Part 4: The rules

If you need catching up, this particular miniseries starts here.

Though I was interested in Carb Nite, I didn’t really feel like buying the book—at this stage of my life, I am strongly in favor of fewer possessions and more money, not the other way around. But that’s fine, because the Internet exists, and it was easy to cobble together the outlines of the system, which is pretty simple:

1. Start with a 10-day “orientation” where you eat fewer than 30 net grams of carbohydrates—that’s carbs minus fiber—every day. (You restrict net carbs but not calories.)
2. Then you have Carb Nite, which means that starting about six to eight hours before you go to bed, you have basically all the carbs you want, preferably in the form of glucose. The goal is to get two or three strong insulin spikes.
3. The next day you go back to ultra-low carb (no more than 30 grams) and continue having Carb Nite once a week. You can adjust the timing however you’d like as long as you go at least five days between Carb Nites.
4. You can do this for as long as six months, take a month or so off, and then do it again if you want.

Having ditched most grains from our diets long ago, we didn’t find it challenging to stay under 30 grams of carbs, but we did have to make a few tweaks. Rice was out. Potatoes were out. Fruit was pretty much out. Honey- or date-sweetened anything was out. Cheese, though, was back in, along with sour cream. On low-carb days, we eat meat, eggs, and vegetables, all drenched in various kinds of fat. And we don’t bother actually counting net carbs, because a gram or three here and there from vegetables is never going to add up to 30.

Now I’m starting to wonder if 12 parts is going to be enough for this saga.