8 Simple Rules For Following Low Carb (Because You People Are Starting To Piss Me Off)

I’m still a regular visitor over at the Low Carb Board That Shall Not Be Named. There’s been a flood of noobs over there since those studies came out a couple of weeks ago that low carb might not be all that evil. Now I don’t claim to be any great diet guru but Jesus, even when I was first starting to get into this I didn’t ask the stupid shit I’m seeing there. Since I would get flamed to a crisp for saying anything remotely negative like “really, you’re this dumb and you’ve reproduced?” I will write my list here.

1. READ THE FUCKING BOOK. Atkins, Protein Power, Carbohydrate Addicts, whatever you’ve decided to do. If you’re cheap you can find all of them in used bookstores but for the love of God read the damn thing. There is a 99.9999998 percent chance that what you’re asking will be found in the book. Don’t say you’re following XYZ plan and make it blatantly obvious you picked it because your 28-month-old DD sounded cute when she said the name.

2. If you have to ask “can I eat (whatever)”, you can’t. See rule one for clarification.

3. Many people wiser than me have said this--if you try to recreate the way you used to eat on a low-carb plan you will fail. Just because it’s sugar-free low-carb shit doesn’t mean it’s not shit.

4. When in doubt, eat meat and veggies. Actually, when in doubt just eat meat. You don’t need veggies—that’s a holdover from the indoctrination we got that veggies = health. They don’t.

5. Ketostix are useless unless you’re a type 1 diabetic. Because you know what happens once your body gets used to using ketones as fuel? The sticks stop changing color. Also pink or purple is no indication you’re losing weight. Lora Ruffner of the Low Carb Luxury site once got stalled for a SOLID YEAR—and all the while her ketostix were nice dark purple.

6. Scales? If you weigh once a month or so, okay. Three or more times a day? Useless again, particularly if you’re a woman. Go by how you feel and how your clothes fit.

7. Don’t panic if you don’t drop ten pounds in the first week. Don’t panic if you’ve been losing relatively quickly and then tail off. Just don’t fucking panic, okay?

8. It’s very easy to stress out about eating too much/too little, exercising too much/not enough, responding badly to food, etc. That’s the beauty of eating this way—you can tweak to your heart’s content. Try different things and find what works for you. Just because someone has 5000 posts on the board doesn’t mean they’re not talking out of their ass. Pay attention to those who’ve lost weight, or those who seem to be honest about everything. There’s a lot of people who just use the place for social hour. You can tell who the serious ones are—even if they joke around.

Go in peace.