Carb Curfew: Cut the Carbs after 5pm and Lose Fat Fast!

Changing body fat does take time but the benefits you see will be long-term. A two to four per cent decrease in body fat over a ten-week period is a sensible and realistic target. Although this may not sound a lot, in real terms this will represent a two to four per cent decrease in the amount of fat your body is actually carrying with you day in and day out.

Recording Your Progress

It is good to keep a record of how much body fat you are losing each week so you can see how much progress you are making. Here is what you do:

Weigh yourself and establish your percentage body fat (either with a body fat monitor or with skin-fold calipers), or if this is not possible then record your weight and tape measurements only.

Using a tape measure, establish your waist measurement (measure around narrowest part of midriff), your belly button measurement (measure around midriff over belly button) and hip measurement.

Record these measurements at the same time each week.

Factors Determining Your Success

Your Willpower

The strength of your willpower is an important factor in how successful you will be at realizing your weight and body fat goals. Generally an individual’s willpower is at its weakest towards the end of the day – perhaps we feel tired or our blood sugars are low. This means that we tend to have less control of our actions at this time and are more likely to overeat or eat all the inappropriate foods. If you are constantly tired and struggling with your weight, you may well be building up extra calories at the end of the day that do not get burnt off. Here are a few questions for you to think about:

Invariably what happens is there is a mismatch between when we need to receive energy from our food and when we are expending energy through our everyday activities. Generally we expend most energy between 7 a.m. in the morning and 6 p.m. in the evening. However, we actually receive the vast majority of our energy from food after 6 p.m. when we are less active. While some studies suggest that it makes no difference whether your calories from food are consumed during the day or all at night, what these studies fail to take into account is our personal willpower. At the end of the day when we are tired, especially when we have not eaten much during the day, willpower will be low and we will be much more likely to overeat. This means long-term there is a situation where at the end of each day there is actually a build up of excess calories which we are not burning off prior to going to bed – and these calories are being laid down in the fat cells as additional body fat. Carb Curfew will show you how to make the right food choices at the right time of the day, so you receive energy when you need it and you don’t end up with a build up of excess calories before you go to bed.

Your Attitude to Food

What we were introduced to as a child defines our relationship with food in later life. If you ate a lot of sugar and sweet things as you were growing up and your diet did not include a variety of tastes, it is likely you now crave calorie-dense sweet foods rather than savoury foods. Maybe your mother used to say to you, ‘You must finish everything on your plate’, and now you always finish everything on your plate thinking it is rude to leave even a morsel. Or alternatively you had a mother who was always on a diet and never ate the same food as the rest of the family. Our mums are great but we need to be aware of how their attitude to food influences our attitude to food later in life. These attitudes have had a long time to become ingrained and they will take a long time to diminish. Carb Curfew will help you re-evaluate your relationship with food, showing you how to draw up a sensible eating plan that will help you realize your weight and body fat goals, as well as providing a positive message for your children.

Your Motivation

What is your motivation to lose weight? Is it to squeeze into that little black dress for a certain event or is it about looking better for a significant A.N. Other? Whatever your motivation you need to identify it and shift it from an external motivation such as an important event to an internal one such as wanting to feel more in control of your eating habits, have more energy and feel better about yourself All of which translates into a strategy that you can incorporate and build on to achieve your long-term weight and body fat goals. Think about this: what we weigh in seven years will not be determined by what we do for the next seven minutes, seven hours or the next seven days but how well we eat for the next seven years. Following an action plan that you can keep to will be crucial – Carb Curfew will show you how to do this. Seeing results is a huge motivation and with a little effort that motivation can be your driving force.

Your Friends

Early on in your efforts you need to establish who are going to be saboteurs and supporters of your aims. Within your circle of friends and family there will be individuals who will encourage you and help you with your efforts. It is also likely there will be individuals who either intentionally or unintentionally try to hinder you – this may be because your effort and seeing you look and feel better makes them feel less comfortable or they are just genuinely unaware of their intentions. Identifying who are your diet friends and foes will help you apply the Carb Curfew strategies more effectively and successfully.

Personalizing the Diet

As you work through the book you will be able build up your own personal plan, using the nutritional strategies to help you realize your goals. It is important to understand that there is no one diet that works for everyone; instead Carb Curfew contains strategies that can accommodate many different lifestyles. As you read through think about the best method of fitting the strategies into your life, for instance which lunches are most appropriate if you work in an office, how you can reach your water intake goal while running after the kids all day, or how you can use the Carb Curfew concept to continue enjoying your busy social life.

A Final Word

So, remember, Carb Curfew is about losing weight whilst still living the life you wish to live. Yes, it does require a little bit of effort but you don’t have to make any big sacrifices or radical changes to your lifestyle to get the results you want – all you need to do is apply the four strategies outlined on pages 3–4 and you will achieve your weight and fat-loss goals not just for now, but for the future too.

Take Action

Write a list of the main obstacles to you achieving your fat-loss goals – try to be as specific as possible, for example, mid-morning coffee break with work colleagues or tea time with the kids when you are starving yourself

Make a commitment today to make one small change in your daily activities that you will keep up for the next six weeks. For example, say no to coffee in your mid-morning break and have a cup of herbal tea instead. Remember, every small change you make will take you one step further towards achieving your fat-loss goals.

chapter three The Carb Curfew (#ulink_45df940c-54e7-567c-947e-453bf2244f0e)

We all know we have to steer clear of a diet that contains too much fat and we feel proud of ourselves if we have said no to chocolate or ice-cream. So why are we still struggling with our weight and body fat? These days one of the most common reasons for our weight-loss frustrations is that we have come to rely on low-fat starches and we are lulled into a false sense of low-fat security, thinking we can eat more of these foods. A high consumption of starch however can provide more calories than we need. If we are unable to burn off these calories they become stored as fat, all of which leads to the scales and belt notches not moving in the direction we want.

So the first part of the Carb Curfew strategy is to operate a Carb Curfew. In this chapter you’ll learn all about the role of starch and its impact on the body and how to:

Use the Carb Curfew – no starches after 5 p.m.

Adapt your meals to make sure you get the right range of nutrients and don’t eat too much starch.

Make good food choices when you are faced with a situation where there is starch on the menu and you are not allowed to eat it.

Carb Curfew Essentials

The two keys to making carbohydrates work for you are:

1. Operate the Carb Curfew to decrease total calorie intake.

2. Consume five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

What is the Carb Curfew?

As we discussed in chapter two starch, processed sugars and fruit and vegetables are all carbohydrates. The starch foods are potatoes, bread, rice, pasta and cereals, all of which provide a good source of fuel for the body to use during the day.

The Carb Curfew means you can eat starch at breakfast, lunch and in your mid-afternoon snack but you are not allowed to eat it after 5 p.m. The evening meal now comprises of protein, fruit and vegetables, low-fat dairy products and essential fats. It is a strategy that allows you to get the right balance of calories and nutrients at the right time in the day. At first this may seem a little difficult to apply but you will soon feel the huge benefits in your energy levels and you’ll certainly appreciate the change in your body shape as you become less bloated.

The Carb Curfew however is not just about saying no to starches after 5 p.m. – it is about getting the right balance of your overall intake of starches and nutrients throughout the day. For example you may be consuming too many calories from starch foods which are contributing to your body fat, so once you reduce the amount of starch you eat you will lose weight and body fat. Also, you will be more in control of your energy levels as you will be eating the right amount of starch at the right time for optimum energy. We will talk more about this later in the chapter.

Are You a Carb Comfort-Eater?

Answer the following questions to find out if you are prone to overeating on comfort starches such as bread, pasta, rice and potatoes.

Do you tend to snack on bread and comfort carbohydrates such as cakes and chocolate?

Do you munch bread with each meal?

Do you feel lethargic in the afternoons?

Do you eat most of your calories at the end of your day?

Do you crave carbohydrates?

Do you experience swings in your energy and mood?

Do you find it difficult to stop eating comfort starches like biscuits, bread and pasta?

If you answered yes to most of these questions you are sensitive to comfort carbohydrates, specifically the comfort foods that are starch-based. You probably have a tendency to eat more of these foods than is appropriate and this causes you to feel lethargic and out of control. As well as operating the Carb Curfew, you need to use the starch-free zone (see page 61) when faced with an excess starch situation.

If your answers were mainly negative, you are less prone to overindulging on carbohydrates. If you experience problems with your weight it may be due to excess calories consumed through carbohydrates or an imbalance in your nutrient intake. Introduce the Carb Curfew as a tool to control calorie intake.

Watch Those Calories!

I developed the Carb Curfew concept as a nutritional diet tool when I realized a number of my weight management clients were experiencing initial weight and body fat loss but then they were reaching a plateau with their weight loss and their efforts seemed to go no further. This seemed to be a recurring theme, not just with my clients but also with other people’s initial weight-loss success stories.