eat good food and lose weight: you just gotta eat the right thing

I previously mentioned in a blog post about how I lost 40 lbs by changing my life last year. However, i didn't focus on the most important aspect of it as much as I would have liked because I was trying to keep the length of the article a bit shorter.

When people see me that haven't seen me in many months (which is quite common over here as our expat population is very transient) they always want to know how it is that I lost so much weight. They presume it is because i must exercise like crazy. Although i do go to the gym now I didn't even start to exercise until I had already lost 10kg (22pounds.) Because the problem is that your size is mostly about what you eat.

There is a friend of mine that went on a vegan diet. Now i am not trying to say there is anything wrong with the vegan diet, I actually admire their willpower to not eat bacon. What I am trying to say is that this person, although he says he feels a lot better is still the same size that he was before he went on this diet.

My diet tastes great - if you enjoy meat and I would like to give a sample menu from an average day for me.

Breakfast:
3 egg omelette with cheese ham and onions
4 strips of bacon
1 glass of milk
1-17 cups of coffee

Lunch:
huge all beef patty fried with onions topped with mayo and mustard (no bread)
1 Diet Coke

Snack in the afternoon:
Pickles and assorted cheese

Dinner:
Chili con carne made with beef, tomato, kidney beans, onion, and bell pepper
loads of cheese melted in
loads of sour cream melted in
1 glass of milk ( I like milk)

Other stuff in the same day.
1-8 San Miguel Light beers

I mix up the menu from time to time and have cheesy roasted chicken, fried chicken (even from KFC is fine,) pork tenderloin, pork chops, tacos wrapped in lettuce leaves instead of tortillas, bacon salads loaded with ranch dressing and cheese, steak, ribs, fish, etc etc.

There are so many ways to make good food. There are even takeaway Thai curries that I can have like Penang, red or green, chicken and cashew nuts, all the isaan food (if you even know what that is)

and i drink beer every ...... single ...... day

Does this sound like a weight loss diet to you? Well it is. The only secret is that you have to keep your carbohydrate intake below 50 grams a day. This means no sugar, no candy, no bread, no potatoes, no full flavor beer, no soft drinks unless diet, no rice, no whatever-you-can-think-of-that-is for-sale-in-the-snack-isle-other-than-peanuts.

It really isn't that difficult. I for one never get tired of chili con carne and could eat only that for every meal and it would still be fine. You don't need to pay any attention to calories, just to carbs, which depending on your food addiction might be difficult for many people. I know i miss bread.

The danger of this diet is that you really shouldn't adapt it in the long term because well, your cholesterol will eventually go through the roof. I was a no-carb nazi for about 6 months, and now I am starting to phase a reasonable amount of them back into my diet. However, I very rarely drink full-flavor beer because that is likely what got me in bad state to begin with.

I understand that everyone is different with metabolism and what not but this diet works. However, you have to stick with it as it takes a while for it to take hold, so to speak. I never go hungry, starving yourself is one of the worst things you can do in a diet because you can send your body into hibernation of sorts where you no longer burn food. I just have to eat the right things when I am.

You can do it too if you want to.

As always thanks for reading and I hope someone out there finds it helpful.