A Trip to the Paunch Shop

I've made up my mind about something. It is finally time to do something about my beer-belly. Unfortunately doing "something" will require two old standbys both of which are equally loathsome: diet and exercise. Specifically this will mean altering my diet and exercising more. And by "more" I mean "at all, because I am one lazy sonofagun when it comes to exercise. My goal? Lose the paunch which stubbornly hangs around my lower abdomen. Or at the very least reduce through the magic of illusion its profile :)

Fortunately I'm not totally without a leg up in this endeavor. After many years of research into the matter I have developed a diet plan that is guaranteed to work without exercise. Yes I know you've heard this claim a million times already. Well frankly I don't care what you've heard and I'm not going to share the particulars with you anyway. I will say (with deep reservation) that Atkins was at least partially right. He was just coincidentally right though. Protein does seem to be the keystone.

The dirty little secret about the Atkins diet though: it reduces calories just like any other diet, sometimes drastically so. "But it works! Carbs are the enemy!" of course it works you dolt! All diets work through the same principle of taking in fewer calories than your body needs thus forcing your body to draw energy from fat stores. "But carbs...starches...ketosis...cutting them that's what does the work!" Once again, you're not telling me anything I don't already know.

Consider this,

Protein: 4 calories per gram.
Carbohydrates: 4 calories per gram.
Fat: 9 calories per gram.

Most foods contain some balance of all three groups lets assume for the sake of argument that the ratios are correct on a macro scale. In otherwords if you need and consume 2500 calories per day 23.5% would come from protein, 23.5% from carbs, and 52% from fats. If you cut your carb intake 90% (as you do during Atkins) you wind up trimming about 530 calories from your 2500 calorie diet. Hey guess what that means! That's right: lower calorie diet.