Atkins and me

I’m not fat. I’m just oddly-shaped.

In my never-ending quest to wear my skin with pride, I decided this time to give dieting a try. And since low-carb’s popularity in my niche is huge (sister has lost over 30 lbs. in 5 months), I assumed it would serve me well.

In one month I lost 8 pounds.

In the first week I went cold turkey on carbohydrates. Zero rice, zero bread. In college, I was a member of this group called the “Three rice men.” Me and two other classmates ordered a viand (usually sisig or steak ala pobre) plus nine cups of rice. Given that’s how much I loved rice, I thought giving it up would be like qutting cigarettes. It was not. In fact, it was easy and the only difficult thing I encountered on my first week was feeling full after a meal. It’s hard and almost impossible to guage when to stop eating without carbohydrates. However, gone is that bloated feeling after “all you can eat” meals.

From my second week until the end of the month, I still did not eat rice but this time I was not that strict in not eating carbohydrates. For example, when I used to take all tiny and insignificant amounts of carbohydrates on meals like bread crumbs, pasta sidings, etc., I now made it a point that if it’s part of the meal, it goes with the meal. Still, zero rice.

The hassles and benefits.

It is very expensive and would not work well with on-the-go lifestyles. Whatever full feeling you get from a value meal, you need two to three of those because of the miniscule amount of protein in such. Forget dining-out if you are in a tight budget. Try to eat as much as you can at home. Meat is expensive, rice is cheap.

Aside from that very satisfying non-bloated feeling after sumptuous meals, let’s not forget the thinner me, most especially, the thinner me in places I needed to trim. I’m back to wearing all my pants, shirts, standing up straight without any unappealing bulges, and gone are always feeling lazy and feeling too heavy.

Done for now.

After weighing and seeing results, I’m back to my old eating habits. It has been one week since I stopped and I noticed a little more control in my rice eating habits. I’m 152 lbs. at 5’8″ and when I started the diet I was at my heaviest at 160. To think that that is not much out-of-this-world, it would have probably been almost ideal for someone who is cut and lean, I, on the other hand, am the opposite of muscular. However, for someone as lazy as I am who needs to stop the slow aesthetic deterioration of one’s body, Atkins is the diet to be. 100% (variable) change in eating habits, 0% lifestyle change.

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