Incredible shrinking journalist
Don Braid
For The Calgary Herald
Friday, April 18, 2003
Because of Dr. Robert C. Atkins, the diet revolutionary who died Thursday after a fall, there's a lot less of me than there used to be.
To be precise, 35 pounds less. I owe my radical shrinkage to Atkins, and will be forever grateful to this remarkable man who had the courage to stand up to North America's medical establishment for more than 30 years.
He was called a charlatan, a quack and even a criminal. But Atkins has proved to be mostly right about food and diet, while his accusers were mostly wrong.
Although his fall was a terrible stroke of bad luck, he at least lived to see himself vindicated, and happily crowed about it on Larry King Live only a few weeks ago.
I used to share the common impression that Atkins was just one of many shady diet gurus. But then, on July 7, 2002, I read an article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "What if Fat Doesn't Make You Fat?"
It outlined the history of the Atkins diet and the growing evidence that too many carbohydrates, not dietary fat, cause the continent-wide epidemic of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and many related illnesses.
Waving the article, I waddled up to my wife and said: "I think this is it. I believe this will work."
"I hope so," she said gently. "Nothing else has."
She was right. I'd tried many diets, including Weight Watchers, lost roughly a tonne of weight, and then gained it all back with even more padding added.
But the Atkins regime seemed familiar. It sounded like the way we ate when I was a kid -- a lot of green vegetables, meat and fish, and not much sweet stuff.
I'd spent much of my life as a very thin person. But, in about 1980, I started reading the new dogma about dietary fat being dangerous.
Like much of the North American population, I began searching for no-fat foods, avoiding meat and loading up on pasta and bread.
Soon I began to get fat, and then fatter and fatter. Every diet I tried was hell -- I'd lose some weight, but be hungry all the time and eat like a monster when I went off the diet. Exercise only left me fit but still fat.
I began to believe I was simply weak-willed and there wasn't much hope for me. I simply could not stop eating. My weight rose frighteningly to 210 pounds with no sign of stopping.
Atkins' books helped me realize I had an addiction to carbohydrates that caused wild swings in my blood sugar. My hunger wasn't an absence of will, but an irresistible reaction to metabolic imbalance.
I'm now convinced that I was eating my way into diabetes. On one of the Atkins written tests, a score of 50 puts a person into the danger zone for blood sugar disorders. I scored 86.
And so, with hope in my fat-encased heart, I started the Atkins diet right after reading the Times article.
Two days later I was utterly miserable -- edgy, grumpy, impossibly hungry. This was not fun. This was torture.
But Atkins warns in his book that, the deeper the carbohydrate addiction, the more difficult the withdrawal may be. He urges people to stick with the regime for three or four days.
I did, grinding my teeth, and on the fourth day an astonishing thing happened.
A great surge of energy and well-being coursed through me, exactly as Atkins had predicted. I had broken my addiction to carbohydrates and started burning body fat.
Over the following weeks, the fat fell away like snow melting in the sun. Weight loss was effortless; and, most miraculous of all, I wasn't hungry! Sensible meals of protein and vegetables satisfied me fully, just as they had when I was a teenager.
Today I tip out at 175 pounds -- still about 20 pounds above my ideal weight, but a heck of a lot better than my former corpulence, which made me look like a small elephant with horn-rimmed glasses.
My infernal, eternal headaches have vanished. No longer do I long for a nap in the afternoon and after meals. My cholesterol readings have gone down.
Every day, I feel better physically and mentally than I did for more than 20 years.
Best of all, I've kept the weight off with no trouble whatever, and know I can shed more pounds any time with another modest lowering of carbohydrate consumption.
I owe a 35-pound debt to this doctor who resisted the pressure of conventional wisdom for all those years, and turned out to be right.
Although Robert Atkins' own days were cut short, he's surely added countless years to the lives of others.
dbraid~nucleus.com
© Copyright 2003 Calgary Herald
Don Braid
For The Calgary Herald
Friday, April 18, 2003
Because of Dr. Robert C. Atkins, the diet revolutionary who died Thursday after a fall, there's a lot less of me than there used to be.
To be precise, 35 pounds less. I owe my radical shrinkage to Atkins, and will be forever grateful to this remarkable man who had the courage to stand up to North America's medical establishment for more than 30 years.
He was called a charlatan, a quack and even a criminal. But Atkins has proved to be mostly right about food and diet, while his accusers were mostly wrong.
Although his fall was a terrible stroke of bad luck, he at least lived to see himself vindicated, and happily crowed about it on Larry King Live only a few weeks ago.
I used to share the common impression that Atkins was just one of many shady diet gurus. But then, on July 7, 2002, I read an article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "What if Fat Doesn't Make You Fat?"
It outlined the history of the Atkins diet and the growing evidence that too many carbohydrates, not dietary fat, cause the continent-wide epidemic of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and many related illnesses.
Waving the article, I waddled up to my wife and said: "I think this is it. I believe this will work."
"I hope so," she said gently. "Nothing else has."
She was right. I'd tried many diets, including Weight Watchers, lost roughly a tonne of weight, and then gained it all back with even more padding added.
But the Atkins regime seemed familiar. It sounded like the way we ate when I was a kid -- a lot of green vegetables, meat and fish, and not much sweet stuff.
I'd spent much of my life as a very thin person. But, in about 1980, I started reading the new dogma about dietary fat being dangerous.
Like much of the North American population, I began searching for no-fat foods, avoiding meat and loading up on pasta and bread.
Soon I began to get fat, and then fatter and fatter. Every diet I tried was hell -- I'd lose some weight, but be hungry all the time and eat like a monster when I went off the diet. Exercise only left me fit but still fat.
I began to believe I was simply weak-willed and there wasn't much hope for me. I simply could not stop eating. My weight rose frighteningly to 210 pounds with no sign of stopping.
Atkins' books helped me realize I had an addiction to carbohydrates that caused wild swings in my blood sugar. My hunger wasn't an absence of will, but an irresistible reaction to metabolic imbalance.
I'm now convinced that I was eating my way into diabetes. On one of the Atkins written tests, a score of 50 puts a person into the danger zone for blood sugar disorders. I scored 86.
And so, with hope in my fat-encased heart, I started the Atkins diet right after reading the Times article.
Two days later I was utterly miserable -- edgy, grumpy, impossibly hungry. This was not fun. This was torture.
But Atkins warns in his book that, the deeper the carbohydrate addiction, the more difficult the withdrawal may be. He urges people to stick with the regime for three or four days.
I did, grinding my teeth, and on the fourth day an astonishing thing happened.
A great surge of energy and well-being coursed through me, exactly as Atkins had predicted. I had broken my addiction to carbohydrates and started burning body fat.
Over the following weeks, the fat fell away like snow melting in the sun. Weight loss was effortless; and, most miraculous of all, I wasn't hungry! Sensible meals of protein and vegetables satisfied me fully, just as they had when I was a teenager.
Today I tip out at 175 pounds -- still about 20 pounds above my ideal weight, but a heck of a lot better than my former corpulence, which made me look like a small elephant with horn-rimmed glasses.
My infernal, eternal headaches have vanished. No longer do I long for a nap in the afternoon and after meals. My cholesterol readings have gone down.
Every day, I feel better physically and mentally than I did for more than 20 years.
Best of all, I've kept the weight off with no trouble whatever, and know I can shed more pounds any time with another modest lowering of carbohydrate consumption.
I owe a 35-pound debt to this doctor who resisted the pressure of conventional wisdom for all those years, and turned out to be right.
Although Robert Atkins' own days were cut short, he's surely added countless years to the lives of others.
dbraid~nucleus.com
© Copyright 2003 Calgary Herald
At least my husband can control his blood sugar and lipids and that is such a blessing for both of us.
