Oda Rygh

So we have decided to go Atkins/low-carb for various reasons ranging from a BMI of over 30, my love for food, and the promise of the wedding dress in a year or two. The boy has refused to get a Kilt till he is slender and slim as well. So, onwards to skinnyness!

Why Atkins (Or South Beach, or Fedon, or Low GI, or whatever)?

Well, here follows a breakdown of reasoning:

Efficiency: It works. It works fast, it works steadily, it gives measurable results week for week. It, like all diets, works perfectly as long as you stick with it.

Sticking with it: I love food. But that is not why I gained weight. I gained weight NOT eating the food I love. I gained weight eating takeaways that were sub-par, chips that were soggy, drinking beer that was cheap and flavourless, eating large piles of icecream in depression that I didn’t even think about eating. I particularly remember a week I had gorged myself on cheap, fatty, carby foods and ordered a kebab. I didn’t manage to finish it, because the first thing I ate was the side salad. I hadn’t had vegetables in a week. This is not the food I LOVE. This is the food i eat when I am feeling too ill to love anything. It is comforteating. It is placing myself in a food-trance. It is Hyper-Stimuli in order to drug myself into a food-induced stupor. And I got over it six months after my degree when i got a job, had financial stability, and got a clue about the future. Sticking with eating the food that I love is not going to be difficult.

Love of food: What I cannot eat on this diet (every day or in large quantities that is): Stuff that when is broken down in my body turns into sugar. Or simpler: Stuff that is white or contains stuff that is white (sugar, flour, rice, potato).

Things that are ok to a varying degree include: Steak with asparagus, mushroom omelette with a side salad, stir-fry with cashews, steamed salmon with broccoli and hollandaise, carpaccio, greek salad, cream of cauliflower soup, cheese and ham salad, tuna steak with roasted peppers, Salade nicoise, Falafel, scottish breakfast with bacon/egg/sausages/fried mushroom/baked tomato, crudites with raita dip, deviled eggs, Fårikål, meatballs in gravy with stewed cabbage, smoked sausage and cheese, vinaigrette, gin and tonic, sour cream, chilisauce, grilled mediterranean vegetables… and so on. There is a reason why Nigella Lawson called atkins the diet of foodlovers. Imagine a diet that lets you avoid all the filling up bits and just have the tasty stuff. It is like that. If you can cook. If you can’t, you may resort to eating nothing but bacon and fried eggs, with good results in term of losing weight, but rather poor results in term of health.

Health: Being fat is not really that unhealthy. If anything a slight overweight increases your lifespan (yes, really: Orpana, Heather M. et al. (2009) BMI and Mortality: Results From a National Longitudinal Study of Canadian Adults) Living in the ways that make you fat however IS unhealthy. And once you are a little bit fat, you are likely to become VERY fat, and that is not at all good for you. Things that are unhealthy: Massive fluctuations in bloodsugar, high levels of stress hormones, grazing on things that are essentially fat and salt and sugar, not getting enough veg and vitamins and minerals, drinking too much, not having enough water, not having enough fibre, not moving enough.. So other than making me slightly less fat which is vanitybased and not at al because I am healthconcious, low-carb makes me not snack on bad things, makes me eat non-starchy vegetables at every meal, keeps my bloodsugarlevels even, and got rid of my anaemia due to not having enough meat and leafy veg. Oh, and I don’t drink beer, but am thirsty for water all the time.

TMI: Horrible periodpains? Constipated? Deadly farts of doom? You may not be eating very well. I digest far better after only one week on atkins. And I am no longer needing to drug myself down with codeine to keep periodpains off. My spots are reduced, my skin is more colourful in the right way, and I am loving it.

The bad side of Atkins: The first week is hell. Your body will resist losing the addiction to sugars. You will be hungry ALL THE TIME. You might get a headache, you may get bad breath untill you realise just how much water you need to drink, and nothing you eat will feel like enough. The first week is not fun at all.

Then on the other side of it you feel better. You get more energetic (May even feel like going for a walk..), you sleep better, you digest better, you weigh yourself for the first time and realise that after a week you have lost a pound, or two, or three. The first weeks you lose all the weight ever. Most of this is water (If you like me have a water-retention issue, this is amazing in itself.), but some of it isn’t. And your lunchbox is envied throughout the office, with its bits of cheese and cucumber and tomatoes and eggs and ham, and bits of grilled vegetables. And you feel good.

I will blog about this fairly regularly from now on. From the point of view of a foodlover, and in hope of being unable to quit it due to having it all on the internet. My BMI started at 30,74. It is now 30,30 after 5 days. I have set myself a six month target of looking amazing at the Discworldcon Gala Dinner in a tiny corset. And staying that way till I get married to a young strapping lad in a tailored kilt.