Lightening Up.

Okay. I admit it. I need to lighten up.

Not politically (I need to heavy down some more there) but physically. I was just joking (well, partly) with my family and friends, and here are some of the highlights:

A lot of us have tried low-carbohydrate diets, and most of us who have, had great results at one point or another. I lost 45 lbs and got into some of the best shape of my life the first time I tried the Atkins diet. I was leaner, more energetic, fit into all my old clothes, enjoyed the food, had a better attitude, absolutely everything. My health was phenomenal. But, as with almost everyone I've talked to who had "done that diet" or one like it, we stuck with it for a long time, had fabulous results, and then at one point (usually a major holiday) we just reverted (fast or slow) to old eating habits. For most of us, the 'bad' results happened slowly. We stayed slim for a while, and we had changed enough to drop certain carb-heavy foods (for example, sugary drinks almost never make a comeback). Instead of with many diets, where you finish the diet and bounce back to your old weight and then surpass it, most of us seemed to gain the weight back slowly, and often were less heavy than originally, but now stunned and disappointed because we knew we could take and keep it of.

That's right. The ultimate problem with the Atkins or low-carb diet is that you have proven to yourself you're in control. You can lose the weight, you can keep it off, and it's only your big, fat, greedy, oversized mouth that does you in. I say you. I mean me.

I know that, if I can stick with the diet again, honestly and seriously, I can lose the weight and fast. Unfortunately, it is never as easy as the first time. I have several interlaced theories why: First and foremost, we aren't doing it seriously and honestly. We're doing it half-assed (which, ironically, provides for a full-sized ass). We know all the little secrets for the so-called "maintenance" phase, which is after the diet when you do have a smattering of carbs here and there. Only we have more than a smattering, we have confused the maintenance phase with the regain-the-weight phase we enjoyed so much after we actually (and usually unknowingly) stopped doing the diet right. This "more than a smattering" for most of us takes the form of (or the shape of, if you're the other Wonder Twin, or both form of and shape of if you're the size of two people) little semi-or-full carb snacks that, on their own, would not destroy even a day's worth of carb count. After all, for me (and most, I believe) we can have well over 30 grams of carbs a day and still keep the weight off. You can eat a nice serving of chips, or a bowl of actual ice cream, of have a delicious "adult" beverage, or two slices of pizza. The problem is like a poorly written formula that gives the wrong results we go from "or" to "and". Our 30 gram day goes to 300. Then, we decide that today is the "one day" off of the diet this month, and we have a bowl of Fettuccine Alfredo with garlic-bread, chased down with the ice-cream version of Mississippi Mud Pie, and for a treat (as if that wasn't enough) a nightcap-tumbler of Kahlua & Cream (the cream, of course, is on the diet, so it makes everything else okay, right? Our 300 gram day goes to 1200. Then we repeat the process, if not tomorrow, then worse, the day after tomorrow, for the day between we have a lot of high-fat, low-carb foods that would have comprised a great day for the diet, but now is merely fodder for the set of four full-sized tractor spare tires around our waist because the carbs on either side of being "good" won't let us metabolize the fat.

But, we tell ourselves, at least we got a lot of protein.

Small consolation when your ass is the size of Wisconsin. (No offense is meant to Wisconsin, I have never been there. I would have said Arkansas, but that would have been intentional and personal).

So, most of us reason, we will exercise. We could do with a little buffing up, some nice pectorals, some rounded biceps, some washboard abs. Now, most of us forget a couple things here, namely that it takes many more years to exercise yourself into shape than to diet yourself into shape. Bodybuilders don't become Mr. Universe overnight. It takes decades. Decades of going to the gym every day for more than a 30-minute "I feel better about myself but accomplished almost nothing" workouts. Decades of going to the gym and burning valuable eating time. Since you can't edge out the other responsibilities in your life (work, kids, whatever else you must do) you have to take away personal time. This is time that could have been put to better use watching your favorite television shows, playing mindless computer games, eating your fifth three-course meal that evening, stuffing ultra-cheese popcorn in your mouth, polishing off that wasted extra piece of cake in the freezer, and washing it all down the with gallon of milk that was just opened close enough to its freshness date that you don't want it to go to waste.

Here's the worst irony for me: every time I exercise, because I'm not going to sacrifice hours of my time to exercise (I simply don't like it enough until it gets really expensive as in playing ice hockey on a team) I exercise about 30 to 45 minutes a day. And I gain weight! Not just that lame excuse of "muscle weighs more than fat" which is meant to comfort people who are losing ground despite trying harder but actual around-the-middle-jiggle weight that makes my attempts to exercise look absolutely comical (when it's not so sad you cry). I mean, the fatty-fat-fatso jiggling and bouncing on the dance-mats or rippling and lapping like a kiddie-pool while working the free weights kind of sad comedy.

It was pointed out to me (and I had actually been doing research about this about 10 years ago) that the problem is our bodies are not designed with modern civilization in mind. We have to remember that for 50,000 or more years we were designed to survive on the "feast and famine" concept. There was food to go around, but it was a heck of a lot more savvy about its impending fate. Around my house the deer get aggressive if you don't feed them enough, and will actually stand around your car waiting for you in the morning. Not to mention with greenhouse farming (which is often more 'organic' than traditional farming, by the way) we have fresh fruit and produce year-round. On top of that we know how to preserve food in cans and freezers. There is no famine! It is feast, feast, feast! But while our minds know this, our bodies do not.

The body is convinced that The Big Famine is coming. After all, that's the only reason we could be eating this much, right? It had better store every morsel and scrap of processable fat (carbohydrates, as I understand it, are translated into gooey body-fats by insulin) for the time when the food runs out. We just might, it reasons, live through the famine if we're fat enough. That is, after all, why we don't stay hungry after two or three days of no food. The body realizes The Famine has begun and starts happily consuming all the fats it was smart enough to store up.

Of course, there are other problems with fasting, or intentional starvation. Largely, we still don't get enough exercise (which would have been hunting the next wildebeest about 7000 years ago, or farming land diligently for food that won't show up for weeks) and often we don't pay attention to when we should really be stopping. Our body isn't designed to live off our own fat forever. Even during "famine" it was used to having berries or grasses or something to vary up the steady flow of internal fats. So we end up with heart murmurs (I can't help it - I picture a strange muppet sketch where the heart is grumbling in some mauve cave), we pass out, we skate perilously close to death... and that's only if you can actually convince yourself to fast. (For more than ten minutes, people). I only know one person who has done that and she said risking death wasn't worth it. Fat and alive beats skinny and dead - or even hospitalized and possibly permanently broken.

Sorry, there's no great ending to this post that solves some major political question if only everyone in the world would agree with me and do it my way. I think I am going to keep exercising in the "almost helpful" area and eating "almost low-carbohydrate" days. The fact is that I can do everything I want and while I'm noticeably overweight, I'm not as spectacular an example of rotund as I sometimes make myself out to be. I think I'm just going to keep hanging out in public, after all there are so many really fat people out there maybe I will look skinny by comparison.

So, thank that fat person next time you see them. They're doing you a public service.