How many of you have spent years of your lives going to bed hungry, skipping meals, and exercising yourself half to death to impress someone or feel good about yourself to others? I presume many people in this country struggle with this. And – the root cause – is WHAT you eat.

As “bro science” goes, “it’s calories in and calories out, stupid. You are just too weak. You need more discipline”. This essentially is what doctors did to me most of my life. As if I was too dumb to count calories. During my massive 175 pound weight loss over 3 years – the first year was calories in, calories out – with a twist. I used a “40-30-30” rule which was 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fats. My trainer firs told me to eat 2750 calories per day with this method. And when I did this, I had realized that most of my life – my carb intake was far, far, far higher than most. While I did exercise my whole life – summers I slimmed down, and winters I gained weight. Every year.

So – bro science would be like “ok – well, you need to work out then. Here are my bro splits. You can work out 6 days a week like this. Don’t forget to run on the hamster wheel. You need your BCAAs and protein powders”.

Let’s state a truth. If you count your calories and exercise routinely, you CAN lose weight. And many of us have done this time and time again – only to have something that triggers us. In my case, I would get injured a lot. My mind was set to push myself, and almost always, here is the pattern I ran into:

• I would have like 600-1000 calories a day
• I had a lot of fat free or low fat items
• I didn’t eat a lot of meat growing up, I was picky. So I ate a lot of carbs
• I would work out and run like a beast
• 2 months in – I’d be down 25 pounds, but I would get overly exhausted.
• I would push myself and hurt something. My hips. Knees. Feet. something
• I would have exhaustion and be injured and stop exercising
• I would go back to eating maybe 1800 calories a day and gain the 25 pounds back and 10 more for good luck
• People would see me after not seeing me for 3 months and tell me I had to lose weight – not knowing what I just went through and my injury
• People would think less of me that I was weak, not disciplined. Women would not give me the time of day growing up.
• You lose self confidence.
• Often – you end up hating yourself or feeling a sense of depression
• You try again.
• And again
• And again
• And 30 times into this cycle, you start to give up. You understand you aren’t “good enough”. You are too “weak”. You do not have discipline.

This is the struggle of just about any overweight person you ever run into. It’s not for a lack of effort. Ultimately, it’s about getting bad information from your healthcare providers. It’s not that they are dumb. It’s that the science they learned is incorrect, and so are the books given to them to memorize. Here are some items your healthcare provider doesn’t know, grasp, or have information on.

• As a general rule, you should not have to run on a hamster wheel every day to be trim. You are gaining weight because you are consuming more calories than your body can burn. But WHY? It’s because you are HUNGRY. OR – perhaps you are not properly diagnosed as ADHD and seek dopamine hits via food when stress or turmoil hits you.
• If you are properly medicated for ADHD, it can help reduce your dopamine-seeking activities
• You are HUNGRY because your hormones are telling you this. Often – foods high in carbs will trigger massive insulin spikes to take glucose out of your bloodstream. When the insulin crashes, it causes hunger pangs via the hormone ghrelin
• You are HUNGRY because foods you eat have been engineered to make you eat more of it. It has been engineered to get you addicted to it. In this respect – calorie counting doesn’t really work because you do not get the satiety you are supposed to. Leptin is the satiety hormone, and you can get leptin resistance.
• Not all calories are equal. If you have a large part of your diet that is carbohydrate-based, or process food-based, you will be hungry more often. At the very least, start with 40-30-30 and calorie counting. With the carbs, have more complex carbs that have lower Glycemic Index scores. I helped my brother lose about 80 pounds with this method, as he can’t “do keto”. However, you can greatly improve your body composition by increasing protein and fats, and reducing carbs. “You are what you eat”. Do you want to be doughy or hard?
• While a pound is 3500 calories, and you may be 60 pounds overweight, why do you get hungry when you have 200,000 or so spare calories you can eat? If your body is conditioned to run on carbohydrates, it constantly seeks more exogenous glucose to run on as a fuel. If you train your body to run on fats as a primary fuel source and stay away from carbohydrates, your body will start to tap the fat stores on your body and you do not get the insulin spikes that lead to crashes and ghrelin triggering hunger.
• Your doctor has at most 20 hours of nutritional training in med school. I have about 3000 hours of study and have lost 175 pounds years ago, and more recently, dropped another 50. Using my methods above – I have lost 225 pounds. And – I know how I gained back a lot of weight over 6 years.
• The “food industry” wants you to buy their packaged garbage. They load it with sugars, chemicals, additives, dyes – they bleach things, and then add things to make it addictive.

My advice to you:

• eat foods with the least amount of ingredients. A tomato. An onion. Chicken breast. If it’s in a box, have some pause. Look at the ingredients. Usually, the more ingredients, the worse it is for you.
• If you cannot do “low carb”, look at 40-30-30 and low glycemic items. I did a lot of meal prepping with rice, chicken, and broccoli. I would eat a giant plate of it for 600 calories and be stuffed. The rice I was eating was lower on the GI. Chicken was a lot of protein. The broccoli was a decent filler. You will find this helps your appetite be reduced
• When possible, avoid carbs. Focus on protein. Fats. If you do have carbs, have less than 150 a day (after a ketogenic induction for 12 weeks). Also – have carbs around heavy types of exercises. Sprinting, heavy lifting, etc.

But Nate – I know many people who have lost weight on low carb. They all say, “it’s not sustainable”

I was sort of in this camp many years ago. Today, I wanted to report that I have perfect substitutions for most of what I loved. What I used to do with keto/low carb was eat LC for like 3 weeks, then have a day or a weekend for a “cheat” weekend. This allowed me to eat:

• chocolate
• bread
• rolls for burgers/cheese steaks
• french fries/potatoes
• PIZZA!!!
• ice cream!
• Pasta

What I have found substitutes for are perfect substitutes in the sense that I get ALL of the love and mouth feel from my substitutes with NO drop off. This wasn’t the case 7 years ago – where you would see “fat head” pizza “dough”. Just no. Rolls were kind of gross. No great ice cream substitution except one that gave me the runs.

Fun fact – with a low carb diet, I rarely ever experience gas. This is something interesting to ponder.

Let’s talk about what I have substituted:

Chocolate:

If I am in a DESPERATE need for chocolate (kind of rare for me), I get a square of this and dip it in a little peanut butter. Maybe 4g of carbs at most for this.

Bread:

This is pretty good. It has 6 net carbs. After your 12 weeks or so, use this then. I would not use this the first few weeks.

This is lower in carbs – but I prefer the 647 better

Hamburger/hot dog rolls:

Rolls for cheesesteaks/meatball subs:

Pizza:

This – is my favorite food. By a lot. It shows. But I can tell you as of last night, the holy grail has been achieved.

First – this is the mix…

I have used this once to bake 12 inch pizzas at home, and they were good. But…I leveled up. I went and bought a Ninja outdoor oven, which not only can have a 700 degree cooking temp for pizza, but it is a smoker too.

So – how did it come out? I am NEVER ordering pizza from a shop again. No more carbs needed.

Ice Cream:

While this is something I don’t eat all the time, it’s something that really gets to you on low carb, especially during the summer months. I had liked certain store bought ones, but the erythritol doesn’t seem to work well with my body. So….I avoid that.

What I found a few days ago was “Fit Creamery” on a Facebook ad. Yes, they got me. I bought the mix. But, I also bought a ninja ice cream maker. No – I am not a paid sponsor for anyone. I like their products. The ice cream is spectacular – and you can add low carb hershey’s sauce or many other items to make it pop. 1g of carbs and 90 calories for a pint with 16g of protein? Sign me up.

Pasta:

This one I am extremely impressed by. Carbe Diem. I mentioned them in my last post – but I also give this to my son every day for school. He was having a lot of hyper activity issues, and I switched all of his food to low carb, and he has done amazing in school since.

French fries? I got nothing 😦