Food & Health: January 2004 Archives

This Makes Me Crazy

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OK. Everybody has their own religion about weight loss and dietary health. But it really drives me crazy that news agencies feel the need to add to the confusion by publishing conflicting reports like this one on CNN: Have Your Carbs and Lose Weight, Too? and this other one on CNN a few months ago: Vindication for the Atkins Diet?. If you wonder why people are overweight and uneducated about their health, it's because all these conflicting stories make it too complex to figure out what you should be eating and how.

On a side note, here's a strange comment in the first story:

Gary Foster, clinical director of the University of Pennsylvania's Weight and Eating Disorders Program, said he suspects participants who lost weight ate less than what was reported.

Usually, researchers suspect that the amount of food being consumed is under-reported, not over-reported, because most people have very limited understanding of serving size. This comment makes even less sense when you note that, as mentioned earlier in the article:

All meals were prepared for participants, who were instructed to eat as much as they wanted. They also were told to return any uneaten food, which the researchers said enabled them to calculate calorie intake.

What does he think these participants were doing, hiding food in their sleeves?

New Ways of Being

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I'm slowly getting used to Atkins. For one thing, I'm warm all the time, which is nice. Although it's been a bit warmer lately, I feel warmer than usual at this temperature, if that makes any sense. I exude heat. I hope this is a good thing and not a sign that I've clogged my arteries with filth and raised my blood pressure beyond what is healthy.

My digestive system has still not adjusted to the change. It'd be nice to not have my tum gurgle every five minutes, as if I had desperate need for a toilet. And it'd be nice to not have desperate need for a toilet so often, too.

The only real drawback is that I feel kind of grossed out by the amount of eggs I'm eating. I mean, I like eggs, but not every day, sometimes twice a day. This kind of reminds me of when my mother and I visited Brazil for a month, and I lived in pizza and omlettes. But without the guarana.

Naan and Curry

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We had lunch today at Naan and Curry, by 9th and Irving. Very good food, not terribly diet-friendly but tasty and spicy, for incredibly cheap. I had a shrimp biryani for $10, and brought the rice home for Noel to enjoy (which he did). They have free chai, too, unsweetened, so you can make it how you like it.

Fun With Physiology

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Sometimes, I wish I could be this funny:
Top Ten Histological and Anatomical Entities of the Year

People Like Low Carb Diets

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Futher proof that I am just a sheep in my dietary decisions, Fortune Magazine ran this article on how Atkins is Taking Over the World.

What Next, the DTs?

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First symptom of the New Diet: an excrutiating headache. I never get headaches, so this is particularly irritating. I don't even really know what to do about it. Well, take aspirin, obviously, but is this a problem? How the hell do I know?

Off to a Good Start

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"And how did you spend your first evening on Atkins?"

"Making an apple pie."

It's just that I'd bought these apples, see, with the intention of making a pie. Well, now I have a large apple pie.

So I'm starting a diet at the beginning of the year. Not on purpose, but because I knew that starting a diet right before going away for Christmas to see the in-laws would be a bit touchy. A pleasant side-effect is that at this time of the year, the diet products I chose to buy are on sale. Since I'm going on Atkins, I needed to get some supplements. Saved a huge amount of money with the sales, but I think I'll buy them online in the future, as they seem to be cheaper.

So, why Atkins? Well, I come from a long line of women who have died too young from diabetes. Atkins may be able to help me control that. And the dietary suggestions seem to be fairly straightforward.

How does a vegetarian do Atkins? Eggs. Eggs are your friend, apparently. Not bad, since I like eggs a lot, and cheese, too. But the fact that I've been eating fish this year will help a lot. We're also going to give duck a try and see if it makes me as vilely ill as chicken does. I don't know; I think I might have had duck once or twice as a kid, but not in the last twenty or so years.

The biggest sacrifice is bread. I do like eggs and toast quite a bit, but there will be no toast for me for at least two weeks, if not more. Bummer.

One thing I have discovered is that eating the Atkins version of peanut butter cups makes you not want to eat peanut butter cups ever again. I guess that's positive. I wish diet product makers would realize that one of the appealing things about peanut butter cups is not that they have chocolate, but that they have soft, oily, salty peanut butter in the middle. Dammit. Anyway, hard chocolate things with a dry, somewhat peanutty filling are not my idea of fun. (Note: as I was walking out of the grocery store with my new Atkins booty, I noted a giant display for white-chocolate Reese's peanut butter cups. Heaven help me.)

About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the Food & Health category from January 2004.

Food & Health: February 2004 is the next archive.

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