September 26, 2004

Guess what? I've been on the Atkins Lifetime-Weight-Loss-Commitment-and-Other-Words-That-Don't-Mean-Diet since the middle of July! I have lost quite a few pounds, depending on how much I weighed when I started, which I'm not sure about, but for the sake of my ego, let's say that I weighed. oh. 945 lbs. Now, thanks to the joys of NOT eating Hostess sponge-cake-simulations, I can safely drive over trestle bridges or ride commercial elevators without violating state law. It's quite nice.

I should also be very glad to inform you that my pants are falling down a lot now. This didn't happen very much pre-Atkins, so I tend to look pleasantly surprised, or even excited, when my pants fall down. I mean, wouldn't you be?

Some of my shirts are also a little roomy now. These shirts might have been characterized in the past as leaving me "room to grow" before I went on Atkins. Now, they are routinely characterized as leaving me "room to store several full-size player pianos." This has posed a problem - what the heck I'm supposed to do with all the excess fabric hanging down around me? My first thought was that I should try tucking those extra yards of fabric discretely into my jeans, going for a look that says "preppy - with some kind of massive pelvic tumor." Then I thought I could just let it hang out. Then I could employ the extra fabric as an evolutionary advance, akin to the flying squirrel or flying wombat, who so famously use their extra flaps to hover effortlessly from the top of Cone dormitory to chapel every 9 am in the morning to the amazement of their earthbound peers, just as I would. Or perhaps I should have taken some scissors to it, but the last time I made a straight, attractive cut with a pair of scissors was 1985, when I actually had small motor skills. Clearly, the only thing for me to do was. put on a different shirt.

Now, I am quite certain that all of you reading this with two present X chromosomes are probably worming in your chair in frustration, thinking, "Why doesn't he just go SHOPPING?!?! I mean, he would actually have an excuse !" But that would be to ignore that very wise, ancient Canadian proverb: "Better to have live mollusks crammed up one's rear end then to enter a men's clothing store. At least the mollusks might get to leave at some point." The ancient Canadians were very wise to have said this, because they understood that ancient clothes shopping is twenty times worse than ancient video rental, in that, you absolutely must take a female along with you in order to make sure you are not buying too many lime green shirts, and the female is required to force you to go to every single table in the store to see if maybe there is something on sale there that you might need for some future weather event such as nuclear winter, and is also required to get really irritated at you whenever you groan and demand to be finished with the ordeal because, as far as you are concerned, two shirts that you like should be enough to last you well into 2026, and the whole thing is just awful. I think we should heed the ancient Canadians, and be okay with the fact that my shirts will all be too big until further notice.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Atkins "Lifetime Health and Well-Being Commitment" (i.e., diet), I will now explain the rules. The idea behind Atkins is that, instead of losing weight by simply restricting how much you eat, you lose weight by rebalancing your diet to something that doesn't involve mass quantities of Little Debbie Cakes. It's basically all about restricting carbohydrates, which are tiny molecules that appear in bread, ice cream, and heinously overpriced organic chemistry textbooks, all of them quite tasty, but ultimately conquerable. There are several phases of Atkins you need to go through to get started, which I will summarize for you here, based on the actions of just about everybody I know who's done Atkins:

Phase 1: Induction - This is the phase where you restrict your carb intake to its lowest point to kick-start the process, making sure not to count the mass quantities of low-carb chocolate candy that you keep stuffed in a kitchen drawer and consume liberally throughout the day. This phase is usually the toughest on the metabolism, but the pain can be eased by complaining non-stop to one's family members about how oh-so-difficult this phase that you have voluntarily entered is. The Atkins book says this phase should last two weeks. However, most people get it out of the way in a few days and proceed immediately to the next phase.

Phase 2: Pretending to be on Atkins - This phase can last anywhere from a few weeks to several years, during which you are continually making claims to be "watching your carb intake" when, to everyone around you, you appear to be slowly transforming into some kind of human-walrus-hybrid. This phase is characterized by meals out with friends during which the Atkins-person says things like, "Well, I guess one little plate of French fries wouldn't hurt considering how so very good I've been watching my carb intake" when, in fact, the Atkins-person has just gotten finished sucking down a double-fudge brownie sundae all of thirty minutes ago. This phase is followed by the final, life-long phase:

Phase 3: Whining About How Atkins Doesn't Work - This phase is specifically designed to enable long-term joys that will last throughout a person's lifespan. Resources can be found online to help people perfect their condescending sneers towards Atkins rookies, with phrases like, "Yeah, I tried it, and it was nothing but trouble."

Of course, I am only kidding about these phases. I am actually following the real Atkins plan (and I'm the only one I know who seems to be.), which I'm sure, if you care that much about it, you'll go find at your own convenience, because I no longer care.

There are a few downsides to Atkins, of course, that you should know about before you undertake it. I'm not talking about missing carbs. If you do it right, you won't miss them at all. I am, of course, talking about obnoxious comments from other people, as well as having to turn down people who offer you freshly made key lime pie.

The obnoxious comments get old fast. I don't understand why people care so much about diet to the point of developing actual religious indignation at people who eat differently then they do, but yet they do. They almost always phrase the comments as if they are just really concerned about your health, saying, "Restricting an entire food group, especially the one containing Mountain Dew, is simply not healthy!" but their tone always suggests that you are the biggest moron and dupe in the history of cafeteria-style eateries, which somewhat undercuts the idea that they're really just looking out for your health.

Even worse, though, is when people offer you delicious desserts that they have made, and then you have to -ulp- turn them down. It's not a happy feeling. They always say, "Oh, it's all right. I would never ask you to go off your diet," but what they are actually thinking is, "Sure, I'll go put the pie back in the fridge, JERK, where it will maybe have only two slices eaten because we were counting on having you, the fat one, eat most of the pie so we wouldn't have to live in the guilt of throwing away perfectly good food that we will now stick in the back of the fridge and forget about until it's supporting its very own civilization of mold, thank you very much!" Okay, maybe they're not, but it sure feels like they are. And also, key lime pie is delicious.

But in the end, it's worth forgoing the pie to be able to look down snidely on fat peo-I mean, feel the joy of being a leaner, more energetic pile of human meat. There's a lot more I could say about Atkins, but I think I'd rather go build a circus tent out of my old wardrobe. And I'm off.