I’m going on a diet. The Atkins Diet, to be more precise.
Yes, that crazy diet where you eat next to no carbs and eat a hell of a lot of meat and vegetables. Yes, I am insane. Thanks for asking!
No, really. I do have my reasons for choosing this particular avenue of attempted weight loss. And here’s a few:
1. Adam, my roommate, did Atkins a couple years ago and lost about 60 pounds, and has kept it off since. I’ve talked to a few other folks who did it and they’ve all said it’s not nearly as hard to keep the weight off as with other diets.
2. Despite the fact that I’m fairly restricted in what I can eat, I can eat however much of it I want. Granted, I’m probably not going to want to eat more than one bunless bacon cheeseburger a day, but at least I’m not going to feel like I’m starving myself, as I have when I’ve tried other ways of cutting back.
3. I need to prove to myself that the control I showed when I quit drinking for a month can extend to food. I’ve never been really good at controlling how or what I eat, and I think if I can pull off this crazy diet for a month, I can do really well with other stuff.
The shit of it is, I have to quit drinking again. Alcohol, especially beer, has carbs aplenty, and is thus out for a bit.
I’ve decided to start this Friday, and do it for a month. This theory also has its reasons. I decided to start Friday because I’m told the first few days where ketosis (burning of fat instead of carbs) starts to kick in can make you feel pretty sluggish.
I’d rather feel blah on a weekend than when I’m looking for a job and trying to convince people of my pep and energy during the week. And at the rate things have been going lately, I’m certainly not going to have a job by this weekend anyway.
Also, because I’m doing it for a month and can’t drink while I do the diet, I wanted to start as soon as possible so that I will be good to go by March 17th for my first St. Patrick’s day in Chicago as a legal alcohol imbiber.
Because you have to have your priorities.
Another reason I’m starting now is that I realized that if I don’t do something about how overweight I am soon, this is going to be a major problem for the rest of my life. My main goal is to get back under 200 pounds, something I haven’t done for several years.
I want to at least go from Morbidly Obese to Medically Obese. I joke about being a fatass a lot, but I’m sick of being so fat I can’t find a goddamn thing my size. I don’t want to be a stick, but it’d sure be nice to walk up 3 flights of stairs without getting winded.
I think partly I’m also starting now so that I feel like I’m at least doing something useful with my life. I feel like I’ve hit major roadblocks in the employment, romance, and general usefulness departments, after weeks of sitting around unemployed.
I swore to my parents I wasn’t going to need their help after I graduated, and it absolutely kills me that I still have to ask my dad for money. Obviously, this doesn’t stop me from doing it, but it’s just frustrating and contributes to my feelings of failure.
It’s kind of a dumb reason to lose weight, but I want to prove that I can at least do something other than take up space.
But at the very least, I’ll take up less space.