Earl and I are on the Atkins Diet, the one where you can eat anything you want as long as it isn’t milk, bread, pasta, potatoes, fruit, or desserts. We’ve done this before to more or less success; and, although I think this particular diet isn’t healthy at all, we’re on it until December 23.
The one thing Atkins has going for it is quick weight loss and no hunger pangs. On Atkins you can eat any amount you want of various foods – mostly fat laden foods – such as steak, shrimp, chicken, and avocado. Whenever you have a hunger pang, you just raid the pantry.
I won’t go into the detailed explanation of why the renowned Dr. Atkins thinks this works. What I notice most is that when you go off the diet, you tend to gain back poundage when you start adding pasta, potatoes, or bread to your diet. So Atkins is a quick weight loss thing. A temporary gotta-get-into-that-tuxedo thing.
I think the way to use Atkins is to jump-start a diet program, maybe using it for a couple weeks. You won’t lose any appetite, but you will lose weight. And this is a motivating factor in continuing the boring regimen of any diet. Then you can move from Atkins into a calorie-counter diet to begin limiting your actual intake. The bleu cheese and the avocado will go, but you’ll get to have juice and potatoes again.
In the old days, dieting was dieting. You simply had to eat less and, to feel satiated, you ate what was called “rabbit food.” It wasn’t satisfying, but it did finally fill you up without going over the daily caloric intake allowed. Nowadays, it’s all about making it easy so people stick with it. Atkins, Weight Watchers, the Zone, any of them – they may not say it, but the common element is stick-to-it-ivness. We just have to grit our teeth and do it.
And that’s how Earl and I are taking up the challenge for the coming weeks.
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