My Atkins journey
I started on October 1, 2011, at 187 lbs, and reached my
goal of 155 on August 2, 2012. It
took another few weeks to make sure I’d stabilized at that goal, and now that I
have, I’m posting this.
Getting on Atkins has been life-changing for me. Below are some experiences I’ve had and
lessons I’ve learned in adopting this way of life. It is long, so if you don’t want to read the whole thing, at
least skip to #13.
#1: I started
with Gary Taubes’ Why We Are Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories, and moved
on to New Atkins for a New You (aka
NANY). I was excited about the
possibilities because these book are full of the science of obesity and
diabetes and I was convinced that Atkins was not just another “fad” diet. I subsequently found that I should NOT,
under any circumstances, have believed that the fat will “just melt off”. This was NOT true, and based on what I
read in the Atkins forums, is especially not true for middle-aged or older
women (I’ll be 62 this month). I
also realized, rather belatedly, given that I’ve dieted dozens of times, that
all diets start off fantastically for most people (I lost a lot right at first)
and that one should never listen to or be impressed by claims of losing a large
amount of weight in a short period of time (including the claim on the front
page of the Atkins website—marketing strikes again). These are best-case scenarios and don’t apply to most of us. This does not mean, however, that
Atkins should be avoided. It is a very healthy and sustainable diet.
#2: A couple of
times I’ve read comments from people who said they were losing slowly, only 2 lbs/week. Get a life! That’s fast!
For me, getting the weight off was very, very slow, slower than Weight
Watchers or the severely calorie-restricted diets I’ve undertaken. Moreover, I had to do calorie restriction
as the diet progressed, even though you’re not “supposed” to have to on Atkins. I did fine averaging about 1900
calories/day until just before I hit the midpoint on a 32-lb (total) loss. Then I had to reduce my calories about 200-300
cal/day to get the rest of the weight off. Note that is still within the 1500-1800 recommended for women
by Atkins and WAY higher than Weight Watchers (~1200 cal/day) or the 1000
calorie/day diets I used to torture myself with. My average weekly weight loss was 0.72 lb, not the 1-2 lbs
(or more) promised by the book.
Yeah, 0.72 is “almost” 1, but when the scale doesn’t move for a week or
a month or more, it doesn’t seem like it, and the average is skewed by the big
loss at the beginning, which is mostly water. Having said that, there are people on the Atkins forum
who’ve lost weight even slower than I did. I’m sure some of the reason it was slow is my age. It was worth the wait.
#3: Everyone is
different, so my lesson #2 does not apply to everyone or maybe even not most
people. The rest of my lessons
also do not apply to everyone, either, except maybe #4.
#4: Every emotion you’ve felt, I’ve felt, and probably most
of the people on the Atkins forum have felt. Whatever problem, whatever frustration I had, a dozen or
more other people have had the same problem or worse, so despite the slow loss,
I learned to suck it up and not get side-tracked. The Atkins forum saved me from myself when I was ready to
give up.
#5: Because I
had to reduce my calories, I occasionally experienced hunger. But when I
experienced hunger, it wasn’t anything like the gnawing hunger I experienced on
low-fat, low-cal, high-carb diets (e.g., Weight Watchers). I have never had that gnawing hunger
since starting Atkins. I reduced
my calories mostly by just eating less, but still kept my fat at around
60-70% of total calories, and the hunger was bearable. Not being starving-hungry all the time has been fabulous.
#6: On
occasion, I found myself craving more food at night. I found the best way to deal with that was to binge (if I
was going to binge) on fat. In my
experience, I ate a lot fewer calories and didn’t gain weight if I binged on fat,
as opposed to eating more of just about anything else. Sometimes, if I had those cravings, it
was because I hadn’t gotten enough protein during the day. I did find myself falling behind on
protein sometimes and learned to watch that more closely.
#7: Perfection
is the enemy of good. Perhaps I didn’t lose weight very fast
because I didn’t follow the program strictly the whole time. I have a lot of self-discipline—I
wouldn’t have had as successful career as I’ve had if I didn’t—but on personal
stuff, I just can’t spend that much mental energy. Although I was very
good at keeping records and keeping the net carbs down (averaging about 35/day), I
did partake of alcohol on occasion, even though I knew it could reverse my
weight loss sometimes, and sometimes I overdid it on the nuts and overall
calories, even after I lowered the calorie goal. Toward the end, I even ate ice cream a couple of times
(small amounts—all I wanted). I
also didn’t pay much attention to the limit on artificial sweeteners, but since
I lost my sweet tooth (see below), I doubt I averaged more than 3-5 servings/day. Although I tracked everything, I often
did not pay much attention to where I was going for the day, so sometimes I
overdid it on the carbs (though only a handful of times in the 10+ months since
I started did I exceed 50 net carbs in a day) and calories. But just keeping track made a big
difference, even if I slipped sometimes.
All this may have slowed me down…or
it may not have. I don’t know,
but I do know that I lost weight and was a lot happier than I would have been
had I watched myself like a hawk every freakin’ minute. I also did not obsess over minor
differences in carb contents of different versions of the same foods, so some
days I may have eaten more carbs than I counted, but I figured that was evened
out by the days I ate less than I counted. One of the reasons I was so hopeful setting out on this diet
was that I was very tired of being obsessed with food, which includes being
obsessed with not eating. When I found I still had to count stuff,
I was quite annoyed, but the online resources made that a lot less
painful. I determined not to
agonize over everything, in which I was mostly successful, particularly after
Collette helped me get past a plateau.
#8: I don't
bonk any more. I used to have
serious bonks on long runs (before my knees packed it in) and long bicycle
rides (>35 miles). I haven’t
bonked once since going on Atkins.
In fact, when I finally got around to doing a 50-mile ride this summer,
I felt great at the end except for my muscles being sore, which is
understandable. But I wasn’t
slogging out the last 10 miles as I have before. Another way of putting it: I don’t need carbs to exercise hard. It was a revelation to learn that my
professional mountain-biking nephew eats the Paleo diet (similar to Atkins).
#9: I have mild
hypertension and the Atkins diet didn’t make a difference. As I already suspected, my hypertension
is idiopathic, in other words, unexplained and unrelated to any of the usual
causes. My mom has the same
thing. Sometimes you really can’t
buck genetics.
#10: I don’t
get cold any more. I used to get
cold pretty easily. I still don’t
stay warm as well as my husband does (especially when I’m sleeping), but I’m a
lot better than I used to be, and skiing is no longer an exercise in ignoring
how cold I am.
#11: I had
certain, er, digestive issues (gaseous emissions) almost constantly before I
got on Atkins. In fact, so
persistent was this that when I started to get serious with my now-husband, I
warned him about it because it was, er, uncontrollable. Once I was on Atkins, this cleared up
almost entirely. In fact, I really didn't experience any problems at all until I had been at my maintenance weight for several weeks. One day, I ate a whole pear (very high net carbs). I had problems for 1.5 days.
#12: One of the
Atkins mantras is to check your measurements and you will see that you are
losing inches if not weight. This
didn’t work for me. I didn’t
measure myself often, but so far as I can tell, the measurements and my weight
changed at different rates and times, and, if anything, the inches lagged the
weight loss rather than leading it.
In fact, when I would lose a lot, I would measure myself, and sometimes
the measurements showed no change—the opposite of what “should” happen.
#13, and the most important of all: I became a different person (you might
have seen my post “Who am I?”). My
relationship to food changed completely.
It is hard to overemphasize the radical nature of these changes for me. There were times when I almost felt—in
the best possible way—that an alien had taken over my body and brain, although
from Taubes’ books, I understand that, in fact, my “normal” self was the
carbohydrates taking over my body and brain. Importantly, the changes were completely unconscious. I’ve changed my behavior—temporarily—on
other diets, but the underlying behaviors were still there, just suppressed by
force of willpower. These new
behaviors on Atkins arose spontaneously—no willpower involved:
a. I lost my
sweet tooth. I didn’t think
anything could cause me to lose my sweet tooth. I used to crave sugar and chocolate like you wouldn’t
believe—it was almost a physical attraction, as if I were a piece of iron and
the sugar was a strong magnet. For
that reasons, I hated having sweets around the house, but my late husband and
my current husband both kept candy and cookies around, so it was hard. I love the Atkins-friendly desserts,
and fortunately, I already loved really, really dark chocolate (>85% cacao),
which is amazingly Atkins-friendly.
I do miss ice cream, but don’t crave it as I used to. I don’t crave any sweets. Miraculous.
b. I have a
lot more energy. I think I
have more energy overall, but I definitely have more constant energy during the day. My whole life, I used to “crash” at around 11 a.m. and big
time about 2:30-3 pm, no matter what or how much I ate. Now my energy level is constant through
the day. Like losing my sweet
tooth, this is an amazing and life-changing development. I can exercise whenever I want and do
high-concentration work whenever I want, without having to plan around the
crashes.
c. I’m no
longer a food zombie. This one
is kind of hard to explain. My
entire adult life, when I was home, I would be constantly in and out of the
kitchen looking for something to graze on. Most of the time, I would be doing something else (reading,
working on the computer, beading, watching TV, whatever) and would have no
intent to go to the kitchen and wouldn’t even know how I got there. If I was dieting (low-fat, low-cal,
high-carb), I would then regain consciousness and leave without eating
anything, only to end up back there again a few minutes later. If I wasn’t dieting, I would eat
something (guess how all those pounds kept coming back on?). You might wonder how I could go back and
forth like that and not even know it, but I guess 99% of my brain was still
involved in whatever activity I was involved in, and the other 1%--the part I
now know was driven by all the negative biochemical consequences of eating too
much carbohydrate--was moving me unconsciously to the kitchen. I hated working at home for this
reason, even though working at home on occasion was an option in my
career. About three weeks after
starting Atkins, I was home just hanging around for a few days after a very
stressful business trip and down with some minor ailment. This sort of situation would have had me
in the kitchen grazing constantly.
I had been sitting around like this for 3.5 days when I suddenly realized
that I had not once gone to the
kitchen to graze. This was a
radical behavior change and it was
completely unconscious!!!! To
me, it still seems miraculous.
Another food-zombie behavior that went away
was my obsession with particular foods.
By that I mean, if I thought of something I liked to eat, I couldn’t
stop thinking about it until I had it—usually to excess. Of course, the things I tended to crave
were high-carb things. Now, sometimes
I think about these foods, but then make myself stop thinking about them. The amazing thing is that I can stop thinking about them. Somewhere on this journey, I read the
phrase “intrusive thoughts of food”.
That was me when I would think about certain foods. I couldn’t stop thinking about
them. Now I can.
d. A pound
up? No problem! About 5 months into this way of life, I
realized I was no longer obsessed with my weight. How did I know that?
Even though I’d still be weighing myself every day and writing it down,
I didn’t even realize I was on a plateau until after it became an “official”
Atkins plateau (no loss of inches or pounds for 4 weeks). The first plateau was a stretch of 6
weeks, during which every day of no loss (or worse, gain, even though my rational
mind knew it was just water-weight fluctuations) was an agonizing exercise in
doubt and self-recrimination for imagined failures, etc. You know the drill. The next time, though, I didn’t even
notice the plateau. Again, a
completely unconscious and completely radical change in my behavior and
attitude.
e. I can
leave yummy food on my plate. About
6 months into this way of life, I was at a luncheon at a conference, and the
meal included potatoes and chocolate cake. I didn’t touch the potatoes (this wasn’t hard). I had two small bites of the cake and
left the rest alone. OK, I’ve done
that before, so no big deal, although it was easier to stop eating the cake
than it had been before. But later
that week I found myself at a formal dinner, and for the first time since going
on Atkins, gave myself permission to not worry so much about the carbs because
the dinner was late and light and I knew it was likely to be carb-heavy. The carb-heavy choices were a dinner
roll, crabcake (made with potato), and a chocolate truffle cake. I had a couple of bites of the dinner
roll because the salad was really small.
But that’s all I wanted, even though I was hungry. I had a couple of bites of the crabcake. It was very good, but the beef short
rib that came with it had pretty much satisfied my hunger so I stopped there,
too. But I was by no means full,
and so I pretty much gave myself permission to eat the chocolate truffle cake
because I LOVE chocolate truffle cake and the piece wasn’t very big. I ate two small bites……and that was
it. It was delicious, but that was
all I wanted. I even tentatively
tried to eat more by taking a small bite while the speeches were going on, and
I just flat did not want more. My
husband was eyeing me suspiciously, thinking, “Who are you and what have you
done with my wife?” Before Atkins,
I would have devoured the whole thing in about 2 bites, even if I was
dieting. I would have found some excuse to eat it. I still love chocolate, the cake was
delicious, I even TRIED to make myself eat it….but that was all I wanted. Very, very, very strange—and wonderful.
That’s it for now.
In a year I’m hoping to add #14:
“This works for the long term.
For the first time in my life, I haven’t started gaining weight after
losing. Before, I’ve regained all
the weight, and sometimes more, in 2 years or less.” Because of all these experiences, and the radical,
unconscious behavioral changes, I have more confidence than I have ever had
before that the last diet before Atkins will be my last failed diet.
I’ll let you know.
