Low-Carb Diet

You know how some people have that horrible urge to actually do something about their New Year's Resolutions? Well, this year I was one of those annoying sticklers and I started on a low-carb diet. I had heard about them for a long while, but a life without carbs seemed hardly worth living.

A few weeks before Christmas, then, a friend who works for an Italian fitness magazine asked me about low-carb. Would I write an article about them? Italians were just starting to look into a pasta-less lifestyle and Atkins was becoming all the rage.

I spoke to a few friends, remembered the pain others had gone through, read about diets on Wikipedia. It all didn't ring true. They said things like, "it just works!" or, "I had no cravings at all!" The exclamation marks at the end of those statements, though, sounded hollow. What does it mean that it works? How can you do without a whole macronutrient and not have cravings?

I decided I had to try it out myself. I used the weeks before the New Year to gain a little weight (courtesy Caloric Christmas Crap from Trader Joe's, thank you!) and then threw myself into this crazy low-carb diet.

I was fully expecting that after day 2 or so, I would start crawling through the house to find errant M&Ms under the couch. Or that I would have to do without lunches and dinners with friends, because the sight of their bread and pasta would just do me in.

I know a thing or two about cravings. I can go on a diet and stick with it just fine if I must, but at some inelastic point, my body has enough and it rebels. If there are calorie bombs in the house, I'll eat all. If not, I will drive to the nearest open supermarket and use the credit card as my accomplice. On occasions, I have managed to eat over 6000 calories in one sitting.

Well, Day 2 comes, and I have no cravings. None at all. I look at the bread in the fridge, at the ice cream in the freezer, at the chocolate cookies in the pantry. Not interested. I look at the chicken breast in the pan, at the salads in the crisper. Yeah, but not right now, thanks.

Miraculously, this thing goes on. Day 3 is the same. Day 4 I start feeling hungry, but no cravings develop. This is a first in my life: I have associated hunger and cravings so much, I didn't really know they were two different things. For the uninitiated, here's how you tell one from the other:

1. hunger n. A general feeling of weakness caused by insufficient supply of nutrients. It is generally accompanied by queasiness of the stomach, possibly by growling of said. The body reacts to hunger by shutting down non-vital functions and by starting to break down its reserves.
2. cravings n. pl. The absolute need to eat or drink something specific right then and there. Cravings are addictive behavior in that they urge irrational compensation: the body signal that something is desired is translated and amplified into an urge to overindulge

I am at Day 11, now, and I still don't have cravings. It's a miracle. I know what not to eat, and just don't eat it. It's as simple as that. Why, last night I was with friends at a pasta restaurant (not my choice, of course). I had grilled salmon, which came with a weird Chinese-chicken-salad-inspired pasta salad. I ate my salmon, left the pasta on the plate, and didn't feel one thing.

It's not all coming up roses, though. So far, I saw two major downsides:

1. On the very first day, my bowels were aching. Somehow, each organ in my abdominal cavity in turn complained: the liver first, then the pancreas, the spleen, the intestines, the stomach... I am not sure that was good (but it was only temporary).
   
2. After a few days or so, I noticed that I couldn't lift as I used to. I either had to reduce weights or reps. Instead of doing 50 push-ups per set I could do only 40, for instance. Instead of doing 20 pull-ups, I'd give up after 15. At first I thought it was just tiredness, but by now I think it's partially the body breaking down muscle mass to fuel its consumption.

I am continuing to watch the functioning of my inner organs. For the second problem, it seems that L-Glutamine might be the solution, so I went out and bought myself some of that.