Living Low Carb (48 page)
Authors: Jonny Bowden
The Four Phases
Phase One of the UYT program is unique in that it focuses on preparation and habits rather than on specific changes in what you eat. “You don’t go into battle without a battle plan,” writes the author. This week of preparation is focused on buying the right food, “bulletproofing your kitchen,” eating meals with specific beginnings and endings, answering lots of questions in the workbook that will help clarify your goals, clearly identifying your own trigger foods and toxic eating situations, and generally increasing mindfulness around eating. You can think of “Phase One” as the psychological equivalent of a warm-up that an athlete might do prior to getting on the field.
If Phase One is like conditioning prior to the big game, Phase Two is when the big game starts. During this two-week phase you will be eating only protein and vegetables with one piece of low sugar fruit a day (apples are recommended). There is also one optional portion of either avocado or nuts. You can cook your veggies in any fat you like (butter, coconut oil, olive oil, etc), you don’t have to count calories or grams, and you can eat till you’re full. It’s actually a very easy program to stay on and weight loss is noticeable.
Phase Three lasts two weeks and is when you reintroduce foods like dairy, grains, and starches, but in a very controlled way. The first week of phase three is all about dairy, the second week is all about grains and starches. The purpose of each week is to gently reintroduce foods in these respective groups and notice what your reactions are. You’ll make notes in your food diary, which will help you decide exactly how much (if any) dairy, grain, and starch foods you can keep in your diet after the program is over.
Phase Four is only one week, and looks pretty much like what you’re “permanent” eating plan will look like. This final week allows you to assemble meal plans with just the right amount of those re-introduced foods to keep your fat burning switch in the “on” position, minimize symptoms, and keep food triggers at bay.
Throughout the program there are incredibly sophisticated exercises that allow you to “recondition” your brain so that your “behavioral control circuits” aren’t disabled every time you smell a Cinnabon in the food court! The program gives you lots of “real-world” exercises—like pairing a really disgusting image with a food that makes you fat—helping to break the link between that food and unmitigated “pleasure.”
A unique feature of the program is detailed menu plans (found in a separate book) plus original recipes especially created by Chef Jeannette Bessinger, co-author of
The Healthiest Meals on Earth
and several other books. However, since the authors recognize that it’s unlikely that anyone will follow exact menu plans for six weeks, there is a very clear “roll your own” section that shows you how to effortlessly assemble your own “Unleash Your Thin”-friendly meal from a list of acceptable foods.
Exercise is vital for health and for weight maintenance but not an emphasis. Why? Because focusing on one thing at a time improves the odds of both compliance and success (not to mention mastery!). If you’re not exercising when you start the program, you can certainly begin with one of the beginner’s workouts, but you can also put it off until you’re more comfortable with the eating plan. (Spoiler alert: when you do begin exercising, the authors recommend high-intensity burst training or circuit training as the best way to burn fat efficiently and effectively. That seems to be in accord with most state-of-the-art recommendations on exercise and fat loss.)
Unleash Your Thin as a Lifestyle: Who it Works Well for, Who Should Look Elsewhere
It’s hard to imagine any demographic for whom the Unleash Your Thin program wouldn’t be suited. It’s probably especially good for those of us who have issues around motivation and willpower and who are continually derailed in their weight loss efforts by cravings, binges, frustration, and stress.
This program would definitely be better suited to non-vegetarians; protein figures prominently in this plan, and vegetarians by definition will have a more limited number of protein choices. However vegetarians who eat eggs and/or fish, and those who can tolerate whey protein powder should have a fairly easy time of it. Vegans should probably look elsewhere.
JONNY’S LOWDOWN
(
WITH DISCLIMER
)
Full disclosure: As primary author, I can’t be wholly unbiased about this program. But I can honestly say that Unleash Your Thin is the most complete system I’ve ever seen for losing weight and, especially, for maintaining that weight loss in the real world. In its previous incarnation as “Diet Boot Camp” it has earned thousands of endorsements from real people getting real results. The “Unleash Your Thin” program is like a turbo-charged Diet Boot Camp with greater depth, scope, and reach. I can honestly say that even if I had not had a thing to do with this program, I would still consider it a solidly 5 star affair! Highly recommended.
WHAT IT IS IN A NUTSHELL
A three-phase diet plan. For the first two weeks, you completely cut out bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, baked goods, fruit, sugar, and alcohol. During the second phase, you add back just enough carbs to let you continue to lose weight. In the third phase, when you’ve reached your goal weight, you can add back still more carbs from any category of food you like.
About the South Beach Diet
The South Beach diet is very…
friendly
. Written by a cardiologist, it has the benefit of a terrific marketing campaign, sports a great-looking cover, and borrows the cachet of a sleek, sexy, very “in” area of Miami known for its celebrities, models, and generally very good-looking people. That gets your attention. More important is the fact that the information deserves it.
The author says the diet was designed
not
with weight loss as its main goal, but to improve heart health “by changing blood chemistry.” Agatston says his heart patients—and his diabetic ones—lost weight “like crazy” (“10, 20, 30, even 50 pounds within months”), much of it from their midsections. The diet caught on and was featured on the local ABC affiliate station in a segment in which Miami Beach residents who wanted to lose weight were put on the diet and then followed around for a month. The station, WPLG, scored big with the feature, and it became an annual “South Beach Diet challenge” for three years. Eventually, the South Beach diet became known nationally, and was enthusiastically endorsed by a wide range of people including former president Bill Clinton.
Here’s how it works. For the first 14 days, you are on a decidedly lowcarb regimen in which you cut out all bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, baked goods, dairy, fruit, sugar, and alcohol. Eggs are unlimited. You can have most kinds of cheese (except for Brie, Edam, and full-fat cheese), certain sugar-free desserts, and a couple of kinds of nuts. You can also drink coffee. According to Agatston, you will lose between 8 and 13 pounds in the first 2 weeks, and most of that will come off your midsection.
In phase two, you reintroduce fruit, certain cereals, bran muffins, pasta, whole-grain breads, and other starches, albeit in small amounts. On this phase, you continue to lose weight at the reasonable rate of 1 to 2 pounds a week.
When you get to your goal, you go on phase three, which is your lifetimemaintenance “forever” plan. At this point, you can eat anything—there are no restrictions on what kind of carbs you can take in, which, of course, makes it very attractive for some people. Regarding these “foods you love,” the author says, “you won’t be able to have all of them, all the time. You’ll learn to enjoy them a little differently than before—maybe a little less enthusiastically. But you will enjoy them again.”
Agatston starts with the same basic premise as the low-carb theorists: high amounts of insulin are responsible for weight gain, and limiting carbs stabilizes both blood sugar and insulin. He explains: “The equation behind most obesity is simple: the faster the sugar and starches you eat are processed and absorbed into your bloodstream, the fatter you get.” He suggests eating foods and combinations of foods (i.e., proteins and fats, with minimal carbs) that cause
gradual
rather than
sharp
increases in blood sugar. He makes distinctions between good carbs (low-glycemic, whole-grain) and bad (processed, sugary, high in starch). So far, so good.
The author is a cardiologist and takes a traditional approach to “good fats” and “bad fats.” Though one could dispute his wholesale demonization of saturated fats, one could also argue that that condemnation is likely to make him more acceptable to the medical establishment, which is a good thing, as his thinking on the subjects of carb consumption, blood sugar, insulin, and weight gain is right on the money. And while he and I might have a friendly disagreement over saturated fats, we concur that trans-fats are the worst, and Agatston hammers this important point home time and again. And no one is going to object to his inclusion of plenty of good marine fats like fish oils.
The popularity of the diet is probably due to how realistic it is. (“It’s important for people to like the food they eat. Eating is meant to bring pleasure even when you’re trying to lose weight. That’s a sensible way to think about food and it’s one of the basic principles of the South Beach Diet.”) Agatston has some great recipes for desserts, like a tiramisu made from ricotta cheese and cocoa powder, as well as some good side dishes, like “mashed potatoes” made from cauliflower. But the most appealing part of the diet may be the fact that after the initial Atkins-like Spartan regimen, you can add back just about any carbs you want, as long as you keep the portions small and continue to lose weight; when you get to your goal, you can eat anything you want as long as you don’t gain.
This could be a problem for some people. Such unstructured eating looks great on paper and works great for many, but it can be a slippery slope for others. Start by adding one slice of bread or one piece of chocolate cake, and for many people, the ballgame is over. It’s like letting an alcoholic have one drink. But if you can follow his advice and stick to the moderate portion doctrine, you’ll allow those “favorite foods” to become occasional treats rather than mainstays of your diet. In this scenario, you’ll love the foods you’re eating, you won’t feel overly restricted, and the health benefits you receive are likely to be enormous. This is truly healthful, realistic, controlled-carb eating for the masses.
The South Beach Diet as a Lifestyle: Who It Works for, Who Should Look Elsewhere
People who want to have their cake and eat it too,
literally
, will love this plan. Because it makes a lot of concessions to “real-life” eating habits and, after the weight-loss period, does not restrict any food whatsoever, it’s bound to have a ton of appeal. And if you are the kind of person who can do moderation, it’s a great diet, providing plenty of protein, good fats, vegetables, and just enough carbohydrates to keep the demons at bay. However, this liberal way of doing things is potentially problematic for people who like specified amounts and clear instructions and want to know exactly what they can and can’t eat. If you fall into this category, you might be better off either staying on the first phase a bit longer or starting with a more structured plan and graduating to South Beach later on.
JONNY’S LOWDOWN
This is a decent program, although it shares many of conventional medicine’s prejudices and misconceptions (including a phobia of saturated fat). Although some of my colleagues have criticized it for “not being anything new” (one Internet pundit called it “Atkins for the first two weeks and then the Zone”), I’m not sure this criticism is fair. Sure, much of the information on insulin and weight control has been out there for a while—but those of us who have been preaching it have remained outside the mainstream.