Buckling down with Atkins

I've written before about my recurrent trend hovering around the same weight- for more than two years! I'm pretty sure that maintaining my weight within a five pound band, even with a pattern of rapid loss followed by slow gain, is more good for me than bad.

I drifted upward in weight over the summer, and its time to wrestle it back down. I started by simply cutting back and upping the exercise. (This sounds very simple but its not. Especially the activity levels. I just couldn't have done it sooner for other reasons.)

But I got re-energized with Atkins as the way to eat. I surfed into a video of Gary Taubes again explaining what really is going on in our bodies with nutrition. Here is my understanding of the explanation which makes total sense to me.

We don't get fat because we eat too much while exercising too little. When we eat too many calories and burn too few calories, the result is we get fat, but there is no "because" there. Why do we eat more? Why do we burn less? Its not because of sloth and gluttony, moral failings on our part. There are many physiological reasons, but the big one for Americans today is insulin regulation. Sugar and simple carbs are the reason we eat more. Carbs make us hungry and screws up out insulin and other hormones. And on the calorie burn side, exercise has less impact than your internal hormonally driven metabolism regulation, which is also affected by the carbs. For many people, simply cutting the carbs sharply with no other changes will result in a weight loss. But for many people that have eaten otherwise for years, it is more complicated than that. And even for those for whom the magic formula works, it is very hard to persist in our society that doesn't build menus that way.

Nuances I have picked up: many people who try Atkins get the "fat is not bad for you" message and so end up after a time eating the worst of all possible worlds- high fat AND high carb. This is a recipe for all the bad things that come from bad nutrition, not just fat but unhealthy hearts and diabetes. So after being on Atkins for a while, moving away from strict adherence is a time for caution.

Here's a tidbit I got from a new book I just started: Mild depression is a positive evolutionary adaptation! I love this, understanding why our bodies have evolved to do certain things. We evolved as hunter gatherers, moving all the time. The only reason NOT to move was because food was scarce. So hunkering down, slowing your metabolism to make it through the dry season, or the winter, was an adaptive semi-hibernation type strategy. The obvious problem we have is we have no food shortage during the time our metabolism is dialed down. The trick is learning how to break the depression-which is the catalyst and which the result? Does moving break it, or does it break for other reasons, and then we start moving? I'm only a little way in the book, maybe the answer will appear.

In the mean time, I'm experiencing the basic Atkins induction rapid loss of 4-5 pounds of water. Very rewarding to step on the scale each day and see huge progress. I know my normal pattern would be two more weeks of faithful adherence which cements the gains into true loss, followed by several months of allowing it to creep back up. Stay tuned to see how I handle this.




What's different this time so far: I started up running before going into Atkins. I've kept it up, and I have a 5K coming up. The Atkins book does not recommend starting exercise the same time as the diet, but I'm currently more focused on strong versus slim.

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