Psssst..hey buddy, I’ll give you fifty bucks for that beautiful brown caramel roll. Do you know where I can score some potatoes? How about a few lines of powdered sugar?
Yup, you guessed it. I’m on the Atkins Diet again and after just one week I’d crawl across the street in my underwear for anything made of wheat..a muffin..a waffle..a biscuit..spaghetti or toast, oh wonderful toast!
What I didn’t tell you about my doctor’s exam a few days ago is that my blood tests showed I’m border line diabetic and he said the best way to avoid crossing the border to becoming a full fledged diabetic is to cut my glucose level. Since our bodies don’t distinguish between carbohydrates and sugar, I need to reduce my carb intake. He suggested the best way to do that was to follow the Atkins, South Beach or a similar low carb diet plan. Yes, you have to give up the starchy and sugary foods you love but there are so many other things you CAN have that are forbidden in most diets.
I tried Atkins once before..eight years ago.. when it was all the rage. People were losing tons of weight without having to give up meat, eggs, butter and cheese..even wine and vodka. Well, I liked the sound of that so even though some dieticians said Atkins was unhealthy, I tuned them out in favor of bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning..ham for lunch and steak for supper if I wanted.
I lost weight too. I just don’t know how much since, like a lot of fat people, I’ve found scales tend to be diet breakers. If you step up and see you haven’t lost as many pounds as you’d hoped or even put on a couple, the disappointment can be staggering and will drive many, like me, into just giving up out of frustration.
Instead, I would gauge my progress by the fit of my clothes. I had..and still have..nearly new clothing hanging in the closet that I’ve outgrown. When I can start wearing them again I know the diet is working. Trouble is, many of the jackets have plaid checks and wide lapels. The shirts have collars six inches long and the pants have bell bottoms and big cuffs. They’ve been there awhile.
As I sit here, my stomach is growling at me..angry that it’s way past feeding time. But I’m just not up for another egg right now or that leftover hamburger in the fridge.
Maybe this is why you can lose weight on Atkins; you get so sick of high fat low carb stuff that you just stop eating altogether.
I know it gets easier after a while and there are lots of low-carb recipes yet to be explored.. but this morning I feel like Adam and Eve.
They had the run of the garden; frolicking around, naked as jay birds, with all the food and fun they could possibly want. The only thing off limits was fruit from the tree of knowledge.
I’m sure they were both curious about why God was so fussy about that one tree but they honored his wishes.
Then one day, Eve got to talking with this snake who was going on and on about what they were missing and before you know it, Eve had helped herself to fruit from the forbidden tree and got Adam to take a bite too.
Well, suddenly they became painfully aware that neither of them had a stitch on. He noticed she had quite a bit of junk in the trunk and she no longer thought his love handles were cute.
God was really ticked-off and, after a good scolding, sent them both packing out of the garden and into the wilderness where they were forced to take up farming.
Now, the Bible doesn’t say exactly what kind of fruit grew from the tree of knowledge.
Maybe it wasn’t an apple after all. Maybe they were both on Atkins and the forbidden fruit was actually puff pastries, or fresh sweet corn ripe for the picking, or baked potatoes or pasta cooked al dente.
Hunger plays strange tricks on the mind.
