The specifics of gold standard lowcarbing, as I have come to call it, are purposely not outlined on this site for many reasons.  One is that the diet will end up being just a little different for each snowflake-body.  The rules are not exactly set in stone, it’s mostly a slow, gradual, and gentle tool/process for finding out what exactly each individual body might need to thrive.  It’s not a miracle diet, not everyone needs it, and SOME bodies don’t respond any better to it than they do to regular old garden variety lowcarb.   

But the primary reason why the information is not here is because over time I realized that the gold standard “diet” has the potential to harm people who aren’t truly ready for permanent change, who just want weight loss, weight loss, weight loss, who just want a DIET that will work.  It took a few years to see, but over time I was able to realize that, just like lowcarb “dieting,” gold standard is a diet tool that can be abused, especially by emotionally all-or-nothing, addicted/binge eaters.  On-again-off-again lowcarb diet abuse often leads to an alarming escalation in addictive/binge eating, regain, weight loss resistance and health problems.  On-again-off-again gold standard DIETING appears to lead to even more serious long-term problems with all of that.   

In this regard it’s a like offering heroin to a pothead.   

The bottom line is that gold standard is NOT a wise step for anyone who cannot consistently stay on lowcarb for a very long time, even when it's stopped working for weight loss.   

So, you START with lowcarb, you LEAD with that, by STAYING on a very carefully planned version of that.  Follow it to the letter.  Most folks, especially chronic re-starters, do not follow it to the letter.  Here’s our article on how to help you avoid the common pitfalls:  The 8 Secrets of Lowcarb Success   

Honestly, that could be all the diet tweaking you’ll ever need to do. 

If you stop losing weight because you’re cheating on lowcarb, even occasionally, that’s not the diet’s fault, you don’t need to tweak the diet, you need to follow it consistently, without any deviations.  You will need to bring that same skill to gold standard if you ever need that. 

If you want to participate on our message board, and are willing to abide by our rules about self-focused, on-topic posting only, if you hit a weight loss road block—that is, no weight loss despite absolutely NO CHEATING for 4-6 weeks, THEN we’ll take a look at the food journals that you have been keeping on a food-journal account from www.fitday.com.  We'll suggest tweaks from there if/when it seems it might be time to do so.   

I don't mean to make this sound so mysterious—and therefore even more alluring—honest!   Staying with gold standard is MUCH more challenging than staying on lowcarb over time, especially socially.  This really needs to be a babystep process toward health and sanity, to a slow but eventual turnaround in our whole relationship with food.   

At this point most folks will say "YES, BUT, I’m DIFFERENT, I’m just totally sick and tired of BEING sick and tired.  Really I am <gulp> this time I mean it!!!"  

Well that’s practically a prerequisite...every single person I know, including me, who is succeeding at this long term had to get to that point.  If you mean it, you will (and I think you MUST) demonstrate to yourself that it's true this time by staying on a lowcarb plan that has stopped working for 6-8 weeks or longer, without getting so upset that you cheat or quit to "relieve" the frustration.  This also affords time to really see that the regular lowcarb diet has taken your individual body as far as it's going to. 

Because an underlying, absolutely fundamental skill we have to be willing to bring to this is to stop stopping when we’re NOT sick and tired anymore, to basically acknowledge (through our behavior choices, not our words) that we truly GET IT.  We have to STOP STOPPING for any reason.  And this includes stopping gold standard if your body loves it.   

We really have to GET the connection that we are not sick and tired anymore because we are eating right and we have to get to the point of valuing the absence of sick and tired more than we value any momentary zing from any choice, including the social challenges and awkwardness, from eating anything that puts us even one step away from “I function and feel so much better when I eat this way, regardless of how much I weigh.”  This is the point when we begin to surrender, and acknowledge that there can simply be no more ways around, over, or under that fundamental personal core physiological truth.   

© leadwiththediet.com

Adele Stratton

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