The Skirting of Starch

In an interesting turn of events, it isn't until about 2 weeks and a couple days into my experimental foray into a "low-carb" diet that I have begun developing moderate craving symptoms.

Truth be told, it isn't really strictly low carb, nor am I blindly following a structured diet ruleset with a fancy name. It certainly isn't zero-carb, which just sounds extreme to me. It's a "as minimal flour and starch-like carbs as you can conceivably cut out without making life totally miserable" diet, with the added bonus of being less stressed about non-trans fat fats.

Basically, no flour, no rice, no bread, no potatoes (I really miss that one), no noodles, no bee hoon, mee sua, hor fun/kway teow, marcoroni, pasta or what have yous made from tapioca or glutinous rice.

Besides noticing that practically every food stall or restaurant in Singapore has one of the verboten products mixed in with every dish that isn't a green salad, things haven't been so bad.

I've mostly been substituting with higher glycemic vegetables and fruits, preferably raw, aka homemade salads of unimaginable variety, or whatever looks good cubed in a bowl. Strictly speaking, I am sure cellulose is a carbohydrate and so is glucose, fructose and all the other nonsense that comes in colorful objects of plant origin. But cutting those carbs seem ridiculous, and the non-biology trained most likely do not mean those when they say "low-carb."

Fortunately, I like greenstuff, and my mother has been fairly cooperative on this attempt. (My last try at halving carbohydrates left me with a burning hunger for more rice during lunchtime. This is diet killing because I start supplementing with extra food bought from the surroundings, and MacDonald's is the only edible thing nearby.)

Steadily over the months, half a lunchbox worth of rice expanded to three quarters, then a full portion, at which point, portion control seemed to be pointless a diet plan.) Greedy humans are not made for rigorous robotic portion control via laboratory accurate measurements. Insteae, it is far easier to refuse any rice, period, and let her make it up by stuffing as many broccoli florets as she can possibly fit, turning lunch into a very passable, and stomach bulking cooked broccoli salad with random asian zi char toppings.

The novelty of salad design also carried me past the first week with nary a whimper. Baby spinach leaves of Australian origin are amazingly thick and chewy, yet tender, a far cry from our regular Chinese spinach leaves. No major limit on fat containing items means I can add dressing if I want to (but generally I don't). Instead, I cut myself a generous slab of good hard cheese (not the smooshy cheese spread crap) and cube it or crumble it, or microwave melty it. As they said, it does appear true that fat is naturally self-limiting, the satiety factor does in any greed for lard-like objects, you really don't eat too much of it before you don't want any more. Add on a boatload of fibrous water-filled vegetables and a moderate slab of protein, and well, it seems like you've eaten the same amount or more, without the explosive blood sugar bomb of starchy carbs.

The novelty factor of figuring out how to eat out was also interesting. Following the rule automatically negated all the fattening fried rice or noodles. One of the easiest ways to eat low carb is to order a meat slab from Aston's and sobbingly say no to all the starch ridden sides and settle for mushy garden veggies or just two green salads (pretty decent, must be factory prepared and just chilled.) Higher class places are remarkably obliging to special requests, I had a Coffee Club burger with no bread, no fries, add extra salad please, and it turned out very nice, even as my mum was fretting over what the waiters and cooks would say behind our backs. They didn't turn a hair. Possibly this low carb thing may be quite the modern fad. At those places thst serve Chinese food dishes with rice, it is quite easy to replicate the meat and veggie tasting customs of elaborate ten course meals on a smaller scale, and just refuse to eat any rice/noodles at the end of the meal.

I was hoping to try it out for a month to see if there were any noticeable effecte before softening up and allowing limited ingestion of not more than half a portion of carb.

Willpower failed a little today as an apple crumble cheesecake demanded my attention at the same time I had just intended to treat myself to a Starbucks cuppa (already with sugar). Now there was flour, sugar, and additional cream cheese and fat into the mix. Still, I suppose it is getting back on the bandwagon that counts.

I do seem to have dropped an average of 2-3kg in these two weeks, without any attempt at exercising. That's more progress in the right direction than I've seen in seven years or so. Hopefully it's not just water weight and I might stick to this for a whiile more until I get closer to optimal BMI.

I do freakin' miss me a good potato though.