{"id":2584,"date":"2015-07-08T09:02:20","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T16:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/?p=2584"},"modified":"2015-07-06T19:20:49","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T02:20:49","slug":"20-pounds-through-low-carb-this-is-too-easy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/20-pounds-through-low-carb-this-is-too-easy\/","title":{"rendered":"-20 pounds through low-carb: this is too easy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Losing weight is supposed to be unpleasant, difficult, and in the long term, pretty much impossible unless you spent a lot of energy on being disciplined (and hungry). People even argue that the body is programmed to gain a couple of pounds a year under the best of circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve now found out this is all false. My exhibit: myself.<\/p>\n<p>Two months ago I decided I wanted to lose some weight, and read up on low-carb diets, starting with the original <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Dr-Atkins-New-Diet-Revolution\/dp\/006001203X\/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1436234625&amp;sr=8-4&amp;keywords=atkins+diet\">Atkins book<\/a>. I didn&#8217;t feel like following any one of their programs down to the letter; instead, I just decided not to eat carbs if I could avoid it. So since, I have not eaten:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>sugar<\/li>\n<li>bread<\/li>\n<li>potatoes<\/li>\n<li>rice<\/li>\n<li>pasta<\/li>\n<li>and some high-carb vegetables like carrots.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ve made no other lifestyle changes. I eat as much as I like, and certainly always when I feel hungry. And here I am, 2 months later, and 20 pounds lighter.<\/p>\n<p>Grand total effort required and discomfort to overcome: ZERO.<\/p>\n<p>This turned out to be WAY TOO EASY.<\/p>\n<p>The only things I had to watch out for have been 1) getting enough fiber. I do that by eating plenty of avocados, and 2) taking some multi-vitamins, just in case.<\/p>\n<p>My conclusion: much of what we&#8217;ve been told about &#8220;balanced meals&#8221; is bogus. If I can just eliminate a few things from what I eat and that not only keeps my weight stable, but actually reduces it, the supposedly &#8220;balanced&#8221; diet is anything but.<\/p>\n<p>When I decide I&#8217;m about at the weight I want to be, I&#8217;ll put more veggies back into the diet. Perhaps also some bread &#8212; the German in me does miss that some (not too much, because much of the bread in the US is simply not very desirable) and I do want to have (home-made) pasta from time to time. But it does seem to be just as Atkins said: you want to lose weight, you don&#8217;t eat carbs; you want to gain weight, you eat carbs. Nothing could be easier.<\/p>\n<p>Why, again, do we have a world-wide obesity pandemic?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Losing weight is supposed to be unpleasant, difficult, and in the long term, pretty much impossible unless you spent a lot of energy on being disciplined (and hungry). People even argue that the body is programmed to gain a couple of pounds a year under the best of circumstances. I&#8217;ve now found out this is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[381,65],"tags":[398,396,95,397,399],"class_list":["post-2584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare-2","category-personal","tag-atkins","tag-carbs","tag-health","tag-low-carb","tag-weight","kind-"],"kind":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2584"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}