The Season Of Sugar Is Upon Us

I want to talk about the slow-carb diet I’ve been on for the last month, but I’m afraid.

I’m afraid of talking about food because food talk makes people crazy. 

Not to mention defensive. 

And most certainly, triggered.

That’s because food is primitive, biochemical, emotional, social, and political.

People can get really preachy and obnoxious, too, when they talk about what they do and don’t eat.

Some say: I only eat green leafies like kale. 

Others: Do not eat Oreos. They are poison.

To them, I say: No and No.

But for the last month, I’ve definitely been on Team Kale. 

I’ve been doing Tim Ferriss’s Slow Carb Diet: No sugar, nothing made with flour, not even grains. 

Vegetables and protein. That’s it. One cheat day a week, then right back to it.

Why Am I Doing This?

Simple: Belly fat. 

Fat rolls at my waist. 

 No amount of planks, sit-ups, or walking was making any difference.

I knew it had to be the carbs.

Carbs spike blood sugar. And those spikes increase insulin levels, resulting in fat storage.

So, the thinking was, if I could stabilize my blood sugar, I would burn the fat.

My Favorite Foods.

I love buttered noodles. And pie (especially pumpkin and especially for breakfast). And oatmeal raisin cookies. And root beer floats. And warm focaccia dipped in crushed garlic and olive oil.

And birthday cake. 

But here’s what happens when I eat those kinds of foods regularly: I prowl the pantry.

I’m constantly hungry. I’m always nudgey. 

I can’t focus or concentrate. I’m constantly hunting for a little sumpin’ sampin’ to snack on.

I don’t sleep well. 

I get bloated.

That’s because I’m always spiking or crashing. 

When I eat slow carbs: chicken and vegetables, turkey goulash, beefy chili, a nice plate of fluffy scrambled eggs, I feel calmer. What the yogis call sattvic.

I have steady, reliable energy all day long, and I’m not grabbing for peanut M&Ms in the middle of the day. 

My main point is this: I learned a lot from this slow-carb “diet.” 

For one thing, it’s fairly easy. I just eat the same basic four or five meals every week. Once a week, I allow myself a treat day. That day I go crazy. I eat the buttered noodles, the pie, all the things. 

Then, the next day, I return to chicken and vegetables. 

Having a Treat Day taught me how to toggle back and forth between two different diets: The spikey high-carb one that makes me all prowly and growly, and the sattvic low-carb one that leaves me focused and content.

And it’s this learning how to toggle back and forth that’s been the biggest lesson for me.

I’ll never have to go on a diet again because I’ll never go off this one for very long.

I’ll have no feelings of deprivation. There’ll be no guilt. As long as I always default back to my slow-carb foods, I can have my cake and eat it, too.

But what most people do when they go off their diet, is promptly revert back to pop tarts and pizza and never look back.

But if you learn how to eat in the land of slow carbs, you establish a home there. You know how to operate within its somewhat strict parameters. You learn how to cook, how to shop. It feels familiar and easy. Like home.

The Season of Sugar is Upon Us

The reason I thought this was an idea worth talking about now is that, as a culture, we are headed into the Season of Sugar. 

It starts in a few weeks with Halloween candy, then moves effortlessly into pie (pumpkin and apple), and ends with decorated butter cookies.

Then, all too predictably, on New Year’s Eve, we declare we are going on a diet.

But I am here to make a suggestion. Why not start dialing back your sugar-spiking carbs now? Find some simple recipes you genuinely love. Go grocery shopping so everything is stocked and ready. Then start eating only slow carbs for a few weeks—food that will stabilize, not spike, your blood sugar. 

Then you’ll feel relaxed and free going into the holidays: calmer, more sattvic. Not all prowly and growly.

You can have the pie, the cookies, and the mashed potatoes, knowing that the next day or the day after that, you’ll go back home to your real food, your default diet.

Which isn’t a diet at all; it’s just what you eat.