I’m sort of doing the Atkins Diet, from a book written in 1997, so if what I say is out-of-date, that’s why.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.

Note: I’m not saying that low-carb diets don’t work–I just don’t like them.

You have to find what works best for you, and if that’s low-carb diets, that’s your decision. I personally don’t like them because they seem to be meat-intensive. Mostly, that’s a strain on the ol’ pocketbook; but I’m concerned about the consequences to your health from eating too much meat. Yes, you may lose weight, but if you are eating foods that are high in cholesterol, are you really getting healthier?

Now, if you cut out a lot of carbs, you’re going to be cutting out a lot of bad stuff. But you can cut out the bad stuff without necessarily going low-carb. Let me explain. Most Americans get a lot of carbs from white flour, sweets and pastries, and foods like potatoes. If you cut out the white flour, and switch to whole-grain flour instead, you can cut out the bad stuff and still eat a “normal” amount of carbs. If you cut out the “loaded” part of the baked potato, you cut out most of the calories and fat, while getting carbs and eating healthfully.

My deepest impression of low-carb diets, though, came from an episode that happened when I waited tables at a restaurant. It was a cajun-seafood restaurant, so we had a lot of carb-heavy stuff, like french fries, white & dirty rice, and complimentary bread. We could tell when we were waiting on low-carb dieters–they declined bread, and asked to exchange the fries or rice for broccoli or asparagus. At the time, I didn’t know too much about low-carbs (and don’t know that much more now, to be perfectly honest), so when I waited on one of these people who was obviously dieting, I mentioned the dessert tray, fully expecting him to refuse to even look at it lest he be tempted. Instead, he ordered the cheesecake. That surprised me, but the kicker was he asked that we not serve it with the strawberry, because that wasn’t on his diet. I had one of those “what the heck?” moments. And I’m still having it. I still cannot comprehend the diet that will allow the dieter to eat cheesecake but not eat strawberries. I just don’t get it.