Low-carb lifestyle
By SCOTT CRONICK For The Press, (609) 272-7017
Imagine life without bread, pasta or dessert. That's the Atkins diet.
Impossible? Not for millions of Americans who have changed their eating habits and jumped on the low-carbohydrate bandwagon.
While doctors and dieticians argue the health issues surrounding the high-protein diet that limits consumption of products made with white flour and sugar, none of the people who have lost weight on the plan question its effectiveness.
I'm one of those people. In about nine months, I've lost more than 80 pounds eating the Atkins way. Despite paying an exorbitant monthly fee to belong to a gym, I haven't gone there once in the last year. Yet the pounds keep melting away.
With no more effort than it takes to eat wings with blue cheese, filet mignon, lunchmeat and cheese, I'm losing weight.
Sure, I get some funny looks from waitresses, but who cares? My cholesterol has dropped, my blood pressure has never been better, my appetite is decreased, and people tell me every day how great I look. But the best part of it all is that I feel like I did when I was in college 10 years ago, and I have the energy of a high-schooler.
Testimonials from believers
Other people have lost even more weight. Paul Summers, a summer resident of Ocean City, has lost more than 90 pounds since last March. The two friends who convinced me to give the diet a try - Chris Giannini of Hammonton and Al Parinello of Brigantine - have lost more than 50 pounds each.
Mary Clair Delbury, a registered nurse and wife of Margate Pub chef/partner Tom Delbury, lives the low-carb lifestyle and says many of the doctors and nurses she works with are doing the same thing.
Delbury went on the diet in 1998 and lost about 38 pounds, which she kept off. She stopped eating the Atkins way while she was pregnant with her third daughter, who was born in November 2001, then resumed her low-carb lifestyle on Dec. 31, 2002. She's since lost 10 pounds.
Low-carb foods
"It's a lot easier now than it was when I first started," Delbury said. "I used to have to get a lot of things online. Now, I go to Wal-Mart."
Delbury said there's nothing wrong with the diet, as evidenced by recent medial reports.
"I think as long as you stick to it as a way to eat and not as a quick way to lose weight, you'll be OK," she said. "Once you start to eat the carbohydrates again, you will gain your weight back. You have to look at the way the food pyramid has changed. It used to be that you needed a lot of carbs. Now, they flipped it. We're learning our bodies don't need carbohydrates like they used to believe we did."
As millions of Americans shed pounds and more doctors and scientific studies endorse Atkins' theories, the business world is noticing. You can now buy tasty chocolate bars to top off your meal of bacon double cheeseburger with no bun. Anheuser-Busch just released a low-carb beer, Michelob Ultra, so you don't have to order Jack Daniels and Diet Coke to a bartender's dismay.
And thanks to a Philadelphia-based company, O' So Lo, you can now make a sandwich.
Chris Joyce, a Dayton, Ohio, native and president of O' So Lo, started his company after he went on the diet 11 years ago and wanted a low-carb muffin for breakfast.
"I tried some recipes online and they tasted like shoe leather. They were extremely bad," Joyce said. "So I hunted down food chemists. I couldn't tell you how many of them said it couldn't or shouldn't be done. But I was determined."
Joyce eventually found Robert Morley, an English chemist who worked on products such as Cool Whip. He made a muffin Joyce finally felt happy sinking his teeth into. The muffins ($5.99 for a four-pack) have approximately 3 grams of carbohydrates and are available in three flavors - blueberry, peanut butter and banana. The average low-carb dieter tries to limit carbohydrate intake to 20 to 30 grams a day, compared to a non-Atkins dieting person's daily intake of more than 200 grams of carbohydrates.
Joyce, who dropped nearly 40 pounds when he started eating the low-carb way, eventually got sick of wrapping cold meat and cheese together without the bread. The result: Three different flavors of low-carb rolls - original, sourdough and pumpernickel. Each contains 3 grams of carbohydrates.
"It took three years to develop them," Joyce said of the rolls, which retail for $2.49 for four. "The problem was taste and texture. We invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to get them like they are now."
One of those investors is Summers, the Ocean City summer resident.
"I've been on liquid diets and lost this much (90 pounds), but you can't stop eating forever," Summers said. "This is my lifestyle now. I plan to live this way. Yeah, you're going to go off once in a while, like I did for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I get right back on it. I don't even count carbs. I just stay away from them."
Where the carbs are
If you're not sure which foods contain carbs and which foods don't, just look on the back of any package. Fish, poultry, eggs, meat, oils and butter don't contain carbohydrates, but cheeses, ketchup, a piece of sugarless gum and even an Equal packet contain at least one carb. While minimal, it could add up. Most nuts and nonstarch vegetables are very low in carbohydrates as well.
A piece of apple pie has about 60 carbs; a bean burrito has around 50 carbs; a slice of pizza has about 25 carbs; and Å of a cup of pasta with tomato sauce is well more than 50. Even a tomato isn't a great thing to eat, especially early on in the diet.
My friends and I say, "Sugar is the devil." So fruits and all desserts are pretty much out.
"You're going to eat carbs by accident," Summers said. "The key is to stay away from sugar. That's what will lure you back in. The sweet taste of a piece of a cookie could be the beginning of the end."
Summers said he has no trouble sticking to the diet because of products like O' So Lo. It's not uncommon for Joyce and Summers to go to McDonald's, order a cheeseburger without the bun and plop it on one of their low-carb rolls.
And things are only going to get better as demand for low-carb products increases. Carbolite, an Indianapolis-based company, offers a great-tasting variety of candy that includes chocolate crisp bars, peanut butter cups, jelly beans and gummy bears. Atkins also has a line of candy bars. Cookbooks like Dana Carpender's "500 Low Carb Recipes," which tells you how to make everything from pizza to chocolate mousse, will become more common.
Wal-Mart manufactures Clear American carbonated flavored water, which can satisfy your craving for sweet soda. There's Fruit2O non-carbonated fruit-flavored water for those who miss drinking juice. O' So Lo will debut a new cracker line next month and already has plans to market cinnamon raisin and Hawaiian sweet rolls, as well as 6-inch hoagie rolls.
"When you see products like the Ultra beer, you realize how many people are living a low-carb lifestyle," Summers said. "A big company like Anheuser-Busch doesn't make a product for the masses unless they plan to make money off of it and continue to make money off of it. This isn't a fad. This is changing the way people live. Sure, we're restricted, but there's a lot of great-tasting stuff out there that we can have. But it's more important for me to look good and be healthy than have a plate of pasta."
Even local companies are taking the extra step to please low-carb dieters.
Don Boyd, owner of Cheesecake World in Marmora, said he sells about 30 low-carbohydrate cheesecakes a week. The cheesecakes, which contain fewer than 2 grams of carbs per slice, come in an eight-slice, 7-inch size for $15 or personal sizes for $3.
"We used to offer a low-fat cheesecake that really didn't sell so well," Boyd said. "So a lady came in and said that I should forget the low-fat cheesecake and add a sugar-free one. I did it about three years ago, and there was a big difference in the amount of interest. People love them. There's a little difference in the consistency of the low-carb cheesecake, but it's hard to tell the difference in the flavor."
Learn how to eat out
Many people have problems eating out on the Atkins diet. It doesn't have to be that hard. Have some French onion soup without the croutons or bread, lobster or crab bisque or chicken broth for your soup course. For an appetizer, dig into a shrimp cocktail or an order of wings or unbreaded chicken tenders with hot sauce.
Have a salad with blue cheese or oil and vinegar dressing. And for a main course, enjoy chicken marsala, filet mignon served almost any way, a veal chop, a lobster tail, crab cakes (without filler), rack of lamb, fish in a butter sauce or shrimp scampi. For dessert, check out some sugar-free Jell-O, or if you're lucky to find it, sugar-free cheesecake, which most of the casinos offer.
Places like the Bay Leaf Cafe in Somers Point are adding low-carb specials to the menu.
"Basically, it started because a couple of friends found success with it, and I thought I would have some things for them here," said Bay Leaf chef/owner Jimmie Murray, who features a daily Atkins Special on his menu. "There are like 50 million Web sites out there devoted to low-carb diets, and we go on there a lot and take their recipes and try them out."
Recent specials have included a cheesesteak with caramelized onions and New Yorker cheese on a spring mix with apple vinegar cole slaw and pine nuts; two burgers with bacon and cheese served on a spring mix; and the most popular special thus far, grilled chicken with roasted red peppers, mozzarella cheese and bacon on a spring mix. Most are served with bottled water and cost around $5.50.
"We've had people ordering them a lot," Murray said. "We see the same people who are on it coming back every day. I'm trying to educate people that aren't on it. I mean, when you have two burgers with cheese and bacon served over a spring mix, it's not a bad meal for anyone."
If you're carrying around extra pounds and you keep putting off a diet, maybe Atkins is the thing is for you. Once you get over the initial shock of changing your lifestyle, it becomes worth it. I got a brand new wardrobe this winter, and all it took was a trip to my attic to find my old clothes. And believe me, that felt pretty darn good.
Where to find products
O' So Lo products are sold at:
# Health Tree, 200 S. White Horse Pike, Hammonton, (609) 561-8316
# Festival Health Food Store, 3914 Black Horse Pike, Mays Landing, (609) 625-3377
# Bayshore Nutrition Center, 3702 Bayshore Road, North Cape May, (609) 886-8008
Carbolite and Atkins products:
# drug stores
# health food stores
# Kmart
# Wal-Mart
#
www.carbolitedirect.com
Clear American carbonated flavored waters are available at Wal-Mart.
Fruit2O non-carbonated flavored waters are sold in most supermarkets and Sam's Club.
Cheesecake World is located at 228 S. Shore Road, Marmora. Hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call (609) 390-2468.
To e-mail Scott Cronick at The Press:
SCronick~pressofac.com
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...OWCARBDIET.html
A Journalist's Low-carb lifestyle
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