’t cause weight loss. I now believe that overweight is not a failure of discipline but a failure of the food supply. Refined carbohydrates in the forms of white flour, white sugar, and corn sweetener are, I am convinced, the cause of our obesity epidemic and all the attendant diseases of Westernization.

I’d encourage everyone to self-educate (you don’t have to read Taubes’ book, there are tons of other sources for the same information) and try a similar experiment on their own bodies. I mean, it’s not like there’s any good reason to eat white flour and white sugar, anyway. And while there’s no reason to wish to live forever, there’s also no reason for the second half of one’s life to be full of discomfort and illness when much of it appears to be avoidable through a gentle and thoughtful moderation of the modern diet.

Before and After
Before and after losing roughly 30 pounds (2.14 stone). And I’m still losing.
 

9 Responses to The no-refined-carbs thing: an update on the experiment.

  1. Karen says:

    Dude. I gave up grains (the only non-vegetable carb left in my diet) three weeks ago and have since lost 14 pounds (in three weeks; I think it’s just about all water), as well as 2 inches off my hips, and I’m hardly ever hungry — and I have energy like I have never had before! It is awesome, and I owe this move to Good Calories, Bad Calories. I want to tell everyone to read it.

    I still eat bulgar wheat. Yay, tabouli! And the occasional serving of soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles). But for the most part I don’t eat many grains any more, though I do eat lots of beans and legumes. -m

  2. naomi says:

    when we started on the low carb diet (read my blog if you haven’t already) i was still a bit skeptical, but i knew that many of the carbs we ate weren’t good for bran. since then i’ve not been hungry except in the morning and like you say, it’s not the ravenous-eat-chair-legs kind of hunger that made me eat all kinds of unsuitable things. i was somewhat hungry this morning (berries, coconut milk and some nuts) and i ate a few walnuts through the morning as i did weekly reports. I was stuffed to the gills after lunch and didn’t want to eat again until i just had supper at 9, after we brought boy home from work.

    oh, a great soup additive, something that will make any creamy thick soup even better…guacamole. it adds flavour and a fabulous smoothness that is, well, fabulous.

    I don’t think all carbs are evil–like I said, I eat beans and legumes every single day, and I eat lots of dairy products–but the refined ones do play havoc with the metabolism. -m

  3. NLW says:

    Just curious – so would whole wheat and brown rice would be ok since your list stresses all of the whites, or is it really avoid grain and rice… period?

    The goal is to keep the blood sugar even and to quit messing with insulin response, so I try to eat in the low GI range. Both whole wheat bread and brown rice are/appear to be in the medium GI range.

    “By definition, the consumption of high-glycemic index foods results in higher and more rapid increases in blood glucose levels than the consumption of low-glycemic index foods. Rapid increases in blood glucose are potent signals to the beta-cells of the pancreas to increase insulin secretion. Over the next few hours, the high insulin levels induced by consumption of high-glycemic index foods may cause a sharp decrease in blood glucose levels (hypoglycemia).

    “In contrast, the consumption of low-glycemic index foods results in lower but more sustained increases in blood glucose and lower insulin demands on pancreatic beta-cells.” – The Linus Pauling Institute Micronutrient Information Center at OSU

    I’d probably eat yummy homemade whole wheat or spelt bread with something fatty and protein-y like egg salad on it, but I haven’t cared enough to bake any yet. (I can’t find any truly whole wheat bread in any market or bakery; all loaves have white flour and/or sugar in them, which puts them in the high GI range and makes them, metabolically albeit not nutritionally, not much better than candy.)

    Mendosa recommends brown Basmati if you want to eat rice, but it’s still medium GI. When I need something to put my curries on, I use boiled, finely chopped cauliflower with butter on it. -m

  4. manu says:

    i’m inspired. we’re gonna try it, and will let you know how it goes.

    Excellent! -m

  5. blackwhiteandreadallover says:

    Posted! So proud of you.

    And I you, size 8 girl! -m

  6. 80 says:

    You look positively svelte! I have been eating this way for a while, not as strictly as you describe, and love the way I feel.

    I like best that a vague understanding of metabolism has helped me know that I’m not actually a gluttonous sloth. I really resented always feeling bad about myself because I wasn’t a naturally athletic, light eater. Now that I avoid the right crap, I eat less than I ever have and I’m not starving! Now all that’s left is to see how I die, because I eat a lot of fat. -m

  7. Jinjer says:

    I’m giving this a go starting today. Thanks for doing the research!

    • Mush says:

      Thanks for finding this post and commenting on it because it made me re-read it. I went back on a diet last week because I’m fucking HUGE and miserable again. It’s so easy to just eat baguette and flour-thickened soups and sauces and then BAM you have a 40″ waist. Ugh.

  8. Jinjer says:

    Yah. So I started yesterday. Pretty much following your no white, this, that or the other. That’s what I did back in 2011 and it worked. Also started back up with my walking. 30 minutes a day seems to do what I want it to do.

    It’s really pretty easy once you set your mind to it. The bread, rice, potatoes, etc are really only there to support the yummy stuff that I REALLY want to eat…the sauces, gravies, curries, etc. I like your trick of eating curries and stuff on top of cauliflower. That makes sense to me. It doesn’t have a lot of flavor on it’s own so I can see putting lots of stuff on top of it. I’m a carnivore (sorry animals, sorry!!!!) so I’m thinking even the yummy spaghetti loaded with meat sauce I’m currently craving could be tasty on top of cauliflower!!! I don’t even LIKE pasta that much anyway. Why have I been eating the delicious sauce on something I don’t like???? So yah, going to try that.

    Now I’m off to find your curry recipes. I know you’ve got them back from your awesome bento boxing days.

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