Every week someone comes to training complaining of feeling “faint, tired and unable to concentrate.” I know what’s coming next but to ease them into the ‘truth blow,’ I’ll ask, “have you been sleeping right?” The answer comes while they give me that ‘I don’t want to do this today’ look like a 9 year-old kid on a cold day at swimming training, “Yeah, well not really… (long pause)… I was talking to my mate (bad advice) Barney and he’s got me on this diet.” Gold strike, I picked this a mile away. Let me guess, “no carbs?”
“So today all I’ve eaten is 2 egg whites and a can of Tuna,” they say in a proud but protesting way. Is it any wonder why this person is feeling like they want to quit before they start? They take solace in the fact that they have lost weight. Well congratulations! Anyone can lose weight by starving, go and pick up a gossip magazine and you can read all about it. I’m not saying that these ‘Carb Heads’ are ‘crash’ dieters like I sometimes, but they are starving their body of something that it has spent over 30 years depending on. Take this away one week and you’ll end up like the guy from the movie ‘Trainspotting,’ locked in a room with nothing but prune juice.
Carb dieters remind me of Adam Sandler in the movie ‘Happy Gilmore’ standing in the batting cage copping baseballs in the head at high speed and saying “only 364 more days until next year’s hockey trials, I gotta toughen up.” I don’t think toughness was his problem, similarly with most people I know – forget about the Carbs there’s other problems that you need to address first. What I call the 3 pillars of successful weight loss and infinite health: 1) Exercise, basically you can’t do too much whatever the style you like just kill yourself only good can come from it. 2) No Fat, in the old days before carbs diets were all about fat and believe me Mr. Fat is stilling hanging around, he needs to go. 3) Limit Alcohol, drinking and the attached lifestyle of fast foods, fizzy drinks and cigarettes are like putting broken glass on your ice-cream, not good. Focus on these 3 factors and you will not need to focus so much on starving your body of carbs.
You guys are all jumping the gun. Carbs are probably the least of your worries and used properly Carbs can work for you. Who do you think you’re kidding by shutting off your body to something it knows and loves? When I do see you 3 weeks later at that famous American place sucking down burgers, beer like a crazy person I’ll hand you a business card and say, “see you in the morning, 6am.”