The Hazards of Low-Carb 2

A few weeks ago I wrote about how one problem with low-carb is that, because I didn’t eat cornflakes and skim milk for breakfast, I’m not yet hungry by lunchtime.

My boss (who is wonderful) and I are very informal about meetings.  Very often one of us will shoot an IM to the other saying, “I need to start 10 minutes late.”  It’s not usually a problem.

Today she IM’d to say, “Dianne, we need to start our 1 pm on time today since I have another mtg at 1:30 that I can’t be late for.”

“No prob,” I wrote back.  “I’ll be sure to get my lunch on time.”  This was a reference to yesterday, when I mentioned to her that I hadn’t had lunch yet at 2:30 because of meetings at 1:00 pm and 1:30 pm.  As I typed it, I was thinking, I have back to back meetings from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm.  I won’t be hungry by 12:00.  When exactly am I going to eat this lunch??

Then she wrote:  “I don’t mind if you eat during our mtg.”

Um, no.  That’s a big fat no.  Sorry.  I am not eating my lunch in front of my boss, whom I adore, but who snacks non-stop on fruit, pretzels, and sweetened Dannon yogurt because they are fat-free, and usually has a Lean Cuisine and a salad with fat-free dressing for lunch.  Because today for lunch, I have half a leftover pork cutlet, a leftover chicken thigh, and some cheese.  I didn’t bring a salad today, and the quality of the salads I can buy around my office just don’t cut it.  Either the dressings are loaded with mystery ingredients, or the greens are poor quality, or they come topped with something that claims to be a chicken breast but tastes like it was rescued from an embalming parlor.  One otherwise good salad that’s sold by a pizza joint across the street has this giant portion of breaded fried eggplant on top - and I am not paying $5.00 to throw away one third of a salad.

So what I have for lunch is basically meat, meat, and more meat, with cheese for dessert.  I am not eating this in front of my-low fat boss.  I don’t feel like being judged.  I don’t feel like worrying about being judged.

Chalk this up to another hazard of low-carb living:  you become very self-conscious about your food.

3,000 Calories

I don’t always agree with Michael Pollan’s conclusions, but I find his hands-on approach to journalism to be eye-opening.  I mean, here’s a guy who, when he wanted to write about the meat industry, went out and bought himself a steer.  Any social scientist will tell you that case studies by themselves have limited value for research - you can’t generalize from a single case - but one thing a case study does provide that other kinds of research cannot is detail.  You read Michael Pollan talking about his steer, and you learn things you wouldn’t have learned if someone had done a study of 10,000 steers.

So, after reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, where Gary Taubes discusses people who have been put on diets containing 2, 3, 5, or even 10 thousand calories and still lost weight, provided that most of the calories were fat, I thought, Hey, that would be interesting.  So a couple of weeks ago I decided that for a week or two, I would attempt to eat 3,000 calories every day, with at least 70% of my calories from fat.  (That whirring sound you hear is Nathan Pritikin spinning in his grave.)  Call it my Michael Pollan-style investigation of low-carb.

Would this affect my weight?  How would I feel?  Please note, I do not mean to imply that my calorie-fest is typical of low-carbing.  It is inescapable, however, that many proponents of low-carb suggest that it is not necessary to think about calories.  Taubes, by referencing studies of people who consumed several thousand calories a day above the norm, raises the question of whether the number of calories consumed matters at all, as long as carbohydrate intake is not excessive.

So what would happen to me if I ate 3,000 calories a day, more than a desk jockey like me is likely to need?  Would I regain the weight I’ve lost?  Would I lose more?  What would I have to eat to reach 3,000 calories in a day?  Would I end up swigging olive oil straight from the bottle?

The first day, October 15, I planned my menus:

Breakfast:  5 strips of bacon, 3 eggs cooked in bacon fat, 1 3/8 ounces of cheese (I picked that amount because it was the size of a lump of cheddar in the fridge), hot chocolate made with 7 oz. coconut milk (half a can), 1 tbsp. cocoa powder, and stevia to taste.

Lunch:  ?? I would probably have to go out and get something.

Dinner:  6 oz. kielbasa; 1/4 head of cabbage sauteed in remaining bacon fat from breakfast; 1/4 bulb of fennel (again, what was left in the fridge) dressed in 1 tbsp olive oil.

Drinks:  water, tea with light cream (about 3 oz. total cream).

Snack:  1/4 cup roasted pumpkin seeds.

Total calories for breakfast, dinner, and snack:  2364.  Fat calories, 1893.  % calories from fat:  79%.  All I had to do was eat a 700-calorie lunch, and that would be 3,000 calories.  No problem.

I fried up the bacon, set it aside on paper towels to drain, and cracked three eggs into the pan.  I warmed the coconut milk and whisked in the cocoa and stevia.  I sipped this concoction while I finished cooking the eggs.  And there it was, arranged on my plate:  3 eggs sunny-side up, 5 strips of bacon, and a little under an ounce and a half of cheese.  I frequently buy eggs from DHA-supplemented chickens, and they have brilliant, school-bus yellow yolks.  They were gorgeous.

Half an hour later, the coconut/hot cocoa drink was gone.  The cheese, it turned out, had gone moldy, so I didn’t eat it.  The bacon was gone.  Two of the eggs were gone.

The third egg stared up at me with its bright yellow eye.

I stared back.

The egg continued to stare, a sunny yellow Cyclops challenging me to eat or be eaten.

I simply couldn’t eat it.

I wasn’t full; at least, I wasn’t stuffed in the way that you can get stuffed, overstuffed, and superstuffed eating bread, pasta, or sweets.  I felt confident that my stomach would hold more, and in fact I drank a cup of tea soon after with no discomfort.  But I simply couldn’t eat that last egg.  I don’t know how to describe it to anyone who has never done low-carb.  I wasn’t nauseated or disgusted by the egg.  It wasn’t even that I didn’t passively want the egg, it was that I actively did not want the egg.  I wanted not the egg, if you get the distinction.

As you guessed from that last sentence, language fails me.  We’re so used to thinking of hunger as a matter of physical fullness, but I assure you I was not full.  Maybe this is what is meant by satiety.

I sat there for a while not wanting the egg.  Then, since I was working at home, I put the Cyclops, er, egg, in the fridge for later.  At 4:00 (yes, really) when I was hungry again, I ate it.

I had effectively not eaten lunch until 4:00 pm, and then my lunch had about 70 calories, plus the little bit of bacon fat clinging to the egg.  I could see this 3,000 calories thing could be difficult to achieve.

At 6:30, I did manage to eat the kielbasa, the cabbage, and the fennel.  Then I went off to hang out with some friends for bar trivia.   I ordered a gin and club soda, thinking that I could sneak in a few extra calories from the booze.  There was no bar food that was low in carbs, and if there had been, I wouldn’t have wanted it.

I never did get to the pumpkin seeds.

Total calories consumed:  2021.  Fat calories: 1562.  % of calories from fat:  77%.

At this point I gave up the experiment.  Michael Pollan be damned - I could not turn myself into an experimental subject.  I will never know if I can lose weight on a 3,000 calorie, high-fat diet, because on a high-fat diet I am incapable of consuming 3,000 calories.

Please note, however, that if I’d added carbs to my diet, I could’ve easily consumed 3,000 calories.  A Burger King Whopper value meal with medium fries and a medium drink is about 1,200 calories.  (Source:  http://www.bk.com/#menu=3,1,-1).  Eat that for lunch and dinner, and you only need to consume 600 calories for breakfast and snacks to top the 3,000 mark.  I will admit to having actually done this back before I saw the low-carb light.