Well I had not told you about this yet but a few of us at work have decided to do our own version of the biggest loser. We had our first weigh in today after having started and we still have some people to go but I look to be in the lead so far having lost 6.5 pounds . I did not expect to do so well. I was so happy I was giddy and squealed like a little girl on the scale this morning. I guess Weight Watchers really does work.
I have had the benefit of doing many diets over the years that have flopped. Why is this a benefit? Well it is becuase while the diets themselves may have failed each one had a good point to make, and that point while not being able to be sustained by itself helps when you combine them all together. Now I know I have only officially done this for a week and I am by far no diet guru, but I think I can speak from experience, and since this was a resolution I want to stick I am committed to this.
Here's what I've learned over the years. When I first experimented on weight watchers (WW) a few years ago it flopped and did not last long. I found myself overwhelmingly hungry eventhough I bought all the WW food and started excercising. I was so hungry I would blow it after a few weeks. It was not until I tried my next diet that I learned why it did not work. For a brief time while we were in Attleboro (days I never thought I'd find myself longing for) we tried out the Suzanne Summers Summercise(SS) diet. I know, I know ir just screams fad but it was fabulous and we're gay so deal. It did make some good points about food combining and was not restrictive per se you just could not mix carbs with fats and so on and so forth and spoke to me for the first time about whole grains and the hazards of refined carbs. It also taught about excercise and how the metabolism increases when you excersice. So that explained why WW had failed me the first time. I concentrated too much on the snack food from WW and the frozen meals that were all made out of Carbs, and combined with my increased metabolism from excercising no wonder I was fucking starved.
Well soon SS started to loose its appeal as it fell victim to our active lives. The recipes were good. I in fact still have fond memories of the first curry I ever made on SS, but there was nothing in there that good be made particularly fast or conveniently. Sure it must have been easy for Suzane with the private chef and unlimited funds for good food, but for Brian and Garrett working man with car loans, rent and school loans it fell out of favor.
Flash forward a few more years we left Attleboro and I really can't tell you how or why but I decided to try something else. There was this new diet on the horizon and gaining in popularity that seemed to work and had some science behind it. This was the Atkins Diet (AD) don't roll your eyes at me. Put out the visions of stacks of bacon and burgers aside. For anyone who actually read about the diet you find out more than just the popular public image of it. Yes it did treat carbs as the anti-christ but it did make some good points which I still hold true to this day.
Paramount of them is that refined carbs are bad, what are refined carbs? They are white sugar and white flour. Some of the best foods are made with white sugar and white flour I know but in moderation it is ok, not in everything you eat. Lets put it this way. How long does evolution take? Quite some time really I mean our bodies don't evolve all that fast, note the appendix which is still kicking around, and our inability to grow skin resistant to harmful UV rays. Evolution is the little old lady driving in the break down lane. Meanwhile the capacity for human thought and engineering is screaming by in the fast lane. Our bodies still really need the basic essentials that you find in nature, fat, carbs, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. They are also built to receive them the natural way. The natural way is what humans were built on; the hunter and gathering stage. Now I am not suggesting that we strip down to the loin cloth and scrounge for berries and spear a pig or two but I am sayine that our bodies are not used to getting the volume of easily converted energy we are dumping into it. Look over the years and see when this country started to become fat. I don't have exact numbers but suffice to say it coincided with the rise of prepaired pre packaged food. Convenience has been the death wale of the American waste line for years. We made foods so efficient at giving us what we need our bodies don't want to let go of it. Then we started increasing the portions.
Atkins found me loosing the most weight I had ever lost seriously I was down about 50 pounds and life was good. I ate well and I kept the Saturated fats down while keeping the carbs down as well. I eliminated trans fats as much as possible. Things were going well until Brian developed a particular sideeffect that I shall not go into and I decided that it was not worth it to continue.
Part 2 continues later ...
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