The Slow-Carb Diet Explained | Tim Ferriss & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | Can you give us just a brief top contour of what the slow-carb diet is?
00:00:06.560 | Sure.
00:00:07.560 | The slow-carb diet is intended to be a simple, easy-to-adhere-to diet for people who have
00:00:14.760 | perhaps failed other diets that allows you to recompose your body.
00:00:19.960 | So improve muscle mass, decrease body fat percentage.
00:00:24.640 | And the rules are really simple.
00:00:26.480 | And that's part of what makes it work.
00:00:28.880 | It's not ideal for every sport and every circumstance, but broadly speaking, it works for a lot of
00:00:34.120 | people who've had trouble with dieting in the past.
00:00:37.200 | So rule number one, don't drink calories.
00:00:41.760 | That's it.
00:00:42.760 | Very simple.
00:00:43.760 | So black coffee, unsweetened tea, great.
00:00:45.200 | Juice, out.
00:00:46.880 | Anything with calories, out.
00:00:48.880 | You could add a little bit of heavy cream to your coffee, let's say.
00:00:52.640 | But that's also bending the rules in a way that I don't like.
00:00:56.040 | So in the beginning, it's like follow the rules so you can break them later.
00:00:58.720 | So in the beginning, let's just say, you can't drink calories.
00:01:01.840 | Number two, don't eat anything white.
00:01:04.600 | Sounds pretty basic, right?
00:01:05.600 | Just don't eat anything that is the color of white or that could be white.
00:01:08.820 | Basically that means you're going to be avoiding starches and things that are similar to starches.
00:01:14.960 | That includes things like oatmeal.
00:01:16.720 | That includes things like oatmeal.
00:01:18.080 | So roughly speaking, just avoiding things that are white or that could be white will
00:01:23.560 | get you pretty far.
00:01:25.160 | And yes, there are exceptions.
00:01:26.160 | Like cauliflower, fine.
00:01:27.160 | You can have cauliflower.
00:01:28.600 | But again, don't get fancy, right?
00:01:30.540 | It's very easy to outsmart yourself when it comes to behavioral change.
00:01:34.160 | Keep it simple.
00:01:35.560 | So for at least two weeks, forget about the exceptions, right?
00:01:41.240 | Don't drink calories.
00:01:42.240 | Don't eat anything white.
00:01:44.840 | And then eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up.
00:01:49.600 | Okay, we got that.
00:01:52.160 | And then there are a few buckets you can choose from, right?
00:01:55.120 | So you have vegetables, beans, and lentils, and then some type of protein.
00:02:02.280 | So you're going to come up with meals that you can follow without deviating for a period
00:02:08.040 | of one or two weeks.
00:02:09.040 | Just come up with the same meals.
00:02:11.800 | And that's going to sound boring, yes.
00:02:13.040 | But guess what?
00:02:14.040 | You do it already.
00:02:15.040 | You just might not realize it.
00:02:17.160 | And the lentils and the beans specifically as a prereq, we can get into some of the reasons,
00:02:23.520 | but add a lot of fiber and also inhibit appetite, right?
00:02:27.640 | So that's actually a very important component of these meals.
00:02:30.920 | And there may be a handful of other rules, but those are the basics.
00:02:34.520 | And then the redemption is take one day off per week and just go fucking crazy.
00:02:42.280 | That's cheat day.
00:02:43.680 | There are some epic cheat days out there.
00:02:45.480 | Some I've captured for myself.
00:02:47.680 | And anything goes.
00:02:48.680 | When I say anything, I do mean anything.
00:02:50.880 | So if you want to consume multiple pizzas, pints of ice cream, whatever, indulge.
00:02:56.880 | I left one out.
00:02:58.800 | No fruit during the week.
00:03:00.180 | So avoid fruit, avoid fructose, so agave nectar, anything that is sort of hidden sugar, avoid
00:03:07.320 | all that.
00:03:08.320 | So no added sweeteners, obviously, but avoid fruit and fructose.
00:03:13.800 | And again, it's not going to kill you.
00:03:16.160 | Guess what, if you're from European ancestry, your ancestors did not have like blueberries
00:03:22.400 | in the middle of winter, generally speaking, right?
00:03:24.760 | So you'll be fine for a few weeks.
00:03:28.080 | And then there's that cheat day.
00:03:29.320 | And cheat day, anything goes.
00:03:30.840 | The amount of damage you can do on cheat day is pretty limited.
00:03:33.360 | And there are ways you can mitigate that.
00:03:36.000 | There's a whole chapter called damage control and before our body.
00:03:39.040 | But focusing just on that diet and having one day off where you know you can do anything
00:03:44.920 | means when you are controlling yourself for those six days of the week, you're not giving
00:03:50.680 | up your favorite foods forever.
00:03:52.380 | You can even keep a list of all the things you want to eat on cheat day.
00:03:55.480 | And then you have free license to eat on cheat day.
00:03:58.320 | And that provides you with a release valve so that you can build in the cheating as opposed
00:04:05.240 | to having it occur as a failure point.
00:04:07.040 | And there are a handful of other things there.
00:04:09.840 | If you have domino foods in the house, for instance, if you eat a lot of almonds or mixed
00:04:15.360 | nuts and you're just going to sit there compulsively eating them while you're sitting at your laptop,
00:04:20.320 | don't have what I call dominoed foods in the house, which are going to really create some
00:04:24.640 | portion control issues.
00:04:25.760 | But broadly speaking, don't drink calories, don't eat things that are white, take from
00:04:30.320 | three categories and build your meals out and those are the meals that you follow.
00:04:34.480 | Do not eat fruit or fructose and then cheat one day a week.
00:04:40.080 | Saturday is a nice day for cheat day for most folks.
00:04:43.120 | And just to answer some questions people are going to have, no, that doesn't mean 24 hours
00:04:47.080 | that you can spread out over two days.
00:04:49.080 | That will actually set you back.
00:04:50.640 | But the amount of fat that you can store in a handful of sittings over 24 hours, which
00:04:58.080 | legitimately is more like 12 to 18 hours, pretty limited.
00:05:04.000 | So that's a slow carb diet.
00:05:05.760 | Great.
00:05:06.760 | Thank you for that.
00:05:07.760 | I also want to ask, is it okay to take the day after cheat day and fast or do one meal
00:05:15.920 | that day?
00:05:16.920 | When I followed the slow carb diet, I benefited from it tremendously.
00:05:20.560 | Lost fat, gained muscle, tons of energy, sleeping great, required less caffeine, all sorts of
00:05:26.320 | wonderful things.
00:05:27.320 | Stable blood sugar.
00:05:28.320 | I felt so, so good.
00:05:29.840 | Really enjoyed the cheat days.
00:05:31.040 | I really, really enjoyed the cheat days.
00:05:33.160 | So much fun.
00:05:34.200 | At some point, there's some gastric distress that comes from not regulating intake, which
00:05:39.360 | led me to not want to eat the next day.
00:05:43.720 | So I tended to do the cheat days on Sunday in my case.
00:05:47.880 | And then I would fast most of Monday, just water, black coffee, tea.
00:05:52.200 | And then I might have a small meal in the evening.
00:05:54.520 | And then by Tuesday, I was back on the slow carb diet.
00:05:57.160 | Does that seem like a detrimental deviation from the plan?
00:06:04.240 | I think that if that is what works for you, then that is what works for you.
00:06:08.700 | So the slow carb diet template for me is a starting point.
00:06:13.000 | And generally, I'll say, I think this is from Picasso, right, it's like learn the rules
00:06:17.920 | as an amateur so you can break them as a professional.
00:06:20.480 | It's like I recommend most people kind of stick with the format for a handful of weeks
00:06:28.000 | and measure the results, right?
00:06:29.440 | So there are guidelines for how to measure.
00:06:32.600 | The scale is a bit of a blunt instrument, so there are other ways.
00:06:36.000 | But if you're extremely overweight, you can just use the scale.
00:06:39.480 | And fasting, I think, is fine, or just ratcheting back your caloric consumption significantly.
00:06:46.520 | And what happens over time for most people also is for the first, say, four weeks on
00:06:52.160 | cheat day, you're going to go completely insane.
00:06:55.520 | And I remember I was doing something much stricter called the cyclical ketogenic diet,
00:07:00.680 | which is a whole separate thing.
00:07:03.220 | It's much more limiting in terms of what you can eat.
00:07:06.940 | But I was training for ultimately the nationals in Chinese kickboxing.
00:07:10.360 | This was happening in '99.
00:07:11.920 | So I was training super hard.
00:07:14.120 | I was following a cyclical ketogenic diet, which meant I could eat very few things.
00:07:18.640 | But I did have this one cheat day.
00:07:20.760 | And I would do a glycogen depletion workout beforehand, which is one of the things you
00:07:24.440 | can do to limit the damage on cheat day, do a glycogen depletion workout beforehand.
00:07:28.920 | And then I would just go crazy.
00:07:30.840 | I mean, I would drive to Krispy Kreme, buy 12 donuts, and they would be gone by the time
00:07:36.040 | I got home.
00:07:37.040 | And it wasn't an hour away.
00:07:38.040 | It was like a 10-minute drive.
00:07:39.680 | Donuts would be gone, right?
00:07:40.680 | So I would go to Safeway, and I would buy a bag of those fun-sized Snickers.
00:07:45.680 | And that would be just a tiny portion of my calories.
00:07:48.920 | Sweet stuff for you, huh?
00:07:50.200 | A lot of sweet stuff.
00:07:51.460 | I also did the savory stuff.
00:07:52.880 | I mean, I had my favorites.
00:07:54.360 | Nothing was safe.
00:07:55.360 | Pizza.
00:07:56.360 | Nothing was safe.
00:07:57.360 | Nothing was safe.
00:07:58.360 | My paws got into everything.
00:08:00.720 | And then over time, because the next day you're going to feel like you got hit by a diabetic
00:08:04.640 | dump truck, you start ratcheting back.
00:08:07.920 | And you're like, OK, maybe I don't need to do that.
00:08:10.960 | Maybe cheat day will just be two meals.
00:08:12.560 | Or maybe cheat day will just be like the pastries in the morning with the coffee.
00:08:17.520 | And you start to regulate a bit, generally.
00:08:19.920 | You don't have to, but over time, you generally will.
00:08:24.880 | And I think after you've followed it to the T, just follow the commandments for, say,
00:08:30.200 | four to eight weeks, then you can certainly deviate.
00:08:33.080 | And I'm not saying if you're not hungry, don't eat.
00:08:35.480 | However, in many cases, people have acclimated to not eating in the morning.
00:08:43.520 | And then they end up overeating later in the day.
00:08:46.360 | If you have that habit, if you're consuming 50% of your calories or more at dinner, and
00:08:52.920 | you want to lose body fat, I would say get some cottage cheese or something that will
00:08:59.920 | give you 30 grams easily in the morning.
00:09:02.280 | Worst case scenario, use a protein of some type.
00:09:05.480 | Just don't make it hypercaloric.
00:09:06.480 | You mean powdered protein?
00:09:07.920 | It could be powdered whey protein.
00:09:11.000 | Whole food is going to do a lot more.
00:09:13.480 | And no calorie counting, correct?
00:09:15.480 | No calorie counting.
00:09:16.480 | It tends to be self-limiting.
00:09:18.360 | When you're eating this much fiber and this much protein, it tends to be very self-limiting,
00:09:23.640 | what you'll want to consume and what you can consume.
00:09:27.640 | Once again, I had great experiences with slow carb diet, and I'm going to go back on.
00:09:31.760 | Yeah, and nobody needs to buy anything to figure it out.
00:09:35.840 | If you just search on Tim.blog slow carb diet, you'll get everything that you need to get
00:09:42.520 | started.
00:09:43.520 | No purchase necessary.
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