Apparently, I’m not the only person who thought the lyrics to “Like a G6” had to do with mozzarella. I found plenty of parody videos on YouTube that prove that, and you will be rewarded with one if you read on...

Anyway! I’m all about the cheese sticks this week because I’m Carb Stepping.

What’s that?

That is part of Robert Ferguson’s new Diet Free Life system, and I was privileged to have him send me the system so I could write about it.

But before we get to steppin’, a little background.

I’ve long been a fan of Robert and his sensible approach to weight loss. If the name sounds familiar, he co-developed the Food Lovers Fat Loss System, an infomercial staple since 2008. The idea is that you don’t have to give up eating your favorite foods to lose weight. 

Robert is no longer involved with the company that markets the system and decided to develop a new system based on the latest research from his own Diet Free Life center in Ventura, Calif.  The principles are similar but are a little more detailed.

Here’s where Carb Stepping comes in. It’s an option he offers as a metabolic jump start and as a way to discover how many carbohydrates you can enjoy while still losing weight. It’s perfect for people like me, who I like to refer to as “metabolically jaded.” I’ve been eating healthy since healthy eating was invented, so it takes A LOT to get my body to go “Hey, let’s release some of this excess weight.”

You take this plan a week at a time, starting with a pretty darn low carb limit. After a week, you weigh yourself and if you’ve lost weight (pretty much a slam dunk there), you increase the amount of carbs you can eat. And so on until your body “hits the carb wall.” If that happens, you reduce the carbs a bit until you get to a place where you’re still losing weight and you stay there until it’s time to Carb Step again.

I like the idea and, believe it or not, I’ve never cut my carbs way down before, so this is something that my body isn’t used to, and it’s used to a lot.

Enter the cheese stick (not the name of a calcium-rich Bruce Lee movie).

Today is Day 1 of Carb Stepping and cheese sticks are my friends (and my favorites also have trivia questions!). So are the carton of Egg Beaters and my collection of mustards. And the giant clamshell of baby spinach! Can’t forget that. Since I’m supposed to eat every 2 to 3 hours, the hunger pangs have been manageable, and I’ve been drinking lots of water because often, one can become a little, ahem, backed up with lower carb plans.

But I’m psyched for two reasons – I know I’m going to lose weight this week, so I know I’ll get more carbs next week.

This experiment is forcing me to look at foods in a way that I never have before and it’s only a week, so the light at the end of the tunnel is somewhat close. And I’m not going to do the dumb “prime rib and butter” low carb thing either. I’m going to stick to lots of lean protein, low-fat cheeses and leafy greens.

And now, for a little entertainment: