I’m sort of doing the Atkins Diet, from a book written in 1997, so if what I say is out-of-date, that’s why. My husband and I have been wanting to lose weight — since starting this blog a year ago, I’ve increased rather than decreased my weight — so he’s been reading all sorts of books, and picked up this one at a friend’s house. I never thought I’d go low-carb, but I’m in the middle of reading it, and more important, in the middle of the 14-day Induction Diet, and I see the results. I don’t want to continue eating this way all of my life — far too much meat and not near enough vegetables — but I am amazed that the weight is dropping off, pretty much effortlessly, and I’m not thinking about calories, while eating things like cream and butter, nor am I hungry. The only times I’m hungry is (about an hour or two after I used to be hungry), it’s lunch-time and I haven’t prepared my food yet. Silly me.

We started this the Monday before New Year’s Day, so I’m nearing the end of my 2nd week. I’ve lost about 10 pounds. I’ve exercised a little. Sometimes a very little, or even nothing above my normal (in)activity — climbing the stairs to get on the computer, going downstairs to check on the kids, doing laundry and cleaning house, etc. Yet I’ve still been losing weight. And I’m not hungry.

In the book, Dr. Atkins has a diagram of a right triangle and says that is the typical American diet, which is unbalanced by having too many carbs (in addition to a lot of unhealthy food like refined sugar, flour, rice, etc.). And if you go immediately to a “balanced” diet (represented by a rectangle on top of the triangle, still sloping), you still have the unbalanced base underlying the rectangle, so you’re still unbalanced. He says that what needs to happen is that you, basically, go unbalanced on the other way (extreme low carbs), so that the two unbalanced sides balance out, and then after that, you can start on a balanced diet — a diet which will truly be balanced without the underlying imbalance, but a perfect rectangle made of the two unbalanced triangles.

It seems to work.

I’m ten pounds down, without being hungry, without counting calories, without restricting myself from anything but breads and the like and fruit — basically anything with sugars (even natural sugars), or high carb content. But I don’t feel deprived, and I don’t really miss the sweet. Yeah, I’ve fudged a little bit — I’ve had a little bit of some things with sugar, like a ketchup-based sauce (there’s sugar or high fructose corn syrup in the ketchup, but nothing else in the sauce had it); and I’ve had some extra carbs (because I didn’t keep close count, I’m not sure how many days I went “over”; but I know that the two days I ate at my mom’s house for supper, I went over, but not by much). But I’ve still lost. Amazing.