Tastes Like Victory
Wherein our narrator muses on fads and
trends.
Somewhere in the period of time between 4
November and today the Atkins low-carbohydrate died reached some sort of tipping
point in the mind of the English-speaking world. There are now tons of
articles, discussion, diatribes, dissent about the diet. Restaurants are
altering their menus. People are clucking their tongues, telling all these
newly-thin people that they'll be dead of heart disease in just a few
years.
So here we are, about 4 months
after starting on the low-carbohydrate diet, and I'm as thin as I've been since
at least 1989. That's 15 years folks. Back then, when I was just 26, I weighed
- at my lowest - 178 pounds. My body seems optimized for that weight. Today
I'm probably somewhere under 190, but I can't tell you exactly where, because I
don't have ready access to a scale, nor would I care to weigh myself, even if I
did. I know that my waist is somewhere under 34", and approaching 32". Which
is really, honestly where I intend to stop.
But there's a problem: I've become
addicted to being thin, to losing weight. I really don't want to stop. Yes,
sometimes at 9 PM at night I'm practically going nuts, wanting some sweets. But
then I just have some berries & cream with a bit of Splenda on top, and the
craving goes away. Last night I ate a half pint of blueberries, which I did
without the littlest bit of regret, because there's only about 7 grams of carbs
in the whole lot of them. Not so bad. And certainly well within the tolerances
for my body - which can easily handle at least 50 to 60 grams of carbs a
day.
Furthermore, this diet seems to be
healthy for me. We already know that it's stabilized my moods. But it seems
that when I eat carb-rich meals, I get gassy. Now we all know that I have a
tendency to be gassy, but that tendency has faded with the imposition of the
low-carb diet. And if gas is a sign that my body isn't really digesting
something (or having trouble digesting it) then I can see no reason to start
eating carbs, and every reason to stay away from
them.
You can criticize my diet, if you
like, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And all this eating is
making me thin and healthy. So tell me it's a fad, if you like, but I'm
beginning to believe, at the dawn of the 21st century, we've figured out how to
feed ourselves.
Posted: Fri - March 12, 2004 at 09:19 AM