Beans, beans, the magical fruit?

Ok, so I really want to try and cut down on the burgeoning belly fat. Last night I went out, and my poor fancy shirt's buttons were shuddering under the strain of it al. This new gain is bumming me out. Gonna go whole hog on the Slow Carb, from Tim Ferriss' "4 Hour Body", instead of half-assing it. No more fruit/nuts/cheese except Saturday Cheat Day, as is prescribed. And now, checking to see if, as Ferriss claims, beans is the magic key to unlocking success with this new diet.

Added beans into my daily dietary mix this morning. A and I shared a can of black beans from Trader Joe's along with our sausage.

Considering how much gastrointestinal distress they have caused me in the past, I realized I had forgotten to procure any bean digestive aids along the way. Ferriss recommends rinsing the canned beans to get rid of the oligosaccharides that are soaked out in the liquid, but I like the liquid from black beans. I remembered reading somewhere that there were some food ingredients you could add to beans to help digest the oligosaccharides. A quick google search lead me to Wikipedia, of all places:

"Many edible beans, including broad beans and soybeans, contain oligosaccharides (particularly raffinose and stachyose), a type of sugar molecule also found in cabbage. An anti-oligosaccharide enzyme is necessary to properly digest these sugar molecules. As a normal human digestive tract does not contain any anti-oligosaccharide enzymes, consumed oligosaccharides are typically digested by bacteria in the large intestine. This digestion process produces flatulence-causing gases as a byproduct.^[12][13] This aspect of bean digestion is the basis for the children's rhyme "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit".

So THAT would explain my extreme stomach discomfort and gas with both beans and anything cruciferous. I had to stop eating broccoli for many years. Also, I always remembered that rhyme as "Beans, beans the MAGICAL fruit." Am I mistaken? Skipping down:

"In many cuisines beans are cooked along with natural carminatives such as anise seeds, coriander seeds and cumin. Other strategies include soaking beans in water for several hours before mixing them with other ingredients to remove the offending sugars. Sometimes vinegar is added, but only after the beans are cooked as vinegar interferes with the beans' softening."

Score! I rifled through the spice cabinet (yes, a whole cabinet devoted to spices, haha!) and found the cumin, tossing in generous amounts. Threw in a few capfuls of apple cider vinegar. Stirred and tested...Tasty! It's been about 3 1/2 hours, now...so far, so good! Stomach not rumbling, no gas pain. Knock on wood! And they taste really good. Like, too good to be good for me good. Let's hope not.

Beans are, by nature, starchy. Up til now, I've avoided them for many years, on that basis. I didn't eat them on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet that I followed to fix my gut, successfully, a decade ago. I mostly avoided them on "The Zone," and I lost 80 pounds at that time (before eventually regaining, and then some.) I was told not to eat them on many phases of the HCG diet that most recently dropped me out of obesity. But Ferriss recommends eating them on his Slow Carb Diet, with the theory that they are digested slowly because of all the fiber, thus avoiding spiking the insulin while adding valuable protein. I need protein from less caloric sources than the enormous piles of fatty meat I've been chowing down to meet the Occam's Protocol protein requirements. He also claims they stop hunger, which I think I agree with, so far. Was craving food a LOT before on my half-assed version of Slow Carb, especially fruit. Today, not at all.

I need to add more veggies to the mix, though. I should steam broccoli and cauliflower and things of that sort more often. It's hard for me to picture my salads without the cheese, fruit, nuts, minimal dressing (though I already use dressing with NO sweeteners and fairly low calorie counts, such as Trader Joe's Tuscany Italian). I want like crazy for goat cheese to be okay, buuuuut it's probably not. He says no dairy at all.

I've already cut out the milk I was using for my protein shakes, substituting Trader Joe's unsweetened almond milk instead. Amazingly, it tastes so much less sweet! Apparently I could TASTE the sweetness of the lactose in the whole milk. 13 carbs per cup! The almond milk has 2 grams of carbs, less than 1 of sugar. The downside of this switch, almond milk has 1 gram of protein, vs. 8 grams in whole milk. But 40 calories rather than a whopping 150 per cup in the milk. Sooooo...to comply with Slow Carb and give my waistline a chance, no milk, no cheese (sob!), no yogurt, no fun.

But I should give this a decent shot to see if my waistline comes back under control while I continue trying to gain muscle. Thanks for bearing with my current floundering. So hard to leave a method that worked and find a new way towards my goals. We'll see how this goes!