Back on Atkins, dreaming of fries
Back on Atkins, dreaming of fries
Eight months ago our restaurants rolled out an extensive Atkins diet menu.
It took off like a California brush fire.
We were slightly ahead of the restaurant curve, and introduced the menu to an anxious bunch of carb-starved patrons. I too hopped aboard the Atkins luge to hell and deprived myself of carbohydrates for eight weeks. I lost around 30 pounds.
Thanksgiving Day - my first day off the Atkins diet - I ate like there was no tomorrow, which is pretty much how I have been eating ever since. Fortunately for me (but unfortunately for my waist), there was a tomorrow and I "found" 20 of the 30 pounds I lost.
However, all of this recent carb loading is starting to catch up with me. I am getting so fat, I can't even jump to a conclusion. I am, once again, squeezing into my old, pre-Atkins blue jeans, and I have moved up a couple of belt sizes.
I am big. If I were diagnosed with a flesh-eating disease today, the doctor would give me 20 years to live. So, back on the Atkins train I hop - all aboard - eggs, meat and cheese, eggs, meat and cheese, eggs, meat and cheese...
I'll stick with regular food this time - hamburgers without the bun, steak, chicken, fish, scrambled eggs and the like.
Last year, column readers tried to talk me into eating those pre-packaged, made-for-low-carb-diet products. No thanks. Most of the products made specifically for low-carb diets taste like dog food.
How do I know how dog food tastes? Because I have eaten low-carb, pre-packaged diet products. That's how.
As a matter of fact, dog food is almost all protein. Dogs live on the Atkins diet day in and day out. The average life of a dog is around eight years. That's 56 years to you and me, using the seven-years-for-every-one-year measure of a human's life.
Dogs have the average life span of an Old Testament stone hauler. I am already 297 dog-years old. I have beaten the dog-year curve by eating mostly doughnuts, French fries and sugary kid's cereal.
A longer life ... isn't that why we are constantly trying diets on for size? We want to be healthier, which will enable us to live longer. Dogs want to live longer, too. Maybe we need to be feeding our canines jelly doughnuts, French fries and Cap'n Crunch.
Birds live a long time. I am told that parrots live extremely long lives. I have heard of people having to bequeath parrots to friends and relatives in their wills. Is bird seed on the Atkins diet?
It is 9 a.m. on the first morning of this Atkins reprise, and already I have visions of French fries dancing in my head. I am not looking forward to three more months of painful carbohydrate-deprivation. I am not what any sane person would consider a healthy eater. A balanced diet for me is a piece of cake in each hand. Having to cut out most of the foods I hold dear is not going to be easy.
I can take solace in the fact that I will be able to eat all of the Leatha's barbecue ribs I want (without the sauce). That is the saving grace of the Atkins diet - barbecue ribs.
My wife once put me on a diet where I had to eat a lot of grapefruit and cabbage broth. I spent that long and windy week puckered up like a persimmon.
Before our children were born, my wife tried another diet trick. She covered the inside walls of our refrigerator with cut-out pictures of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models.
It worked. Every time she opened the door to the refrigerator to get something to eat, she saw the pictures and immediately closed the door. She lost 10 pounds. I gained 20.
The toughest part of a diet isn't watching what you eat; it's watching what other people eat. It's my hope that someone will open an all-Atkins diet restaurant. Everyone would be in the same boat: the S.S. Atkins. The restaurant owner could forego the usual piped-in Muzak, and let the customers vent about the pains of being on a low-carb diet. It would be like one big 12-step meeting with meat, cheese and a side order of rage.
Mind over platter, Robert. Mind over platter.
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Reach Robert St.John at robert~nsrg.com or 601-264-0672.
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