Nobody was doing it the right way.

Everybody else's low-carb food tastes like a punishment — nasty, tasteless stuff you're supposed to choke down because it's "good for you." That's why people quit.

LoCarb Lifestyle starts from the other end: the food has to taste like the food. Cheesecake that tastes like cheesecake. Lemon cake you'd serve to somebody who doesn't care about carbs at all. Then we count the carbs, honestly, and show our work — including the places where we chose a few extra carbs because the zero-carb version wasn't worth eating, and what the stricter swap is if you want it.

High-carb intake was never mandatory. It was something the food industry did because carbs make food cheap and filling — they loaded everything with them and America got fat as a result. Smart move: keep the flavor, lose the carbs.

— Mike