It’s been fifty two days since I started my diet, and I’m down by thirteen pounds according to this morning’s weigh in and eleven pounds or so according to my trend line.

On May 1 I said my weight loss would slow once I was done with losing water weight. As you can see in the chart below, I rapidly regained about half that weight over four days then spent almost the whole remainder of the time losing again.

This was a little discouraging. I was actually pretty convinced I had plateaued from about day thirteen to about day forty. Day forty is when I finally added the trend line calculation to my weight tracker, and then I saw I had been making consistent, if slow, progress.

There have been other advantages. Where other diets left me feeling weak, this one has certainly made me stronger. (Part of the reason for the slow loss is I was gaining muscle at the same time.) And where other diets have left me feeling listless, I have had tons more energy on this diet. And where other diets have left me constantly hungry, the low-carb approach hasn’t had me feeling as though I were on the edge of starvation.

I have not been counting calories, but I have certainly been exercising more and snacking less. The key here is that neither of those changes were accomplished through willpower. I have not forced myself to exercise; I have almost been forced by the excess energy I’ve gained. And I’ve been eating less because I want less food.

As you can imagine, this makes the diet ridiculously easy to maintain. Is it counterintuitive? Yes. Is there a logic to it? Absolutely — about which more later also.