Only Fat People Skip Breakfast: The Refreshingly Different Diet Book. Lee Janogly
Bingham, who led the study for the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer and Nutrition said: ‘The effect seems to be related particularly to saturated fat found mostly in butter, meat, lamb, sausages, bacon and cheese,’ foods which are the main staples of the Atkins diet. Women eating the most fat had a 33 per cent extra risk of developing the disease.
So—are you dying to be slim?
Another report by Dr Bill Robertson, a clinical biochemist at the Institute of Urology at the University College Medical School, claims that although you could lose a stone on the Atkins diet, you could also gain a stone—in your kidney. Kidney stones are extremely painful hard deposits that often need an operation or laser treatment to remove them. Dr Robertson says, ‘It (The Atkins Diet) is the worst possible combination. The absence of fruit and vegetables means the body is deprived of a means of counteracting the negative effect of a diet rich in animal proteins and calcium oxalate. The high-protein diets have contributed to an increase in the number of kidney stones that we are seeing.’
Are you suffering to be slim?
These reports have caused the Atkins company to hastily ‘revise’ how the diet should be used. It appears the consumer ‘misunderstood’ Dr Atkins’ use of the phrase ‘eat liberally’ in relation to foods high in saturated fat, and are now advised to place more emphasis on fish and chicken rather than red meat. In other words, ‘Please don’t sue us if you get sick.’
Television personality, Anne Diamond, now more well-known for her fluctuating body shape than her presenting skills, described being on the Atkins diet as follows: ‘In my view, the Atkins diet is a recipe for a revolting feeling of bloated over-consumption, coupled with a disgusting, fatty taste in your mouth and breath like vapours from a compost heap. I tried it for six days. In the end, I gave up because I felt so nauseous, and I was seriously worried about my heart.’
Anne finally went to her GP with palpitations. Once he knew what she had been eating, he said, ‘Stop being so bloody silly and to go back to eating proper food in moderation.’ That’ll learn yer!
In the short term, a high-protein diet does little harm. The trouble is, it just encourages yo-yo dieting where you lose significant amounts of weight quickly, and put it back on as soon as you start eating ‘normally’ – then you have to go on the diet again to lose it, and so on. According to doctors, this sort of fluctuation is more dangerous than staying permanently at a slightly inflated weight.
An interesting fact to emerge from the Atkins diet is that, contrary to previous thinking about weight, dietary fat doesn’t make you fat—in fact, in the absence of carbohydrates it appears to have the opposite effect, albeit only while you adhere to this formula. It is sugar that makes you fat, and the fat/sugar combo found in cakes, biscuits and the like is the surest way to increase your girth.
So Why Diet?
The stupid thing is that most dieters are not significandy overweight. Dieting has become so much part of our culture that many people, especially women, go on diets regardless of their actual weight on the assumption that, no matter what they weigh, it would be better to weigh less.
The ‘what should be’ never did exist but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be’ – there is only what is.
Social Conditioning
Women are particularly vulnerable to the diet-based lifestyle. Girls tend to learn from an early age that their worth can be measured on a set of bathroom scales, and it sets the pattern for a lifetime of dissatisfaction with how they look. A study carried out by the University of London in September 2003 involving nearly 3,000 youngsters from 28 schools, found that almost half of the girls aged 11 to 14 were trying to lose weight. Most modelled themselves on Victoria Beckham and admitted to skipping meals in their efforts to adhere to the latest manifestation of a world gone mad, where women are supposed to look like pre-pubescent boys with big tits. By the time these girls become young adults, they will have internalized the belief that there is something wrong with them for being their natural size or slightly bigger. They think it is their fault and collude with the culture that tells them they should be thin to be worthwhile.
Guilt
This is why all dieters feel guilty about eating—whatever they eat. Even though they enjoy the taste of food, they usually gulp it down quickly. This is because, subconsciously, they feel they are doing something wrong by eating anything at all – although logically they know they have to eat to stay alive.
Guilt is also the reason they put themselves on horrendous detox regimes, living on just fruit juice for a week with all the discomfort, headaches, weakness and coated tongue that are the inevitable results. And when they feel that bad they think they deserve it because this is the price for eating too much and becoming fat.
People go on strict diets to punish themselves for being fat – for overeating.
Once you understand that diets are punishments for bad behaviour, you can understand why they fail. Eating is not a crime but you behave as though it were. Diets are like being in prison where you do ‘time’ for not looking right: ‘I’ve done three days now’. Prisoners, however, become rebellious. Regardless of how willingly you entered your diet-cell, after a while you begin to think about breaking out. Convicts fantasize about a cake with a file in it. Dieters just fantasize about the cake.
A Distorted Self-image
Most dieters have such a distorted view of their own bodies that they don’t know what their genetic shape should be. They accept the idea that there is an ‘ideal’ body and that theirs is far from it. So whenever they feel bad about themselves, regardless of the cause, they say they ‘feel fat’.
Although you see yourself as weak-willed, self-indulgent and lacking in self-discipline, none of this is true. No-one has ever tried more diligently to solve a problem than the chronic dieter. You have followed every recommendation ever made regarding the best way to approach what you see as your problem. You have deprived yourself of food in endless ways, and spent time, energy and money in your efforts to find the answer.
Unfortunately, the diets you have embarked upon have always failed you in some way because, if you are an over-eater or binger, once that urge to eat is upon you, there is no way you could stick to a diet devised by someone else. These diets never address your need to turn to food when under stress. That is why only four dieters out of every hundred keep the weight off.
Even now, scientists are testing production of a new, ‘safer’ diet pill—one that will eliminate hunger without the damaging side-effects of previously used amphetamine-based drugs. They might as well not bother. Most overweight women do not eat because they are hungry. They eat because they are tense, stressed, bored and often because they are depressed at being fat. How many times has the following scenario been played out by a woman and her concerned partner:
Him: Why are you eating that?
Her: Because I’m fat.
Him: But if you finish that whole packet you’ll be even fatter.
Her: I know. I don’t care.
Him: But you do care. You keep saying how miserable you are because you’re fat.
Her: Just LEAVE IT will you! I’ll do it when I’m ready.
That’s it, mister, leave it. She will do it but in her own time. Any word from you will send her diving into the biscuit tin.
You may not believe it, but you are not deliberately being self-destructive if you eat when you’re not hungry. You eat at these times because it feels ‘right’ to you – as if food will ‘help’. And you’d be right. For many years, compulsive eating