The Atkins Diet has taken Britain by storm, despite warnings that it could cause long-term damage to health. Hardened slimmer Teresa Hunter gave it a try and found it more draining than expected
ARE you sure you want to buy this book?” the sales assistant at Waterstones asks. ‘‘I’m not happy selling it to you,’’ she adds, disappearing behind the counter, leaving me to marvel at the rapacity of Britain’s retailers. What would the Americans make of a shop assistant refusing to sell a book because she was worried about its impact on a customer’s well-being? But what are we talking about here? The stuff of snuff videos, child rape or a handbook for international terrorists?
No, it is a copy of the Atkins diet.
The assistant returns after consulting with her manager, I suspect, as to whether the company could in any way be held responsible – not as stupid as it sounds, given our burgeoning compensation culture. She asks again: “You are sure you want to buy this book? It can be very dangerous. There have been a number of reports saying it can be extremely bad for your health.”
Well, that’s me done for. Tell me that something will do me good, and my bowels turn to water. But issue storm-force warnings that something is dangerous and it’s like waving a red rag at a bull. I just can’t resist it.
Before I leave the shop, though, she tries one more time. “Eating disorders are very serious matters,” she says. “I find it very hard to put on weight,” she confides, as the penny drops. She is pencil-thin. Bitch!
A bit over a week ago, right at the height of the furore over the controversial weight-loss plan, I defiantly embarked upon it. I am no newcomer to diets. About three years ago, I lost nearly three stones the sensible way, by joining WeightWatchers. I slavishly followed conventional wisdom and shed an average one pound a week over an 18-month period.
But once I reached a weight I was happy with, it stuck in my throat to fork out handfuls of cash for a five-minute weekly weigh-in. After all, I had changed my eating habits and could weigh myself at home.
The consequences? Without the threat of a weekly public humiliation, I put on an average of one pound a week over the following two years. So I’m pretty much back where I started. The sensible approach clearly doesn’t work, so I might as well go for the white-knuckle ride. Howver, on a more serious note, I am rapidly losing faith in the proselytising coming from the health lobby, and was less than surprised to hear that one of the most outspoken critics of the Atkins Diet, Susan Jebb, head of nutrition and health at the Medical Research Council, has close links with the flour industry.
If these experts are so good, how come obesity, particularly among the young, is one of our most serious health issues and one which has been scaring me to death for some time? I used to regularly arrive home from school starving and then devour anything up to six slices of bread and dripping, but I never had a weight problem until I left home and switched to a low-fat diet.
My 13-year-old daughter has been raised on the epitome of the Mediterranean diet, with everything either tossed or cooked in top-grade olive oil. Yet she is considerably bigger than I was at her age. Most terrifying of all, she is already the same dress size as me, and it isn’t through lack of exercise. I’m as good a mum as I am a dieter. I don’t do school runs, or indeed any runs. If my kids want to go somewhere, they walk.
So could it be, for all my anxiety about healthy eating, I have fed my daughter a diet that has failed her in a way my mother, who never gave our food a second thought, never failed me? The answer is “maybe”.
Having just returned from a touring holiday of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, I was struck by their diet. Every meal was comprised of lashings of meat and dumplings, anathema to the low-fat brigade. Yet I didn’t see a single example of obesity. The population, young people in particular, was enviously slim and svelte.
Arriving back at Calais was like a slap in the face. It was impossible not to notice how on the ferry home most women under 50 in cars with GB stickers were two if not three sizes larger than their central European counterparts.
More alarmingly, I was in Jamaica earlier in the year mopping up the sun on beaches packed with Americans. The sights were truly shocking. Young women, in their teens and early 20s, with bodies utterly deformed by obesity. They were so fat their misshapen legs struggled to support their bulk. They could barely walk. How has the richest country in the world managed to fail its children like this? That’s not necessarily to conclude that Atkins is the answer, as my first week on the diet might suggest. The hardest thing was giving up alcohol and coffee (because it contains caffeine, banned in all forms from the Atkins’ diet). They are not so much an integral part of my diet as, in the normal course of events, all of it. But I’d just returned from a two-week alcohol-free holiday full of fresh air and exercise, so it was now or never.
Under normal circumstances, working in frenetic newsrooms with their accompanying stress levels, I wouldn’t stand a chance with Dr Atkins.
Day One was a breeze. Or at least I think so. I can’t remember a thing about the day whatsoever, which I take to mean my short-term memory was simply wiped.
Day Two was a challenge. It started OK, until my son came and announced two important pieces of news. He had just smashed up my car, reversing into a wall, and … oh yeah, his grades had come through, and he’d got his place at Oxford. That night, boy did I need a drink, and indeed had one, or was it two or three? So the following day it was back to Day One all over again. Herbal teas, decaffeinated coffee, four ounces of cheese for lunch, and chicken and lettuce for dinner.
But Day Two, mark II, was always going to be a triumph of hope over experience. It was the start of a weekend of corporate hospitality at the Edinburgh Festival. The fun began at 5pm with a lavish reception for 60 at the Edinburgh Park offices of our hosts. The food was a gastronomical delight, as were the wines. But I was good, at least at first. I stuck to mineral water, chicken and lettuce, with a plate of cheese to follow. Then on to the brilliant stand-up Adam Hills at the Pleasance. Being sober, I lapped up every word. At the post-show party back at a hotel, I again stuck to water.
But at 1am, when I could no longer understand a word any of my fellow hacks were saying, I caved in and ordered a glass of wine. Just one wouldn’t hurt. You guessed it, I finally lurched to bed, less than sober, at 4am.
Breakfast the next morning was an all-time low. How could I be so weak? I ate five sausages to steady my nerves (no, they are not allowed).
I stayed on course for 48 hours after that. The next big challenge was rising at 6.30am for a radio broadcast. Have you ever tried to get going at an unearthly hour on a cup of camomile tea? But I did it.
My downfall though came when I arrived at BBC Scotland’s reception in Queen Margaret Drive, and was offered a coffee; they didn’t have decaff. I took one anyway.
By the end of the week, I’d lost a couple of pounds and felt a bit thinner. As I had peed incessantly though, with urine which had turned a worrying colour, it was probably all water loss. So was it worth it?
Almost certainly not, but I’ll keep it up for another week. The best encouragement came from Adam Hills. He told us about a friend who designs CD covers, and recently worked on top 10 hits for three female celebrities.
“She digitally enhanced the figure of every single one of them for the cover,” he told the audience. “Try as much as you like, girls, you can never look like that.
“And the really big joke,” he finished, “is that us men aren’t that fussy.” Now that I have always known.
24 August 2003
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