Food Lovers Fat Loss System Day 4 – The Dirty Dozen

By Shane Craver on October 2, 2009

It’s already Day 4 our 21-Day trial of Robert Ferguson’s Food Lovers Fat Loss System.

For a diet, this truly is a non-diet but it’s still not easy. Ferguson has his clients eat throughout the day like a programmed eating machine. You eat when you wake up, and then eat every two to three hours until bedtime with three full meals for the day.

Are 21-dayers gorging? Heck no. Portions are small and snacks in between meals need to be kept between 100 and 300 calories for men and 100 to 200 calories for women.

Meals are not calorie restricted just yet, but are definitely portion controlled – I had the smallest steak of my life yesterday.

With the small portions, 21-dayers are going to get hungry during the day but Ferguson’s solution in his Food Lovers system is to resolve it by . . . well, eating.

The most difficult part up to day four has been simply starting out the day. Not being a breakfast eater, lunch can roll around until I realize that I forgot to eat. That almost happened on day three.

I’m also learning that the recipe recommendations can be both good and frightening. In the audio portion, Ferguson recommends adding protein powder to your oatmeal in the morning to add in the protein portion of the “Food Loss Plate.” My first thought, “hey, that’s great, why didn’t I think of that.”

The next morning, I stirred in a scoop full of my Zero Carb Isopure to my steel cut oats and it was a painful breakfast. Either the protein power congealed into rubbery bits of goop, or my children were messing with me and crumbled up an eraser into my breakfast.

Not good.

However, that experience was bounced out of my mind like a rubbery mess when I tried grilled, fresh pineapple slices last night as my “Fast Carb.” Why didn’t I think of that for real?

Onto Day 4, it was a lesson day about the “Dirty Dozen” fat loss killers:

1. Sugar (Sucrose)
2. High Fructose Corn Syrup
3. Brown Sugar (my favorite)
4. Dextrose
5. Maltose (sounds good, right?)
6. Corn Syrup
7. Malt Syrup
8. Maple Syrup (Good with donuts)
9. Maltitol (Sugar alcohol – it can’t be that bad if there’s alcohol in it)
10. Maltitol Syrup (had I known about alcohol syrup my life could have been richer)
11. Modified Corn Starch
12. Corn Starch

On top of the Dirty Dozen, 21-dayers are given a quick lesson on processed grains.

Thankfully for me, I didn’t read the Day 4 section or listen to the Day 4 audio track until after lunch allowing me to savor my last bagel of the next 17 days. Guilt led me back to review the bagel bag and, yep, enriched flour (sounds healthy but it’s not) and lots of corn syrup.

So, just to be clear, the above 12 ingredients are to be avoided, along with the processed grains if they fall within the first four ingredients on the label.

Whole Wheat grains are okay (just be careful that they label is correct) and sugar substitutes are of course fine. Look for Splenda, Stevia or Neotame (my personal experience is that Splenda is closest to sugar’s taste while Stevia is much sweeter).

Tying into the Dirty Dozen, you’ll notice that of the 12 simple sugars above seven of them are by-products of corn: HFCS, Dextrose, CS, Maltitol, Maltitol Syrup, modified and regular corn starch.

An argument can be made (and has been) that America’s obesity epidemic is made possible by these corn products. A good documentary related to this topic is King Corn and is highly recommended.

Finally, within the Day 4 reading, Ferguson brings up the diet habits of Sumo Wrestlers. It’s an eye-opening example of how to eat wrong. Skip breakfast, starve before a workout and eat very large dinners then fall asleep.

Check back next week for the more reports on the Food Lovers Fat Loss System.