This entire post is premised on carbs being 'harmful' but I'm not bought into that claim. Try to convince me?
I'm realizing now that I spoke too confidently about this. In reality, my confidence isn't that high, and I really would like to have some more clarity on this question of carbs. But What made the Ancient Egyptians Fat and Sick? is a video that comes to mind.
In my experience trying both, slow-carb was cheaper and more fulfilling than keto, mostly because of beans. Beans are filling, and it's easy to make a big batch of those and eat them throughout the week. They're also dirt cheap, and if you have a pressure cooker you don't have to pre-soak before cooking.
I have ~2 million thoughts about the many sub-points in this post, a lot of which are "yes!" or "gosh, we think about some things similarly". I'll pick two big ones.
The first is that filet mignon is NOT the most flavorful cut of steak. It's the most flavorful cut of steak that has no marbling a/k/a fat. Objectively, the most flavorful cut is the ribeye, medium rare (fight me). Spend $80 on one at The Palm, and then you will have found the true ceiling on steak flavor.
The second is: I've done low-carb, and I've done "just count the calories," and the latter is the easy winner, both from a $ angle and a "time you have to spend thinking about complying" angle (in my experience, with goals similar to yours except also adding muscle). The smart folks at Stronger By Science, an evidence-based strength and nutrition website that's mentioned here somewhat frequently, recently published a calorie-tracking app called MacroFactor. It has replaced LoseIt as my weight maintenance app (and I had a 500-day streak on LoseIt). The math isn't public-facing because it's the thing of value that they are selling, but I've been using it for about a month with a "maintain" goal, and the rolling average of my weight has moved .2 pounds in either direction. As with any calorie-counting app, all you do is eat whatever you want and log it and stop eating when you hit the limit for the day. SBS are somewhat more oriented toward the strength training community, but you can basically tell the app, "Give me a low protein target." Or you can ignore the macronutrient tracking entirely and just do calories.
I have ~2 million thoughts about the many sub-points in this post, a lot of which are "yes!" or "gosh, we think about some things similarly". I'll pick two big ones.
Cool! I'm interested in hearing the other thoughts too FWIW. Not to be pushy, just saying this in case you didn't think they were important enough to say.
The first is that filet mignon is NOT the most flavorful cut of steak. It's the most flavorful cut of steak that has no marbling a/k/a fat. Objectively, the most flavorful cut is the ribeye, medium rare (fight me). Spend $80 on one at The Palm, and then you will have found the true ceiling on steak flavor.
Ah, that does make sense. That thought actually started brewing in my mind last night as I rewatched that episode on steak with Heston Blumenthal, but you have helped me solidify it.
The second is: I've done low-carb, and I've done "just count the calories," and the latter is the easy winner, both from a $ angle and a "time you have to spend thinking about complying" angle
Hm that is interesting. If the stuff I said about carbs and hunger is true, counting calories risks you being put in a situation where you had a bunch of carbs, the carbs are making you hungry, but you've also reached your calorie limit for the day and have to stop eating. It seems like that would happen quite often if you are only paying attention to calories and not paying attention to what you are eating.
Epistemic status: riffing based on personal experience/background knowledge/my best personal synthesis of the research I've read or heard about from sources I trust, which is definitely not all of the research out there; sources cited below are just for flavor and are not the basis of my claims.
On top of this, I tried Tim Ferris' slow carb diet once, and it actually worked! I lost a little over five pounds in, maybe two weeks? I forget.
You only lost five pounds of tissue if you cut ~3500kcal*5 pounds out of your diet in two weeks, with a fudge factor for your genetic tendency toward compensatory changes in energy expenditure. Low carbohydrate diets tend to cause loss of fluid weight in the acute stages, before it returns to baseline. This was a known "problem" with Atkins 15 years ago when all the women I knew were trying it. Problem only insofar as you got discouraged when the scale went back up, if you weren't expecting it.
I often eat more than twice as much food as my girlfriend
For a male and female of the same fitness level and the usual height disparity, I wouldn't be surprised if the male's maintenance kcals were 1.5x the female's. This statement you made didn't cause me to update very far in the direction of "wow, Adam has {some unusual dietary need}".
This is very ballparky, it's hard to describe since I don't have actual data on calories or grams.
People are natively very bad at estimating calorie content. (Another reason a calorie-counting app is a big help.)
Another data point is that friends and family all notice and point out that I eat crazy amounts of food, and joke with me about it.
I've been this guy at the office (one office literally called me "the human garbage disposal"; in context, it's not as mean as it sounds), with family, and with friends since I started competitive 5k training in my late 20s. When I started strength training in my early 30s, it got even more pronounced.
My plates are often 1/2 carb, 1/4 meat, 1/4 veggies.
The American dietitian professional association recommends 1/4 carb, 1/4 meat, 1/2 veggies. NB not sure how well-validated this is, and given who their clients are, it's unusually focused on people with diabetes.
Personally, I find that it's hard to feel full after eating eggs given the soft texture.
This is true even with 12-egg omelettes...ask me how I know
He identifies various ingredients that give you protein and have a low cost per calorie.
Structuring your diet around these things is a crappy life.
Milk and dairy in general Ferris says shouldn't be a part of the slow carb diet.
People at the start of their muscle-building journey have been drinking 2L or more of milk every day, on top of their usual diet, since at least the 60s. It's not great for a low-carb diet because it has some sugars in it.
I guess you could mix it with water too but that sounds gross.
Yes, you buy a shaker cup. It's not great (it's not great with milk, either). Optimum Nutrition Gold Standard Double Chocolate is fine for this. But protein shakes are really about getting yourself over the protein line when normal eating just can't get you there. It's not cost-effective for calories in general.
(although I'm leaving the yolks out because of my cholesterol; I've heard that maybe they aren't actually bad for your cholesterol, but it seems like a good idea to be safe and leave them out)
The link between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol is definitely not settled, and dietary cholesterol is only one of many factors contributing to serum cholesterol, if it does at all. Eat egg yolks as much as you want at breakfast, is my conclusion.
But those veggies a) aren't very nutritious and b) aren't very filling.
Two things are filling: calories and fiber.
I need to go no carb or close to no carb in order to lose some weight [...].
I am confident this claim is false. I will donate $50 to GiveWell if you use Macrofactor for two months, with a goal of slow weight loss (.25kg/week), make a conscious effort to track your food accurately and thoroughly ("I can't cheat or it's like cheating supposedlyfun"), don't go over your daily kcal allowance, and you nevertheless don't lose tissue roughly in the amount of the goal you put into the app.
"roughly" is doing a lot of work there, so I'll let you decide if the time comes.
If you lose the weight but find that the deficit was too painful to maintain sustainably, I'll donate $25.
I suspect that 2-3kg of weight loss will also yield lower blood numbers--it did for me--but I'm less confident due to less personal and friends' experience and less familiarity with the science.
I am confident this claim is false. I will donate $50 to GiveWell if you use Macrofactor for two months, with a goal of slow weight loss (.25kg/week), make a conscious effort to track your food accurately and thoroughly ("I can't cheat or it's like cheating supposedlyfun"), don't go over your daily kcal allowance, and you nevertheless don't lose tissue roughly in the amount of the goal you put into the app.
Thank you, that is very nice of you! Maybe I'll revisit calorie counting in the future, but I'd at least like to give slow carb a chance first. I really like having that one cheat day a week. I like that I can eat until satiety, whereas with calorie counting it doesn't always work out that way, and I really don't like stopping when I still feel hungry. I also don't enjoy the process of keeping track of calories. Plus I still suspect that there are various benefits to low carb. So for all of those reasons it does seem like it'd be best to continue with slow carb.
Low carbohydrate diets tend to cause loss of fluid weight in the acute stages, before it returns to baseline.
Ah, that is a great point!
For a male and female of the same fitness level and the usual height disparity, I wouldn't be surprised if the male's maintenance kcals were 1.5x the female's.
Interesting. I didn't realize that, but in retrospect it does make sense.
People are natively very bad at estimating calorie content. (Another reason a calorie-counting app is a big help.)
Yeah that makes sense. I feel like there is some general principle here that I can't think of. Another thing that comes to mind that fits this principle I'm envisioning is how people are bad at knowing how much time they spend on various things.
one office literally called me "the human garbage disposal"
Haha, I've been called that too. Independently by different social groups. Ie. my family and my girlfriend's family, but my girlfriend's family didn't know my family calls me that. My mom would say that to my dad too. I get the sense it's a common phrase. Like how in romantic relationships people often call each other "honey".
This is true even with 12-egg omelettes...ask me how I know
Oh wow! I was thinking of just eating more eggs. More than six felt overboard to me. But yeah that's interesting how even that many eggs doesn't make you feel full. Seems like it is pointing at something important about how hunger works.
Structuring your diet around these things is a crappy life.
I actually don't feel that way. I've been pretty happy with my meals since starting slow carb, enjoyment-wise. For me having to count calories and stop at a certain number even if I'm not full yet would be a crappy life.
The link between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol is definitely not settled, and dietary cholesterol is only one of many factors contributing to serum cholesterol, if it does at all. Eat egg yolks as much as you want at breakfast, is my conclusion.
Sigh. Yeah. I get that sense too a little bit. There are a few videos from that What I've Learned YouTube channel that said stuff about this, plus it linked to a talk by Peter Attia where he said some stuff about this too. Given that it's not settled though, you don't think it'd be safer to just leave the yolks out? If it was settled in the direction of yolks being ok that'd be one thing, but otherwise it feels risky to me.
Re eggs: I like eggs, and I don't like no eggs, and I don't like egg whites, and the hedonic disparity is worth what I perceive to be a very small risk increase. Especially because the risk level is easy to indirectly monitor, via blood work, but even more especially because my model of your body, based on how mine was at your age + what you said in your post and comments, is that getting your weight under control is likely to get your blood work under control, such that you can add as many egg yolks as you are likely to want without your numbers moving in a way that adds appreciably to your risk of dying of heart disease.
Re low carb, absolutely try what you are most inclined to try, because compliance is hard without motivation, and low carb will probably put you in a caloric deficit anyway.
Good luck! I'm excited for you.
Gotcha on the eggs. Incorporated into my model.
easy to indirectly monitor, via blood work
Do you know of any good ways to monitor blood stuff more frequently than waiting for your annual check up?
I don't, but when my blood numbers were high, my doctor prescribed (or whatever causes insurance to pay for it) more-frequent checks, like every month or so. ymmv depending on your insurance. You might be able to pay out of pocket if you call up LabCorp and work out a volume-discount deal.
If only Theranos didn't turn out to be a fraud. That's a good tip though about the doctor prescribing it. I feel like that is plausible. Thanks.
I have this problem with white carbs and ended up cutting them out almost entirely. I do occasionally have a loaf of ciabatta or white tortillas, but I time those meals so I won't be able to eat more later.
Hm that is interesting. If the stuff I said about carbs and hunger is true, counting calories risks you being put in a situation where you had a bunch of carbs, the carbs are making you hungry, but you've also reached your calorie limit for the day and have to stop eating. It seems like that would happen quite often if you are only paying attention to calories and not paying attention to what you are eating.
In my experience, this just isn't a problem. I have only rarely experienced the [large carb bolus]->[untimely hunger cues] effect, and only with food that is so sugary that it makes me ill to eat, like a strawberry mochi that was 8cm across and 3cm thick. A Snickers bar (35g carb, 29g sugar) does not cause this effect--maybe the peanut fats blunt it?
The only times I might have to go to bed hungry are when I lifted heavy that morning and am experiencing excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. Sometimes, I take a Unisom so I sleep through it, and sometimes, I just keep eating. The net effect of these choices is weight maintenance.
I suspect that a healthy weight is even lower than what those BMI calculators would indicate
What's your basis for this? The lowest death rate is in the "overweight" category, and while there are a lot of confounders for that, if you're eating and exercising reasonably and in a sustainable manner, I wouldn't automatically assume the things you need to do to lose weight are healthier than maintaining your current habits.
I don't have a strong basis. Unfortunately it is all very vague. A lot of it is coming from preconceived notions I have surrounding health. Things I've heard throughout my life.
If there are any resources you can point me to that would be awesome.
Many kinds of beans are more nutritious than tofu.
Liver is cheaper and more nutritious than most other animal products.
I bet that you can expand your options beyond the slow carb diet rules without losing the benefits if you use the Satiety Index (e.g. add potatoes).
Epistemic status: Writing to think. Ie. I'm trying to figure it out. Feedback/conversation would be appreciated.
Background
Recently, I have been learning about low carb diets and how harmful carbs are. Mostly through Peter Attia, Tim Ferris, and What I've Learned.
So there's that, and then there's the fact that low carb seems to be the thing that works for me. I am 28 years old and am 5'6. At my peak, I was 165 lbs. That would put my BMI at 26.6, which would be considered overweight, and I suspect that a healthy weight is even lower than what those BMI calculators would indicate. I also have been gaining steadily since college. I think I was around 120 lbs in the beginning of college and maybe 130 at the end. Plus, my cholesterol and stuff is high.
But my diet has always been pretty healthy, I think. I only eat out maybe twice a month. I rarely eat processed meat, processed foods in general, deserts, or things with a lot of sugar, including fruit. I do a lot of cooking my own meals using raw ingredients. Chicken, beef, veggies, rice, pasta, beans, etc. That's always been what I assumed was healthy.
On the other hand, I eat a lot. I'm not really sure how to describe this, but one indicative thing is that I often eat more than twice as much food as my girlfriend. And when I am eating meals with guy friends, I also often eat maybe 1.5x as much food as them. This is very ballparky, it's hard to describe since I don't have actual data on calories or grams. Another data point is that friends and family all notice and point out that I eat crazy amounts of food, and joke with me about it.
After learning about low carb stuff, maybe it makes sense. My plates are often 1/2 carb, 1/4 meat, 1/4 veggies. Maybe the carbs are making me hungry. I'm also a pretty good cook, so my meals are often pretty appetizing, making me want to eat more.
On top of this, I tried Tim Ferris' slow carb diet once, and it actually worked! I lost a little over five pounds in, maybe two weeks? I forget. Unfortunately I ended up getting off the rails and giving up on it, but I really felt like it was working. So I get the sense that, at least for me personally, low/no/slow carb is what I need to lose weight and improve my blood numbers.
Expensive?
But here's the thing: that seems to be rather expensive. It involves eating lots of meat, and meat is expensive.
Does it have to be? Is there a way to do the low carb thing in an affordable way? Let's see.
Mr. Money Mustache
Mr. Money Mustache (MMM) wrote about this stuff a bit. Basically, this is what I think it comes down to. He identifies various ingredients that give you protein and have a low cost per calorie.
Let's go through this.
What do I take from this? Eggs are something I should focus on as much as possible (although I'm leaving the yolks out because of my cholesterol; I've heard that maybe they aren't actually bad for your cholesterol, but it seems like a good idea to be safe and leave them out). Having nuts on hand as a snack is a good idea. But beyond that, I'm not really seeing much that is actionable.
Veggies
How else can we lower the cost of a low carb diet? The next place my mind goes is to eat a ton of veggies. At first that sounds reasonable, but one you get into the weeds, I'm not so sure.
Check out this spreadsheet I made of the cost of various ingredients. Some veggies are cheap: lettuce, carrots, cucumber, green peas, corn in particular. But those veggies a) aren't very nutritious and b) aren't very filling. With the exception of green peas. Which is partly why they are one of my favorite things. They're also delicious and convenient, because they freeze so well.
If I were to go crazy with veggies, I'd want to be eating a lot of snow peas, sugar snap peas, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, and brussel sprouts. But doing so would be expensive. And time consuming, by the way.
So I'm not sure how it'd really work in practice. Maybe I just need to figure out a big salad that works for me.
Tofu
In looking at my spreadsheet, tofu actually stands out as an excellent option, in terms of price and protein (and P/E ratio). So maybe eating a lot of tofu moves us a step or two towards a solution of doing low carb without it being expensive.
However, I have some hesitation. If it became too big a part of your diet, I worry that you wouldn't be getting enough nutrients. I recall hearing on the What I've Learned YouTube channel that meat is actually very nutritious, and it helps your body absorb those nutrients too. Also, I get weird "artificial" vibes from tofu. I could easily be on the wrong track with this thinking though.
Cheap cuts of meat
My understading is like this:
I really like cheap cuts of meat! Well, kinda. In theory I do. Sometimes I get weird fatty or chewy pieces that gross me out.
Prime cuts always feel like they lack flavor for me. I mean, they're delicious, but I'd be much happier with a flavorful curry than an awesome steak. And this isn't because I haven't eaten the right steaks. I've eaten at perhaps the best steakhouse in the world.
I was watching Heston Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection. He's one of the best chefs in the world. In the episode on steak, he said:
So, naturally, I went. I ordered the filet mignon. It was very good, but it just wasn't my favorite thing ever. It cemented the opinion for me that steak just isn't flavorful enough for me, and that limits it's ceiling.
Anyway, I've had a lot of cheaper cuts like braised short ribs that are packed with flavor that I absolutely love. So it works out well. Last night actually I made Slow Cooker Sesame Beef (with a big pile of sugar snap peas and no rice) and it was delicious. Slow cooking also is quite convenient. It doesn't take too long, plus you can cook in bulk easily, lowering the average cooking time invested per meal.
I also really like ground meats. I don't feel like they are lower quality. I mean, I guess they are, but they taste perfectly fine to me. One thing I like to do is have ground beef with a bunch of indian spices along with green peas, and that's an easy delicious low carb meal. It's also pretty easy to cook that in bulk too.
So this all is seeming very good. However, even "cheap" cuts are still expensive! I spent some time looking around on various sites, and they're usually $8-12/lb. Actually, ground beef can be like $6/lb if you're lucky, but that's still a lot.
Edit: I re-watched the episode and Heston was talking with a farmer and they both agreed that prime cuts are boring, lack flavor, and that they'd prefer cheap/butcher cuts that are marinated with some creative flavor. I guess I'm not crazy after all!
Buying meat in bulk
Maybe this is a problem that can be solved by buying large quantities of meat in bulk. I've spent some time googling around though, and I'm not finding this to be the case. However, I do have an itching feeling that an answer is out there and I'm just not finding the right stuff.
Expensive meat is healthier?
In researching all of this meat stuff, I thought back to something I read in a blog post a while ago:
Sigh. It makes sense. If I was an alien who visited earth and you described to me how the food industry works, what their incentives are, and how they cut all of these corners in producing the meat, I would expect that it'd cause some sort of non-trivial health problems.
Unfortunately, I don't really have much evidence other than that blog post. I spent some time looking and couldn't find anything. I also asked on LessWrong but it didn't result in anything useful.
So, how should one act in the absence of more information? I feel like it'd make sense to default to eating expensive meat from farmers I trust. Which is bad news for the idea that you could do low carb cheaply. I'm not sure though.
Why not just get grass fed and organic stuff at grocery stores? My understanding is that those labels are BS. It's too easy to sidestep, so ultimately you are stuck having to trust the farmer.
Low carb vs no carb
Here's a point that I think is important. I suspect that right now, I need to go no carb or close to no carb in order to lose some weight and get my blood numbers down. But I also suspect that once I accomplish those goals, transitioning to a low carb diet would be fine, and probably even better than a diet without those carbs.
I'm talking stuff like oats, brown rice, quinoa, and whole wheat bread. In moderation. Like maybe 1/4 of your calories. Not loading up on white rice, pasta and tortillas, as much as I would love to do that.
I think this point means that I'm not in danger of spending too, too much money long term.
Is it worth splurging?
The Mustachian in me is always looking for a way to do things on a budget, but I suspect that this is something that is worth splurging on.
The value of my time
Suppose I spend an extra $300/month on food. How much would that cost me?
Weird question right? Isn't the answer that it would cost… well… three hundred dollars?!
I don't think so. Or rather, I don't think that's a useful way to think about money. I like to think about it in terms of how many hours it costs me.
I plan on retiring early. Currently I make $95k/year. My paycheck is about $2800 every two weeks. That's $280/day. Let's just assume I never get a raise or switch to a company that pays me more. I could prolong my retirement by one day and my last paycheck would be prorated, and would include an additional $280. So basically, by working one extra day, I could pay for healthier food for a full month. That seems worth it to me.
That's only part of the story though. I'm really talking about a lifestyle change that will continue on once I reach early retirement as well. I use MMM's technique of taking your yearly spending and multiplying by, say, 25 to arrive at how much you need to retire. If I spend an extra $300/month, that is an extra $3600/year. Multiplying by 25, it's an extra $90k I'd need. Suppose that takes me something like an extra year to reach early retirement. That's certainly inconvenient, but spending an extra year working in order to be able to afford a healthy diet throughout my life does seem worth it.
The value of my health
Here's another thing. The reason why I am considering all of this is for health reasons. If I am right about it improving my health, then it will mean I don't have to spend as much on healthcare in the future. Presumably. Office visits, blood tests, medications, consultations, EEGs, and surgeries. (I could hear my grandma saying "God forbid a million times Adam!")
So then, it's not really correct to say that I am spending money on this. If I don't spend money on the healthier food, I will have to spend money on healthcare stuff. So I have to spend money either way. The question is just whether I'd prefer to spend it now vs later, and which one would involve spending more money. I don't know the answer to that second question, but I could see the healthcare costs being more in the long run.
But even if they aren't, if it saves me some money in healthcare costs, that puts a dent into how much I am paying for all of this. Like instead of $300/month, if it puts a dent in my future healthcare spending, maybe it's more like I am spending, I don't know, $200/month instead.
In which case, the question becomes whether the benefit of improved health (and taste, and warm fuzzies) outweigh this cost of, let's say $200/month. I feel like they do. $200/month = $2,400/year $24k/decade = $120k/50 years. I could very well see this giving me an extra year of life, and paying $120k for an extra year seems worth it. Government agencies value life at something like $120-200k, and I place more value on it than other people do. Plus the improved quality of other years I am living.