Thirtysomething

Goodbye Atkins

In December of 2003, I went on the South Beach diet. I don't remember if I told y'all this already. I hadn't joined a gym yet and wasn't exercising, but wanted to lose some weight. Atkins sort of scared me and when I read up on the South Beach diet, it seemed more reasonable. It seemed simple enough: cut all carbs for 2 weeks and then slowly reintroduce them one by one to see which ones your body could handle and which seemed to cause weight gain. No carbs for 2 weeks seemed managable.

It was a fad diet. I knew it was a fad diet. But I did lose over 15 pounds while doing it. By May 2004, I had joined a gym and stopped officially doing South Beach. There were some lifestyle changes for me though as a result of South Beach. I eat breakfast now, every morning. Sometimes it's eggs (or Eggbeaters) and turkey bacon (a South Beach fall back that I had eaten every morning for months), but nowadays it's more likely cereal made with multi-grains and some fruit. Before South Beach, breakfast used to consist of a PopTart.

Another lifestyle change: fewer carbs from processed flour. I used to be all about the pasta 3-4 times a week and BREAD, oh the bread. I still have pasta, but it's probably only about twice a month now. I tried whole wheat pasta, but bleck! I just bought a box of this new Barilla pasta --we'll see how that goes. Bread happens less often now. I chose whole wheat tortillas over flour. Little stuff like that.

I used to be seriously addicted to candy. Like a candy bar about 4 times a week. Now I hardly ever have candy. Ice cream is a different story. Dessert is still a weakness of mine in general. Other repeat offender is the morning donut which I pick up on my way to work. I go for weeks where I do without the donut. But the last two weeks, there's been a morning donut every work day. Surprisingly, I seem to have lost 2-3 pounds in the last month anyway. YAY, DONUTS.

Anyway, now it seems that Atkins, of which South Beach is a spin-off, is going bankrupt. The fad is over, I guess.

posted by DJ Heavy D @ 6:07 AM