The truth about dieting and dispelling myths about carbs

After having four children, my mom tried everything to lose weight. She went on diet after… After having four children, my mom tried everything to lose weight. She went on diet after diet. What’s worse is that she made my sisters and I join her in every weight loss expedition. Having to eat foods according to my mom’s diet was sometimes pretty harsh. It made me realize the intense measures people go through in order to lose weight, and why people gain the weight back most of the time.

The first diet I can remember going on with my mom was the grapefruit diet. This diet consisted of eating half a grapefruit before every meal. You were allowed to eat until you were full, but after munching on a sour grapefruit, you didn’t have much of an appetite.

After a month, the results weren’t all that my mom hoped for, and she couldn’t bear to eat another bite of a sour grapefruit. She quit this diet and was on her way to her next venture.

Her most recent diet was one of the strangest I’ve ever heard. She calls this diet the “Cleansing Diet.” It’s supposed to clean the toxins from your body. My uncle, a new-age herbal pharmacist, recommended it to her. These are the terms of her diet:

Noon: Eat lunch, but only dry, hot foods, no liquid or drinks.

2-4 p.m.: Drink as much water as you want, but only hot water.

6 p.m.: Eat dinner, only dry, hot foods, no liquid or drinks.

8-10 p.m.: Drink as much water as you want, but only hot water.

I actually tried this diet for a day. The amount of discipline it takes to follow this diet is unbelievable, and it soon became clear that I didn’t have it because, at about 12:05, I decided the diet wasn’t for me and I quit.

My mom, on the other hand, followed this diet pretty religiously. Eventually, her willpower failed her and she fell into bad eating habits. She still swears by this diet and continues to try to restrain herself to the terms of the diet.

After a life of watching what I ate and watching my mom suffer through diets, I did a little research on a popular weight loss plan, the Atkins diet. I also found a few reasons why the popularity is dying and people are slowly gaining the weight back.

What some people don’t know is that the Atkins diet has some health risks associated with it. Because of the terms of the diet, many people’s diets consisted of a lot of meat and, believe it or not, mayonnaise. Atkins himself said that followers could even eat mayonnaise with everything.

The problem with this is that if you eat mayonnaise all the time, you’re bound to have serious heart problems. One man followed Atkins’ advice and ended up with extremely high cholesterol. President Clinton himself even regretted going on the Atkins diet. After his quadruple bypass surgery, he commented on how he wished he had foregone the Atkins diet and followed a diet that was low in fat.

Recently, the Atkins diet has been seriously debated. Some people are complaining because the food plan that worked for them in the past no longer has the desirable effects. The reason why the Atkins diet is losing efficiency is because too many corporations buying into the fad made products with reduced carbohydrates. These products gave dieters more options of sought-after, low-carb food. Since one of the terms of the Atkins diet is that you can eat as much as you want as long as it doesn’t contain carbohydrates, people started to eat these products, which still caused people to gain weight, even though they were low in carbs.

To put it simply, cutting out food that had carbohydrates in it eliminated half the things that you ate. But when low-carb foods are on the market, the diet allows you to eat those and you gain the weight back.

I, in fact, tried this diet and quit after about a day. Rice is a major staple in any good Asian diet and I couldn’t bear the thought of living without my bowl of rice. Plus, imagining a hamburger, save the bun, didn’t sound very appetizing to me.

After talking to Dr. Garen Steele about weight loss, he gave me some valuable information. He said that in order for people to lose weight, all they have to do is burn more calories then they consume. This means eating less food and exercising more.

Weight watchers don’t need to go to extremes in order to lose weight. They just need to balance their diet and go for a run in the morning.

So think smart and eat healthy. Weight loss isn’t something that’s going to happen in a day; it involves a complete change in lifestyle. The next time you hear of some new diet that lets you eat chocolate 18 times a day, chances are there’s something amiss.

E-mail Jennifer at mjk18@pitt.edu.