Slow-Carb Diet Results

My weight. Dotted lines are when I couldn't measure a) without a scale, b) during the Arenal trip and c) going back to the US

While Nick, George and I were in Costa Rica, we tested out the Slow-Carb diet to try and get ourselves trimmer than we already were. Really we didn't need it that much, especially Nick who started off with 12% body fat. Usually whenever we told people we were doing it, we got funny looks, oftentimes with a strong hint of concern. After all, don't you only diet when you're overweight or anorexic? And we didn't look overweight. But we simply wanted to do better than good in terms of health, and there was a strong dose of curiosity and challenge, especially to see if this diet were as miraculous as Tim Ferriss had said it was in his book. Or in George's case, an insatiable hunger to prove him wrong.

It took most of the two and a half months in Costa Rica to get fully used to it, really. Mostly, it was me figuring out how much I had to cook. Nick and George eat a ton, and I never truly appreciated this until I had to cook everything for them. Given the tenants of the diet, they couldn't just snack on granola bars or cook up some pasta whenever they were really hungry. Everything that they ate six days of the week had to be prepared and cooked. And usually what would happen is I would cook modestly more than I would imagine three of me would eat, and it wouldn't be anywhere near enough. The wails and moans of hunger were competing with the toucans and geckos for acoustic superiority. It was also a drag on our work.

So finally at the end I figured out the trick. Cook up a ton of beans and put them in a plastic bag in the fridge. Beans are the main source of carbs in this diet, and so they could be snacked on whenever they wanted, or mixed with whatever paltry leftovers remained from before. I also gradually got used to cooking more every night, but having a sizeable backup source of ready to eat beans or lentils was key.

Granted, by the end it was pretty much just Nick on the diet, though he has since wrapped it up after settling into Pittsburgh. George and I largely gave it up after the Arenal trip. I had lost about ten pounds before Arenal and was curious if I could push myself lower without following the exact instructions of the diet, thus also figuring out how I would maintain a low weight post-diet, and I think George had simply had enough of dealing with it. I tried sticking to some of the minor hints and tricks listed in the 4-Hour Body, like making sure I had plenty to drink, eating eggs at the beginning of the day so I would be less hungry for food the rest of the day, eating slower and making myself stop once I felt full. It worked; I lost some more pounds, including the ones I had temporarily gained during the Arenal trip, and I felt confident I could maintain my lower weight without too much effort.

So, overall I think the diet works pretty well. It probably works better for people with more weight to lose, but it does the job. It really is important to eat enough, at least for some people. I seem to be immune to the bothersome effects of eating too little, but George and Nick felt the pain far more readily. As long as you eat a lot of beans, you should be fine. What I consider more important though is forming the habits that will allow you to stay at the same weight after the diet has done its job.

The most important thing I learned about this diet though is just how much fast-carbs form the onus of our eating. By cutting out this one subset of carbohydrates from your diet, it really makes you realize how much you depend on them for meals and snacks. Bread, pasta, fruit, starch and sugar are so much of what we typically eat. Perhaps if anything will stick with me beyond this diet, it will be a focus on eating more beans and vegetables in general, which I imagine can only be a good thing. Especially since it appears that my acid reflux completely went away when I was on the diet. And that's something I'd like to keep to a minimum.

Now, back in the states, I'm headed right back up in terms of weight, but on purpose this time. I'm trying the muscle building program in the same book as the Slow-Carb Diet, Occam's Protocol, so named because it strives to be as simple as possible while achieving maximum results. Basically I drink a bunch of protein milkshakes and go to the gym every few days at measured intervals for a few short but intense and very specific workouts. I've definitely been gaining weight and strength and soreness, but so far my belt has remained tightened at the same hole. I've only been at it for a week, so we will see how it goes...

Dinnertime, George

Uvita Photos #2

Have another batch!

What is it??

On the trail off Poas we found the weirdest plant. The leaf texture was very rough and inflexible. And the dark red stem was covered in little droplets, which stung a little bit to the touch. The three of us marveled at its freakishness, while Steve retold the piece of advice his botanist friend had said about Costa Rican plants: something like "if you don't know what it is, don't touch it."

On the way to San Jose from Arenal, the five of us stopped in a little town called Zarcero. It was a beautiful day, and they have this great park in front of the city church. I was remarking to George how nice this place would have been to stay at, it not being as hot as Uvita, when we learned from a local that this sunshiny day was the exception, not the rule. This was the first clear day they'd had in a long time.

If you're in Uvita follow this sign!

Hot!

Wouldn't be complete without a picture of this. Playa Hermosa.

Uvita Photos #1

Picked out a few photos that don't really fit into a larger blog post but are still good to share. Enjoy!

 Workstation: Kitchen

It's the dry season so our river was eminently walkable

Well, parts of it anyway. Whatever, he has Vibrams.

Walking from the town on the highway. We invariably go to the pool after this hike.

Nick waits in a downpour to flag down the bus while George and I take shelter nearby. Nick loves it.

George is the master of surfing now

Learning Spanish

It's a good idea when traveling, especially when staying in a place for a while, to try and pick up some of the local tongue. It's both practical and respectful to the local culture. For Costa Rica at least it's not strictly necessary, since enough people here speak English and you can get by, but it can make things easier and it's the perfect time to pick up such a skill. And you get brownie points with the locals.

So Nick and I decided to take lessons from a tutor. Tynan recommended them as one of the most efficient ways to pick up a language, since you get to work one on one or in small groups and the class goes at whatever speed works for you. We signed up for a couple hours per week, which costs $28 per person per class. Not a bad price, we think, especially compared to college.

Our one room school house

Class itself is fairly structured but with a healthy dose of chaos. We'll generally follow the packet the teacher gave us, but often we get sidetracked. Mostly this is my fault because I'll think of something tangential to the current topic (sometimes interesting, sometimes not particularly) and I'll go on to do terrible things to the language in my attempt to say what I'm thinking. I often won't have the vocabulary (or the verb tense) to say what I want to say, so I'm regularly asking '¿como se dice...?'. In this way we usually end up with at least a few dozen new words or phrases per class to learn for next time.

But class isn't enough! Two hours a week is less than half the amount of classtime one gets in a Spanish class in Oberlin, and I've got enough free time to do more. So Nick and I also study a textbook I bought on my Kindle before I left. It's alright quality, and often it teaches us words that aren't really used in Latin America, but it allows us to really pick up the pace of language absorption to our liking.

And to learn all these words from my textbook and from class, I use the very handy program, Anki. It uses a spaced repetition system, which is just about the best way to learn a large body of facts efficiently and effectively. I've known about Anki for a while but didn't really use it a lot before this trip. Boy do I wish I had it back when I was in high school, maybe then French wouldn't have been so painful.

This one is pretty key

So in the middle of the day or after work I take my laptop to a hammock on the porch and study on Anki just about every day. An hour and a half is usually my limit before my brain stops absorbing anything more, but with that much time I usually pick up about forty new words and phrases per day. I hope by the time I leave I'll have learned about two thousand items. And with any luck Anki will remain a part of my daily routine, so that I don't promptly forget most of I've learned, like I've done with French, Swedish and Japanese before. Just a little bit of review a day will keep all that knowledge fresh.

The drop in studies in the middle, that's Arenal's fault!

The only thing that's missing is something to deal with my greatest weakness: listening comprehension. When listening to others talking, if I don't understand everything they say fairly quickly or they go very slowly, I get lost pretty immediately. It's something I've had particular trouble with for every language I've studied. So I'm looking for some online service to help me with that, maybe something along the lines of SpanishPod or something that connects me with Spanish people on the internet I can practice talking with. That would probably be good.

Already though how much we've picked up has come in handy. Nick and I actually understand the prices of things when we go shop at the farmer's market on Saturdays. It's helped me converse with our groundskeeper, Gumerzindo, who knows less English than we do Spanish. And reading a newspaper is slowly becoming feasible. Not bad for about a couple months of work so far. Definitely worth the time and money.