Last summer, with a bit of pressure from my internist, I agreed to start on a diet and lose enough weight to ward off a variety of bad ailments over the next few years. As this is written, I have now gone 3 months and peeled down some 30 pounds. I have been a conscientious and diligent soul and I can hardly wait until a time to stop.
Back in 1987, I was weighing 235 pounds and things crashed on me. It was a time when the American College of Radiology was going through a crisis about reviving its relative value scales. Even with hard work and high hopes, it was very stressful and my stomach began to hurt. In a matter of a few months, while I felt poorly and my tummy ached, I lost some 40 pounds. Some of my friendly radiologists performed the acceptable belly imaging without achieving a confirmed diagnosis. Gradually, I felt better, while leaving off any abundance or anything to drink except plain water.
Then, I went off to speak at a conference at Lake Tahoe in the spring. It was the week when the snow melted off of the mountains. The germs from animal feces were not chlorinated. I came home with parasites that was diagnosed as a case of Giardia. I had been taking a variety of palliative pills and when my gastrointestinal doc made the diagnosis he pumped me full of Atabrine and killed the bugs. But I continued with the arrays of pills to stem the tummy ache and it remained. My friend, Glenn Hartman, arranged for me to get a workup at the Mayo Clinic. After he took my history, the chief of gastroenterology confiscated all of the pills I had been taking. By the time I left there, a week later, with a thorough and repeated analysis, I was pronounced as being well from whatever had caused my ailments. Without the pills, I began to feel healthy and a bit stronger.
So here I was, two decades later, having gradually gained back to 230 pounds and a protruding pot belly. Half the clothes in my closet were useless. I needed suspenders to hold up the pants that kept slipping down. I listened last summer and agreed to get into a zero carbohydrate diet routine.
If you have been through anything like this, you know that your allowed food and beverages leave out bread, potatoes, cheese, sweets, fruit, beans, desserts, oatmeal, butter, beer, and wine. What’s left are small pieces of meat or fish daily, all of the salads, stewed green vegetables, and packages of dried powder that are purged from carbohydrates. Just add water and heat or cool. And stay away from everything not mentioned in general or contained on the list.
In the weeks I have endured this pietistic approach, my dear wife started with me and prepared our food to meet the requirements. A couple of weeks later, she dropped out of the zero carbohydrate drill and joined the Weight Watchers team. That allows a wider selection of small portions and she is gradually creeping down. I am staying on the original scheme and she minds my manners as carefully as before.
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