Atkins Dieting (part 1).
When I first encountered an Atkins Diet book, I was working in an office. I had been working there for five or six years and had accumulated a fair bit of excess weight. I had never been active in sport, but my previous job had been working on site, which brought with it a certain amount of physical activity ” just enough to keep me in reasonable shape. After five years of pen-pushing, I weighed 18 stone 12 pounds (264 lbs or 120 kg), up three stone and neither I nor my doctor were happy about it.
One day a representative of a legal firm came in for an appointment, and, while we were waiting for the other directors to arrive, we got talking about office life and its propensity to put on weight. He said that he had had the same problem before, but that now he made sure he got out of the office regularly and walked everywhere time would allow. He also said that he’d read a good book on losing weight while on holiday in America and that he would send me a copy. I thought nothing more of it and never saw the man again. Mr. Blackwell, I think his name was.
The book arrived as promised, but I left it lying on my desk unread for months and months, until one day, I had a dentist’s appointment and had forgotten to take a book to work to read while I was waiting ” something I always did/do because the magazines are always so old and boring. Anyway, I read 50-60 pages that day and I was mesmerised. I had never been on a proper diet before and I thought I should give it a a go. I had stopped eating pastry, cakes and chocolate months ago, but it hadn’t had much effect and my weight was still on the increase, albeit more slowly.
It occurred to me that the Atkins diet was a ‘thinking person’s’ diet There is a vast amount of scope for individual tastes and lifestyles and the usual problem of self-discipline did not seem to be much of a problem because for that reason. The book warned of addictions and fads and how best to overcome or prevent them. These did not seem to be an issue for me either - I liked coffee, but could take it or leave it and I had already given up chocolate. I knew that maybe beer and bread would be my biggest problem.
The only ‘must do’ in the seven-day induction phase is to eat not more than 20 gram of carbohydrate per day. The book had a clear list of almost all foods and their carbohydrate content. I found it really easy. In fact, I started eating in a more healthy manner in the induction stage than I had been eating before it! I bought a tub of Ketone sticks from the local chemist to check whether the Atkins Diet was working and found that I was in ketosis on the third day. It was very satisfying to know that now I would be losing weight whatever I did and wherever I was every minute of the day!
I gave up bread (and beer!) for a fortnight and felt great. I actually felt ‘bouncy’ or ’springy’ as you see a boxer in the ring before a fight. I had no trouble whatsoever staying within the 20 gram limit, although I missed fruit more than I’d expected. But I found ways to compensate for everything. The book has loads of recipes and suggestions so I won’t go into them here, but I started eating breakfast before I went to work and in the evenings, took great care and attention over preparing a lunch box for work the next day, usually consisting of a salad, some cheese and various nuts to snack on. You can eat a few strawberries too. In the evening, I would cook up something like a curry (no flour) eating it with green beans instead of rice; or a traditional British meal without potatoes followed by cheese and strawberries and cream. I lost 18 pounds in two weeks and felt wonderful.
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