My Health Journey, A Win and a Loss

---

This is the second post in a series on my Health Journey. If you’re just tuning in, this was the first post.

For 18 months, I suffered. I ate cheerios with almond milk for breakfast nearly every day. I had salads for lunch and I don’t even remember what I had for dinner. I was starving within an hour of each meal. I had the discipline to endure it, but fun was not in the vocabulary.

At that point, I had lost 35 pounds and my cholesterol dropped 61 points. Sounds great, but like I said, I was suffering…

At the office, we used to have lunch together as a team every Wednesday. The CTO had lost a lot of weight (clearly way more than I did) over the past few months and was looking great. One lunch, I noticed that he had a giant plastic container of tuna with mayo and chopped celery.

The tuna itself was probably fine for me to have, but mayo? As much as I craved it, I knew that was a no-no for my cholesterol/heart issues. However, it also happens to have been one of my favorite things growing up!

I asked him how it was possible that he lost so much weight and yet ate that kind of stuff. He said: “The Atkins Diet“. What was this magic?

I immediately ordered the hardcover from Amazon and devoured it (I know, a little too clever…). Not only did it sound too good to be true, Dr. Atkins also claimed that by following his diet, your cholesterol would go down.

I was ready to go for it, but I was cautious enough to discuss it with my cardiologist. He said that he was OK with me trying it, but we’d have to keep an eye on the bloodwork after a few months.

The first two weeks of the diet were brutal. I was so full after each meal that I didn’t want to ever eat again, but you have to eat every six hours during that initial period whether you’re hungry or not.

I loved everything I put in my mouth. Breakfast was an omelette with bacon and cheese. Lunch was a chicken caesar salad. Dinner was two hamburger patties with cheese (no buns). But, like I said, I was forcing this delicious stuff down my throat.

Fast forward. A few months later, I’m down another 25 pounds (so around 205). That’s the Win part of this post.

But, when the lab results came back, my cholesterol was 39 points higher than when I first saw the cardiologist (now close to two years later!). He was absolutely insistent that I immediately stop Atkins and return to my original diet. I was crushed. This was the Loss part (obviously).

Everything that Atkins said in his book was accurate for me, with the overwhelming exception of the impact on my cholesterol.

The next post will be a very high level review of 2003 (when this post happened) to 2019, so you won’t be suffering a month-by-month recital.